Director's Letter of the Month:

May 2023

Dear Friend and Supporter of the Center for Humanities & the Arts,

This morning I woke up to the happy news that the Center for Humanities & the Arts had been singled out by CU Systemwide President Todd Saliman in his May newsletter:

“CU Boulder’s Center for Humanities and the Arts fosters interdepartmental and cross- campus dialogue to enhance the profile of the arts and humanities while also building support for creative works and scholarship. It’s an excellent model of how we can create a community of collaboration on campus that can offer an example for doing the same in communities across Colorado and beyond.”

This is a huge compliment to the Center for Humanities & the Arts, but it’s really a testament to the vitality of arts and humanities on CU Boulder’s campus, particularly the accomplishments of our faculty and students. It’s a perfect note to end the academic year, as we get ready to celebrate our graduates and faculty prepare for some much deserved time off where they can dive into their summer research and artistic projects.

To help promote the work of our amazing faculty artists and scholars, we have the 2022 Faculty Celebration Magazine, its pages full of the major works that faculty across CU Boulder working in arts and humanities have produced/published/released in 2022. Take a look and take time to applaud your colleagues who are enhancing the profile of arts and humanities that President Saliman mentions above. We will also have printed copies available for distribution in the fall. If you’d like a copy, please email us: cu-cha@colorado.edu.

May is also Asian American & Pacific Islander Heritage Month, and as part of a grant that we received from Asian Americans Advancing Justice Center and the Kaiser Permanente Foundation, we are distributing tote bags with books and a brochure that includes a QR code to a free 3-week Coursera course on “Asian American History and Identity: An Anti-Racism Toolkit.” Please reach out to us through email [cu-cha@colorado.edu] if you’d like to receive a totebag. Additionally, I invite you to join me on Thursday, May 25 from 12-1pm MT for a virtual talk for the College of Arts and Sciences JEDI office on “Asian American History, Identity, and How to Be an Anti-Racism Advocate: An AAPI Heritage Month Talk.” Registration is in the hyperlink.

Because Macky has no air conditioning, the CHA is joining the Center of American West in working remotely for the duration of the summer, but you can always reach us on email cu-cha@colorado.edu. The CHA will be hard at work preparing for next year’s programming on the theme of “Liberty, Freedom, Democracy: the Fight for Ideas” and working alongside the Arts and Humanities division in the College of Arts and Sciences and the Center for Teaching and Learning in a year-long project, “ Racial Literacies” – which is designed to bring together people to talk about race, racism, and intersectional oppression and how we can have conversations on these topics and increase our racial literacy. We still have openings and are paying stipends to students, staff, and faculty who want to join, so please check out this link, and I hope you sign up.

Have a great summer everyone and Congratulations to our Graduates!

Sincerely,

Sincerely,
Dr. Jennifer Ho
Director, Center for the Humanities & the Arts