Joan Shelley Rubin, a noted scholar of American history, has been appointed director of the Humanities Center at the University. Rubin, the Dexter Perkins Professor in History, has served as interim director since the center\u2019s creation in spring 2015. She will hold the title of Ani and Mark Gabrellian Director of the Humanities Center.<\/p>\n
\u201cJoanie is an exceptional scholar and was at the forefront of the faculty advocating for a humanities center at the University,\u201d said Gloria Culver, dean of the School of Arts & Sciences. \u201cShe has done a wonderful job as the interim director, and her appointment into the directorship came after a long national search. The center is the intellectual, and soon to be physical, home for faculty and students interested in the humanities. It is in very capable hands with Joanie at the helm.\u201d<\/p>\n
The center, which will celebrate the opening of its permanent home in Rush Rhees Library in October, supports multidisciplinary engagement with literature, history, the arts, and philosophies of cultures past and present in order to foster educated, contributing global citizens.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am delighted by Joanie\u2019s appointment, and I am confident that her leadership will ensure the center becomes a hub of multidisciplinary life on campus,\u201d said University President and CEO Joel Seligman, the G. Robert Witmer, Jr. University Professor. \u201cThe humanities are a key priority of our strategic initiatives to move the University to the Next Level.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Gabrellian Directorship is named in recognition of the support of University Trustee Ani Gabrellian \u201984 and her husband, Mark Gabrellian \u201979. In addition to the directorship, the couple established the annual Hagop and Artemis Nazerian Lecture Series, named for Ani Gabrellian\u2019s parents and directed by the center.<\/p>\n
\u201cAni and Mark deserve our deepest gratitude for their generous support of the center and of the study of the humanities,\u201d said Seligman. \u201cThey have long recognized the important role that the humanities play in the lives of our faculty and students.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rubin said that her work with the center flows naturally out of research to which she has long been devoted. \u201cI\u2019m a historian of the dissemination of the humanities, fundamentally,\u201d she said. An American cultural and intellectual historian, Rubin is the author of The Making of Middlebrow Culture<\/em> (University of North Carolina Press, 1992) and Songs of Ourselves: The History of Poetry in America<\/em> (Harvard University Press, 2007), among other projects.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve been very impressed by what she has done while serving as acting director,\u201d said Ani Gabrellian. In the center\u2019s first year, Rubin spearheaded renewed engagement with the Central New York Humanities Corridor and, backed by support from Seligman and Culver, launched an array of programs to engage students, faculty, and the public, including public lectures, workshops, a work-in-progress seminar series, undergraduate research fellowships, and faculty fellowships.<\/p>\n Although the center\u2019s space will not open until October, Rubin made the center feel like an integral part of the University from the very beginning, said Gabrellian. \u201cHer vision for the immediate future is grounded in what she calls an \u2018experimental approach.\u2019 We like that flexibility and open-mindedness.\u201d<\/p>\n Rubin joined the University in 1995 and specializes in 19th- and 20th-century American history and the history of the book. She serves as the history department\u2019s director of graduate studies and also directs the America Studies Program, an initiative she helped found in 2011.<\/p>\n Collaboration and exchange are at the heart of the center\u2019s efforts to enhance the study of the humanities at Rochester and strengthen ties to related disciplines. But Rubin said that she will also make sure that \u201cthe lone scholar, the isolating work of reading a text closely yourself,\u201d is also supported.<\/p>\n And she aspires to a wide reach.<\/p>\n \u201cI want our center to touch the life of every Ä¢¹½´«Ã½ undergraduate,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s a lofty goal but an important one because I firmly believe that an appreciation for the humanities and an understanding of human culture are central to what it means to be an educated citizen.\u201d<\/p>\n