About the Center for Humanities and the Arts
At the University of Colorado Boulder there is a focal point for humanistic research, creative work, and scholarly innovation. That place is the Center for Humanities and the Arts (CHA), founded in 1997. CHA serves all faculty and students in the arts and humanities. In addition to bringing together academics and students across disciplines, the Center is also an interface between the community and the university.
At the core of CHA’s activities is an annual fellowship competition for faculty in all departments of the Humanities and Arts. By granting successful applicants a semester off from teaching, CHA contributes to the innovation of scholarship and the rejuvenation of teaching. In addition, various committees in the Center award grants to faculty for research trips and invited speakers, as well as grants and fellowships for graduate students. CHA funds collaborative faculty initiatives across departments, and organizes symposia, workshops and visits from prominent intellectuals and artists to stimulate new research.
All of CHA's events are free and open to the public. The center hosts 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, Helmut Muller-Sievers
Hello, and welcome to a new year of exciting programs and activities at the Center for Humanities and the Arts.
My own scholarly work is concerned with the intersection of the life sciences, philosophy, and literature at the turn of the 19th century; in recent years I have developed additional interests in the role the knowledge and practice of engineers is playing in the culture of the 19th century. My forthcoming book, The Cylinder, Kinematics of the 19th Century, attempts to relate the practices of transmission design to the development of realist modes of narration.
Before coming to CU, I taught for almost 20 years at Northwestern University in the Department of German Literature and Critical Thought. I was also director of the Program in Comparative Literary Studies (2003–2006), Lane Professor in the Humanities (1997–1998), and the director of the Kaplan Center for the Humanities (1998–2002). In this last position I raised funds to seed new interdisciplinary initiatives in Classics, Race Studies, and Narrative Theory, and invested a great deal of the Center’s energy in opening reliable interfaces between the university and the general public in Evanston and Chicago.
During my time here, I have come to understand that CU-Boulder has an excellent and active humanities and arts faculty. The quality and diversity of your work, together with a supportive administration, and a receptive audience in Boulder offers CHA the opportunity to devise truly path-breaking initiatives on campus and beyond.
If you would like to get in touch, please email me at hms1@colorado.edu, or better yet, come by and see me in my office at Macky 201.
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:
- Adam Bradley - Department of English
- Carol Cleland - Department of Philosophy
- Francoise Duresse - Department of Art and Art History
- John Gibert - Department of Classics
- Asuncion Horno-Delgado - Department of Spanish and Portuguese
- Greg Johnson - Department of Religious Studies
- Beth Osnes - Department of Theatre and Dance
- Paul Sutter - Department of History
- Keith Waters - College of Music
- Masano Yamashita - Department of French and Italian
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 Boulder since 1993. She has been involved with CHA since its inception, and has overseen CHA's operations full-time since 1998.
In November 2004 CHA welcomed our Administrative Assistant, Lisa Bailey. Lisa oversees GCAH grants, and assists with all 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.
