2024 End-of-Year Director’s Message
by
2024 End-of-Year Director’s Message
December 13, 2024
For all of us at the Denbo Center, this calendar year has been one of momentous change. In January we moved to the Cherokee Mills building on Sutherland Avenue, off campus but to a beautiful historic site and in our own suite with exactly the right vibe for arts and humanities research and community building. In April, we celebrated the generosity and friendship of Don Denbo, renaming the UT Humanities Center as the Denbo Center for Humanities & the Arts.
We launched a new gallery space at the Center with an exhibition of art by Jered Sprecher, created new programming for graduate students, and hosted our first visiting Fulbright Scholar, Mari Hatavara, for the entire spring semester. For the first time, we were able to provide space for symposia run by our arts and humanities faculty and graduate students. In the summer and fall, we hosted the Executive Board meeting of our NEH state council, Humanities Tennessee, and hosted visits by the president of the Modern Language Association and the National Humanities Alliance board and the membership and diversity officer of the international Consortium for Humanities Centers and Institutes.
This fall we supported two new research seminars, created a new Digital Humanities faculty fellowship, connected with humanities centers from throughout the US at a “bootcamp” for humanities center directors at the National Humanities Center, and created new collaborations with the Big Ears Festival and the Delaney Legacy Committee in downtown Knoxville. We became a sponsor of the Community College Humanities Association (CCHA), which held its annual meeting this year at Pellissippi State Community College, and hosted town-and-gown book groups as well as a College of Arts and Sciences book party.
We financially supported graduate-student summer travel, hosted faculty book manuscript reviews, helped to finance faculty conferences, and will host a faculty summer residency at the National Humanities Center in Research Triangle. And all the while we ran the regular programming—our Fellowship residencies, Distinguished Lecture Series, Conversations and Cocktails, Big Hairy Grants, Chandler Luncheons, Digital Humanities training plus student and faculty DH showcases, and Write-on-Site programs—that has brought internationally recognized speakers to campus and created important research mentoring opportunities for faculty and graduate students.
Sadly, we did say goodbye to our outstanding GRA, Michael Sutherlin, as he completed his dissertation work and moved on to full-time employment. And most sadly, we will say goodbye to our dear friend and communications & marketing coordinator, Katie Hodges-Kluck, as she leaves in January to take a wonderful new job as assistant director of communications for Rare Book School at the University of Virginia. Katie has been key to our success since she arrived at the Center in spring 2022 from the Marco Institute; we wish her the absolute best in her new journey and hope that Rare Book School knows how lucky they are to have her in their employ!
As we move into the new calendar year, with momentous changes afoot not only for us but for the nation as a whole, we look forward to connecting with you more frequently, and we will need your continued support. As the former head of the NEH, Jim Leach, once noted, “The arts and humanities are vastly more important in troubled times.”
We at the Denbo Center for Humanities & the Arts wish you peace, health, and community in the coming year, and hope to see you soon.
Amy J. Elias
Director, Denbo Center for Humanities & the Arts