Humanities Newsletter
Keep up with the Humanities!
Keep up on humanities-related events on campus and in the wider RVA community, and learn about the accomplishments of our community. Issues always feature an example of humanities practice –it might be an essay, a translation, a collection of images.
To submit an event or a HumLight (a humanities highlight: anything faculty, staff, students, alums, and community partners are doing that shows off the range of our humanities practices), please use this FORM.
Find our previous issues below.
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August 2025
View the entire newsletter here.
LEAD ARTICLE:
Welcome from the new director
A note of introduction from the new director of the UR Humanities Center
Welcome and Welcome Back, a new school year begins! I am honored and excited to step into the role of Director of the University of Richmond Humanities Center. The Center promotes humanistic methodologies and facilitates humane conversations in the university’s intellectual and cultural life. Thanks to the efforts of my predecessor, the indefatigable Dr. Nathan Snaza, the UR Humanities Center is a welcoming space committed to fostering the essential role the humanities play across the university’s five schools, its departments, and its programs.
For those who don’t know me, I’m first and foremost a 25-year member of the History Department. I specialize in the Medieval and Renaissance history of the Mediterranean, southern Italy in particular. Over the years my research and teaching interests have ranged from twelfth-century aristocratic families to premodern travel and migration, and from the works of Dante to the Crusades. (If you’ve heard rumors of a professor who has their students plan sieges of campus buildings, yup, that’s me.)
A little over a decade ago, I co-developed the ‘Humanities Initiative’. The project had a twofold mission: first, to foster community and inquiry for students interested in humanistic study and second, to elevate the visibility of the humanities on campus – showcasing the work done by both faculty and students. The Humanities Fellows Program and Humanities Connect Program were born of these two objectives. Thanks in no small part to the foundational work of past Directors Nathan Snaza and, before him, Dr. Nicole Sackley, these two missions grew into the University-wide Center and its fruitful programming collaborations.
Forging Ahead…
With many important pieces in place, the Humanities Center is moving into a new phase– one that comes during a challenging and, frankly, unprecedented time for universities and especially for the humanities. We are in a moment when ‘making the case’ to engage in this work has never been more urgent or necessary and at the same time has never been more difficult. Aware of these challenges, we seek to explain the centrality of humanities questions, values, and research as a way to promote understanding and to offer tools for navigating an often bewildering contemporary world.
For a new Director the theme for this year’s programming, How Do We Inherit? is specially fortuitous. I will press forward with the goals that I have inherited and that have defined the Center since its inception:
- To advocate for the Humanities
- To nurture Students as Researchers and Ethical World Citizens
- To facilitate Connections across Departments, Programs and Schools
- To support Faculty Research and Pedagogy Through Collaboration
I am eager to build upon the Center’s efforts to incorporate career planning and training into the program – to offer an ‘applied humanities’ of sorts by linking humanistic disciplines with career development for students. I will draw on the expertise of the newly - selected American Colleges of the South Mellon Academic Leadership Fellows, Dr. Mimi Hanaoka and Dr. Olivier Delers, whose charges include integrating the humanities with Career Services.
We are fortunate to be part of an intellectual community of teacher-scholar-friends at UR. We have a vibrant Humanities Center and an inviting dedicated space in the Humanities Commons. We all know there are many humanities and humanities-adjacent events on campus – talks, workshops, exhibits – a veritable feast of opportunities to enjoy humane study and performances and to build community. The Humanities Center will continue to operate as a clearinghouse for those events, where people inside and outside the university can find out what the humanities have on offer at UR.
If you are planning an event that intersects in some way with the Humanities, please post on this Google doc. I urge you also to reach out to me with ideas and suggestions for future programming.
I look forward to working with all of you over this next year. And I am confident that as we exchange ideas, share new research possibilities and sing the praise of a humanities education we will continue to fulfill the Center’s vital mission: to promote the humanities “as a cluster of practices that shape how we perceive, make sense of and respond to an ever-changing world.”
- Joanna…
- Spring 2025
- Fall 2024