At its recent meeting, the Board of Trustees of the National Humanities Center elected Daniela Bleichmar, professor of art history and history at the University of Southern California (USC), as the Center’s newest trustee. Bleichmar is also the founding director of the Levan Institute for the Humanities and director of the USC Society of Fellows in the Humanities.
After nine years at the helm of the National Humanities Center, President and Director Robert D. Newman has announced his retirement. He will step down as director in July 2024. Newman assumed leadership of the Center in 2015 and has overseen an array of initiatives expanding opportunities for humanities scholars and teachers.
The board of trustees of the National Humanities Center has elected Porter Durham, who recently retired as managing partner of Global Endowment Management, as its new chairman. He succeeds Ben Vinson III, the newly appointed president of Howard University. Joining Durham as officers of the NHC's board are entrepreneur Rishi Jaitly, vice chairman; Karen Lawrence, president of The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, secretary; and Raymond Wiacek, a partner at Jones Day, who was re-elected as treasurer.
How does our understanding of American history and culture change when viewed through the eyes of Black women? How should we incorporate Black women’s voices in curriculums to ensure students can benefit from those perspectives? These and related questions will be the focus of (re)Centering the Narrative: Black Women’s Voices of the 19th and 20th Centuries which will be held July 10–14, 2023 at the National Humanities Center.
The National Humanities Center has announced the selection of twenty talented educators from across the country as members of its 2023–24 Teacher Advisory Council. These teachers, from schools in twelve states, will work with the Center’s staff in piloting, evaluating, and promoting NHC resources and professional development programs for collegiate and pre-collegiate educators.
At its recent meeting, the Board of Trustees of the National Humanities Center elected Yolonda Y. Wilson (NHC Fellow, 2019–20) from St. Louis University as the Center’s newest trustee. Wilson is a philosopher whose work focuses primarily on African American political philosophy, bioethics, feminist philosophy, law and morality, and related topics.
Howard University has announced that NHC Trustee Ben Vinson III (NHC Fellow, 2005–06) has been appointed to serve as the university’s 18th president, effective September 1, 2023.
The National Humanities Center is pleased to announce the appointment of 35 Fellows for the academic year 2023–24. These leading scholars will come to the Center from universities and colleges in 16 US states as well as Canada, Hong Kong, Nigeria, Singapore, South Africa, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom. Chosen from 541 applicants, they represent humanistic scholarship in a wide range of academic disciplines.
The National Humanities Center is working to help teachers with questions about the civil rights struggle and other topics in African American studies through its Teaching African American Studies Institutes. The newest of these, More Than a Slogan: Understanding the Historical Context of Black Lives Matter (February 6–10), will provide an immersive, hands-on learning experience to help educators better understand the approaches and historical perspectives required to teach African American studies to K–12 students.
The NHC is pleased to welcome twenty-two undergraduates who have been selected for the Center’s National Humanities Leadership Council. Nominated by faculty from colleges and universities across the country, these students will receive professional development and mentoring from leading scholars and other humanities professionals as well as research support, opportunities for networking, and access to NHC programming and expertise.