Welcome from the Director
The University of Rochester Humanities Center is dedicated to exploring the varied dimensions of the human experience. We are committed to values that lie at the heart of humanistic inquiry: critical thinking, reasoned discourse, diversity, civility, empathy, and compassion. Our primary mission is to serve the needs of a democratic citizenry through scholarly reflection, inclusive exchange, and collaboration across disciplines in the humanities and humanistic social sciences. Whether you are an anthropologist or a literary critic, a musicologist or a historian, a faculty member, graduate student, or undergraduate, you will discover among Center participants a shared engagement with the practices, ideas, beliefs, and art forms that people have created over time to understand and express the human condition.
Founded in the spring of 2015 and located on the second floor of Rush Rhees Library, the Humanities Center oversees a lecture series and a program for internal and external fellows. The Center also hosts a bi-weekly Jesse L. Rosenberger Work-in-Progress lunchtime seminar for fellows, faculty affiliates, and graduate students. The seminar is the venue for lively discussion about the participants’ current research, enhancing the prospects for interdisciplinary collaboration.
Among our other central activities are working groups, small gatherings of students and faculty to talk about matters of common interest. These include Grupo, devoted to topics concerning Latin America, another that focuses on broad professional opportunities for Ph.Ds., and a Victorian reading group. We welcome new working groups, which are funded by the Humanities Project, at any time. Along with the Ferrari Humanities Symposia and the Distinguished Visiting Humanist series, the Humanities Project also brings thought-provoking speakers to the campus. At the same time, University of Rochester researchers have the opportunity to interact with colleagues from Syracuse and Cornell Universities, as well as several upstate New York liberal arts colleges, through the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation-funded Central New York Humanities Corridor, which runs working groups on several topics of interest to humanists.
The Center’s goal of fostering community among those studying the humanities and humanistic social sciences at Rochester extends to University of Rochester undergraduates, who have often felt isolated from one another. Our Meliora Scholars program offers funds to selected second-semester first-year students to undertake a research project during their sophomore or junior years, with the goal of presenting their work at the beginning of their senior year. Meliora Scholars attend at least three Center-sponsored events each semester and meet with Humanities Center mentors as they devise their projects. The Center also mentors recipients of Humanities Research and Innovation Grants (HRIGs). I and my colleagues who comprise the affiliates of the Center (around 250 at this writing) are extremely grateful to Ani and Mark Gabrellian, who have generously endowed the directorship of the Center. We could not operate without the support of the Office of the President, the Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences, University Advancement, and numerous others.
The Humanities Center at the University of Rochester is abounding with inquiry and activity. I welcome you to join us.
Peter Christensen
Arthur Satz Professor of the Humanities, Department of Art and Art History
Ani and Mark Gabrellian Director of the Humanities Center