Humanities Center

Joseph F. Cunningham ’67 and his wife, Andrea, have created an endowed fund to support research, lectures, and public forums within the humanities.

Noam Chomsky, professor of linguistics, emeritus, at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is the University’s Distinguished Visiting Humanist. Chomsky, an esteemed linguist, philosopher, political commentator, and activist, will meet with students and faculty this week. In advance of his visit, Jeffrey Runner, Chair of the Department of Linguistics, and Theodore Brown, Professor of History and Charles E. and Dale L. Phelps Professor of Public Health and Policy, talked with Chomsky about his seminal works in linguistics and politics.

As this year’s keynote speaker for the Ferrari Humanities Symposia, literary critic Jane Tylus will outline some of her new ways of thinking about how artists and others in early modern Europe depicted rituals of separation in a public talk, “Saying Good-bye in the Renaissance: Leave-Taking as a Work of Art,” on April 5.

During the mid-19th century, a series of grand hoaxes captured the American imagination: the Great Moon Hoax, the Cardiff Giant, and the fantastical creatures of P. T. Barnum. Joan Saab, an associate professor of art history and visual and cultural studies, examines the relationship between seeing and believing.

Multidisciplinary artist Christopher Knowles rehearses in Todd Theatre. The Sundance Kid is Beautiful presents Knowles’s work in a staged performance environment that incorporates many of his diverse approaches, including dance, sculpture, music, and poetry.

The University’s Humanities Project will present a solo performance of The Sundance Kid is Beautiful, a rarely shown work by visual artist Christopher Knowles. Knowles is often regarded as being an outsider whose work is explained through his autism.

University of Rochester Trustee Ani Gabrellian '84 and her husband, Mark Gabrellian '79, have committed $2 million to establish a directorship for the University’s newly created Humanities Center.

The University will celebrate the opening of its Humanities Center this fall with an inaugural talk by Gerald Early, a leading authority on race and American culture.

Dean of Arts & Sciences Gloria Culver has announced the creation of a Humanities Center, which will support multidisciplinary engagement around literature, history, the arts, and philosophies of cultures past and present. Culver and interim director of the new center Joan Shelley Rubin have chosen “Humanities at the Crossroads: Charting Our Future” as the center’s theme for its first year. Faculty and students will organize research projects, seminars and symposia around the theme.