People
Program Administration
Letter from the Senior Associate Director
The humanities disciplines have always provided opportunities to examine the past and the present, to envision new models for the future, to index transformation and resilience in people and ideas and events. And the IPRH is always perched on that boundary between the past and the future – informed by the events and programs and processes that have come before, but always looking ahead to new ways of thinking and doing and being. This year’s IPRH schedule is thus a combination of the familiar and the new.
What is new? Many things – including the newsletter that you are holding in your hands, which has been redesigned this fall, and which we hope you will use as a resource and starting point for the programs and activities that we have planned for the coming year. We also invite you to visit our recently upgraded website throughout the year for additions and updates to our calendar of events – including detailed information about our speakers, podcasts and video recordings and blogs that capture and preserve our events, and an archive of past IPRH Fellows and programs. Our year will also be structured by exciting new partnerships (including those that have made our “climate change and the humanities” lecture series and our Digital Humanities Post-Doctoral Fellow possible); by a new initiative that will award prizes for outstanding research in the humanities to faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates; and by a new IPRH course that will be offered in the spring semester by the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, featuring the works of the IPRH Fellows for 2009-10.
And what continues? Again, the list is long and exciting: our faculty and graduate student fellowship programs (we are delighted to introduce this year’s Fellows on pages X through X, and the guidelines for our upcoming 2010-11 fellowships can be found at the back of this newsletter); the exciting and varied public lectures, panel discussions, and symposia that have been at the heart of the IPRH’s mission since 1997; and the IPRH Film Series, which was launched in fall 2000 and which continues to screen free films for campus and local audiences throughout the year.
Above all, what continues is this: the IPRH remains a hub of activities and events that supports humanistic endeavor on our campus and generates exciting and productive new projects that enliven humanities scholarship on the U of I campus and beyond. The IPRH offers numerous opportunities for engagement – some of them familiar, some of them new – and we invite you to add your voice to the conversation.
Yours truly,
Christine Catanzarite