The Center serves to foster creativity, critical thinking, and cultural understanding, and it celebrates the arts, humanities, and humanistic social sciences across colleges at the University of Vermont. The humanities are as vital to our public and private lives as oxygen—and the Center provides resources for faculty, students, and staff to engage in research, conversation, exhibitions, workshops, forums, and performances designed to foster humanistic inquiry. As a research hub on campus, the Center sponsors a wide range of initiatives, programs, grants, and events that range from multi-year research collaborative projects to pedagogy-centered seed grants to international conferences; these disparate and diverse fora promote active dialogue on the most challenging questions facing humanities scholars.
The Humanities Center works across disciplines and colleges at UVM and in recent years has prioritized pressing questions in its programming and grants. Of special interest are the environmental humanities, medical/health humanities, confronting histories and realities of discrimination and bias, and digital humanities. Similarly, the Center is uniquely and prominently invested in public humanities—the translation of necessarily specialized research into accessible formats, language, and programming.
The Center is a founding member of the New England Humanities Consortium, a network of universities and colleges across New England dedicated to intellectual collaboration, interdisciplinary exchange, and regional humanities programming.
Mission
To be a leader in Vermont and the nation in advocating for and investing in the humanities and fine arts, promoting excellence and innovation in scholarship and pedagogy through research, creativity, interdisciplinary collaborations, and civic engagement. To strengthen the humanities and fine arts on campus and in the broader community by broadcasting the perspectives and practices of humanities and fine arts disciplines and sponsoring inclusive initiatives that generate discussion and critical reflection on important issues in public and intellectual life. To provoke and facilitate opportunities for reciprocal and selfreflexive interventions that bring communities and university-based partners together for study and analysis. To increase understanding of the relevance of the humanities and fine arts in the ongoing construction of a just and democratic society.
Vision
The humanities and fine arts are a central and vital part of the fabric of University of Vermont and the intellectual life of our community. The Humanities Center is a hub of activity infused with imagination, critical engagement with the complexity of human experience, and the exploration of enduring questions.
Goals
To support this vision and mission we take the following actions:
- Provide incentives to advance UVM’s institutional commitment to high-quality and impactful humanities and arts scholarship.
- Identify, create, and expand concrete opportunities, relationships, and initiatives, both on and off campus, for demonstrating the findings and insights of humanities and arts scholarship, and showing how these findings relate to enduring and important issues of human concern.
- Promote a culture of collaboration and innovation among scholars while recognizing that excellent work in the humanities and arts also emerges out of the wisdom of individuals.
Location
University of Vermont
Humanities Center
Billings Library, B401
48 University Place
Burlington, VT 05405
Humanities.Center@uvm.edu
802-656-1997
All mailing, communication, and inquiries to Ande Tagliamonte