About the Center for Humanities and the Arts
Founded in 1997, the Center for Humanities and the Arts (CHA) serves as a focus for humanistic scholarship and artistic creation across the Boulder campus. Each year, CHA selects a theme around which to organize its central activities: a year-long faculty and graduate student seminar, a lecture series, and a spring colloquium. CHA also supports innovative research and creative work through monthly "Work-in-Progress" sessions, and events with other units on campus. In addition, CHA plays an important role in supporting graduate education: CHA grants approximately $500,000 in graduate fellowships each year, has sent graduate students to Cornell University's School of Criticism and Theory, has hosted Woodrow Wilson Postdoctoral Fellowships in the humanities, and ran an internship program for students seeking employment outside the academy, a program that won a 1999 Innovation Award from the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. In spring 2003, CHA hosted its first Visiting Scholar/Artist. All of CHA's events are free and open to our various constituencies, and we also host special events for undergraduate students and for our friends in the community. Through all of its programs, CHA works to encourage interdepartmental and cross-campus dialogue, to raise the profile of the arts and humanities in Boulder, and to build support for scholarship and creative activity.
CHA's Director
Michael E. Zimmerman, a longtime professor at Tulane University, is the director of the University of Colorado at Boulder’s Center for Humanities and the Arts, beginning Fall 2006. Zimmerman also was named the Eaton Chair of Humanities, and will teach in the Department of Philosophy. His research interests include 19th- and 20th-century German philosophy, environmental philosophy, and Buddhism. He replaced Professor Jeffrey Cox, who directed the center since 1998. "I am taking over a center that is in great shape," said Zimmerman. "In addition to carrying on what has already been achieved, I hope to partner with those who want to extend CHA programming into new areas."
A specialist in environmental philosophy, Zimmerman would like to further develop the connection between the humanities and social sciences and environmental studies on the CU-Boulder campus. "When it comes to issues such as global warming, science alone can’t address the problem, you have to bring views from many different disciplines to the table," Zimmerman said.
Before coming to CU-Boulder, Zimmerman was a faculty member at Tulane University since 1975, where he held the positions of professor and chair of the philosophy department, co-director of the environmental studies program, director of Asian studies, and director of the honors programs. He received numerous awards at Tulane University including the Interdisciplinary Teacher of the Year Award, Sheldon Hackney Award for Excellence in Teaching, Tulane Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award and the Honors Professor of the Year Award. He is the author or editor of five books, and dozens of articles.
Steering Committee
Each year a quorum of faculty members serve on the Center's Steering Committee. These distinguished scholars and artists, drawn from across the university, direct the work of the Center, aiding the director in selecting themes and speakers, overseeing the budget, and determining future programs. The current members of the Steering Committee are:
- Melinda Barlow - Film Studies Program
- Bud Coleman - Department of Theatre and Dance
- Adrian Del Caro - Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures
- Jill Heydt-Stevenson - Departments of English and Comparative Literature & Humanities
- Peter Knox - Department of Classics
- David Korevaar - College of Music
- Suzanne Magnanini - Department of French and Italian
- David Mapel - Department of Political Science
- Jim Palmer - Film Studies Program, Director of Conference on World Affairs
- Bob Pasnau - Department of Philosophy
- Jeremy Smith - College of Music
CHA Staff
The Center for Humanities and the Arts is fortunate to have Paula Anderson as its Program Assistant. Paula has worked at the University of Colorado at Boulder since 1993. She has been involved with CHA since its inception, and has overseen CHA's operations full-time since 1998.
Through generous grants from the Graduate School and College of Music, In November 2004 CHA welcomed our Administrative Assistant, Lisa Bailey. Lisa oversees GCAH grants, and assists with American Music Research Center and CHA events.
Listserv Information
The Center for Humanities & the Arts at the University of Colorado at Boulder has created an electronic mailing list for interested faculty, staff, students and community members in the humanities and arts. The cha-info list enables faculty, staff students, and community members to communicate with each other directly over the internet. We expect that subscribers will exchange news, ideas, information about themselves and/or colleagues, and about their interests in the humanities and arts.
Apart from encouraging users to observe normal rules of politeness and civility, the only restriction we would put on use is to remind participants that the list is a public venue and that messages of a highly personal nature be reserved for private communications.
To subscribe to cha-info, address an e-mail message, with "CHA Info List" in the subject line, to paula.anderson@colorado.edu and ask to be subscribed to the info list.
To send a message that will go to all of the members on the list, you must address your message to: cha-info@lists.colorado.edu.
