Dean’s Welcome Message
August 29th, 2023
Dean Hollis Robbins
Welcome students, faculty, staff, and post docs to an exciting Fall 2023 semester in the College of Humanities!
We have an exciting menu of new courses, initiatives, communities, and events on our schedule, enriching our established and excellent academic and student programming that continues to be offered by departments, centers, and programs.
A few highlights:
Our Great Books course begins its first official semester with seven Humanities faculty members teaching works that have been influential in each of our College’s seven departments, including Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, Franz Kafka’s The Trial, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time, Nora Ellen Grace’s Everyone Here Spoke Sign Language, John Durham Peter’s Speaking into the Air, and Jose Medina’s The Epistemology of Oppression.
The Tanner Humanities Center will be welcoming David Wallace-Wells, author of The Uninhabitable Earth on October 24, 2023. See here for other terrific Tanner events and here for a comprehensive calendar of events sponsored by the college.
The award-winning John R. Park Debate Society, founded in 1869, enters its 154th year this Fall with plans to host two electoral debates (Salt Lake City & Ogden mayoral elections), the Rwandan Debate Team, and the 4th Annual U.S. Universities Arabic Debating Championship (hosted in cooperation with the Middle East Center and Arabic Debating Club).
We were excited to learn that 93 humanities students participated in learning abroad this summer (this includes eight Hinkley global internships).
We welcomed new staff to the Dean’s Office team. Visit our directory to see new roles and faces committed to faculty and student success in the College of Humanities. We’re also thrilled to welcome eight new tenure track faculty, eight career line faculty, two Asia campus faculty, and seven post docs!
As we know, students who have chosen Humanities majors have chosen the very best path to fulfillment, leadership, and a lifetime of engagement with the fundamental questions of our experience on this planet. I look forward to seeing very soon powerful student energy exploring history, the stories we tell, our ways of communicating, our deep thoughts and ways of knowing. Humanities students are our future leaders, chroniclers, and knowledge-makers. We trust in them and will provide them with the tools they will need to succeed.
For the latest news and updates about the College of Humanities, please visit our News page and follow us on social media @UofUHumanities (Instagram, Twitter, Facebook).
Dean Hollis Robbins