About the Humanities Center

Mission Statement

The UR Humanities Center will be a cross-school, cross-departmental structure that advocates for the essential role of the humanities at UR and infuses humanistic methodologies and questions into the intellectual and cultural life across all five Schools at UR.  In keeping with the University’s mission, the Center will be guided by commitments both to disciplinary and interdisciplinary work in the humanities, foregrounding an understanding of the humanities as a cluster of practices rather than a discrete set of departments or majors. The Center will be guided by the values of curiosity, humility, critical thinking, hospitality, voluntary participation, sustainability, and enchantment with the world.

Goals

The Center will have four principal goals:

1) Advocate for and make the humanities at UR more visible,

2)  Nurture students in their scholarship and research, and in intellectual and ethical habits that will guides them to lives of purpose after graduation regardless of major,

3) Connect humanists and humanities conversations across departments and schools; publicize faculty, student, and alumni endeavors;  and infuse humanistic methodologies and questions into the intellectual and cultural life at UR, and

4) Support faculty research and teaching by fostering collaborative exploration. 

Advocating for the Humanities

The UR Humanities Center will advocate for and demonstrate the essential relevance of the humanities for understanding our world, past and present, through historical, aesthetic, and speculative inquiry, and for responding to the crises of our time.  Although broad in geographic and temporal scope, the Center will be particularly attuned to the history and legacies of the ground on which the University stands, from the displacement of Powhatan people, to city’s role in the transatlantic slave trade and the Confederacy, to our present day city. The Center will also amplify the external visibility of the humanities at the University of Richmond, seeking to expand our presence among prospective students, in the city of Richmond, and in our various humanities fields. 

Nurturing Students as Researchers and Ethical World Citizens

As an undergraduate liberal arts university, students are at the core of the Center’s mission. The Center will nurture students in the humanities, inviting them into cross-disciplinary humanities conversations, and helping them to imagine lives of purpose after graduation. The Center will house and administer the Humanities Fellows Program and Humanities Connect, two programs for humanities undergraduates that foster undergraduate humanities research and focus on student mentoring. The center will work with the Office of Scholars and Fellowships, Academic Skills Center, Career Services, and other UR offices to strengthen and expand materials and workshops on the role of humanistic skills and competencies in the global market, foregrounding a commitment to the humanities as an ethos that guides civically-engaged life regardless of major or career path.

Facilitating Cross Departmental, Program, and School Connections

The Center will strengthen humanistic connections across departments, divisions, the five Schools, and the wider Richmond community.  The Center will facilitate and explore intellectual connections across units, through common themes that structure events, research programs, and curricular projects. The Center will also act as a clearinghouse for information about courses, events (on and off campus), and the accomplishments of faculty, students, and alumni in the humanities at UR. It will affirm an ecumenical, capacious understanding of the humanities, building on ties with the Digital Scholarship Lab, interdisciplinary programs, the Bonner Center for Civic Engagement, and faculty developing new curricular offerings (such as Environmental Humanities) that cross boundaries among schools.

Supporting Faculty Research and Pedagogy Through Collaboration

The Center will serve as a resource for faculty in the humanities, affirming the teacher-scholar model, and the intellectual and practical inseparability of teaching and research. This may include building on the Faculty Learning Community model to support teaching and research groups, or working to help faculty plan and undertake collaborative research and pedagogy, conference planning, and logistical support and publicity for scholarship involving UR collaborations, such as edited journal volumes and academic conferences.