humanities center
Welcome to the SU Humanities Center. Founded in June 2008, as the result of a five-year planning task-force led by the College’s Humanities Council, the Center is now located on the third floor of the historic William P. Tolley Humanities Building at Syracuse University.
An interdisciplinary center for research, events and exhibitions, and critical programming in the arts and humanities, the SU Humanities Center is home to three respected programs previously housed in The College of Arts and Sciences: Syracuse Symposium, an annual semester-long intellectual and artistic festival; The Andrew W. Mellon Central New York Humanities Corridor, an interdisciplinary collaboration with SU, Cornell University, and the University of Rochester; and The Jeanette K. Watson Professorship and External Fellows Series. The SU Humanities Center also sponsors major research initiatives, supports fellowships and public programming, and assists with procuring external funding for humanistic research activities.
Only in its second year, The SU Humanities Center has already hosted over 52 major conferences, lectures, performance and exhibits at Syracuse University and in the CNY region through its major affiliated programs Syracuse Symposium ™ and the Mellon CNY Humanities Corridor.
The theme for this past year’s Syracuse Symposium was “LIGHT,” and included lectures and public talks among others by radio host Ira Glass, renowned author Edwidge Danticat, physicist Jana Levin, and photographer Howard Bond; performances by the international dance group Shen Wei and award-winning playwright and actor Lynn Manning; and exhibits of the 19th Century painter Winslow Homer and contemporary video artist Barry Anderson.
In hosting this year’s Syracuse Symposium calendar of events, The SU Humanities Center partnered with many organizations at SU and in the Syracuse community: Bird Library, SU Gallery, LIGHT WORKS, The Society of New Music, The Syracuse Film Festival and The Human Rights International Film Festival, and University Lectures. Next season’s theme for Syracuse Symposium is “CONFLICT (PEACE AND WAR)” and planned events will soon appear on syracusesymposium.org and through a new Symposium page on Facebook.
The Mellon CNY Humanities Corridor, which The SU Humanities Center administers under my direction, has sponsored over 28 different conferences and working groups of faculty at Syracuse University, Cornell University, and University of Rochester. The Corridor has now been extended for another year until December 2010 and we are now in the process of applying for a renewal of this generous grant funded by the Andrew W, Mellon Foundation. Detailed information on the Mellon CNY Humanities Corridor project is available through The SU Humanities Center website at syracusehumanities.org
In addition to these major programs, The SU Humanities Center has also initiated many new exciting research programs to support faculty and graduate students at Syracuse University, including the Humanities Center Dissertation Research Fellowships and the Internal Faculty Fellows generously funded by Dean George Langford, The College of Arts & Sciences. Last year we also initiated a new series of Humanities Mini-Seminar Series, which brings national and international scholars to the Center to interact in a one-day seminar setting with faculty and graduate students from SU and the CNY region. This fall Mini-Seminars were conducted by Professor W.J.T. Mitchell, Distinguished Visual Studies scholar from The University of Chicago, and by Professor Richard Dyer of King’s College, London, U.K. This spring's invited Humanities Mini-Seminars included Professor Gabriele Schwab, Chancellor’s Professor of University of California, and Professor Gerhard Richter, University of Santa Barbara, and Professor Cary Wolfe, Rice University. Also this spring The SU Humanities Center is participating in the establishment of a Consortium of New and Transitioning Humanities Centers with Auburn University, Northeastern University, and University of Florida.
A key objective of the SU Humanities Center is to create a dialogue about the public possibilities of humanistic inquiry, as they pertain to innovative thinking and real-life problems. If you would like to participate in any of the SU Humanities Center's public programs or donate to our ongoing initiatives such as Syracuse Symposium, please do not hesitate to contact us at 315-443-7192, or through the contact portal of this web-site.
Sincerely,
Gregg Lambert
Dean’s Professor of Humanities
Founding Director
December 2009