Welcome to the Humanities Initiative!
In an era of intense interdisciplinary exploration in humanities scholarship, a humanities center acknowledges the need to increase the opportunities for intellectual exchange among faculty members in the humanities. Nationally, humanities centers were first established in some large measure as a home for new and often marginal fields within the humanities. However, as these centers have matured as institutions, the need to strengthen the connections between the centers and the core academic activities of their universities has increasingly become important.
The Humanities Initiative committee here, after examining humanities centers around the country, has therefore decided to pursue the development of a scholarly center devoted to the core disciplines of the humanities. As a first practical step, the committee has sponsored a series of programs that replicate some of the standard activities of the more ambitious and scholarly humanities centers: conferences, faculty workshops, faculty lunches, and grant development. In the future the committee hopes to begin programs to award faculty research fellowships and competitive postdoctoral fellowships. Current programs include grant development, Tuesday Lunches, Research Seminars and Workshops, and publication subventions.
A flourishing Humanities Initiative fits well into the ambitious goal of establishing an intellectual climate here at UT that will enable the university to qualify for membership in the Association of American Universities. In its evaluation of prospective members, the AAU considers only one objective measure in the humanities: the number of major fellowships awarded to the humanities faculty. Therefore all of the programs of the Humanities Initiative are designed quite deliberately to contribute to the attainment of the maximum number of such fellowships.
Announcements
The Tuesday Lunch Series: Fall '08 schedule here.
Departments
Contact Information
Dr. David Tandy
Professor and Head
Department of Classics
1101 McClung Tower
Knoxville, TN 37996-0413
Phone: (865) 974-7705
Fax: (865) 974-7173