Humanities in Cultural Affairs

The CCA has received a Chairman’s Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities for a new workshop series that will explore the essential linkages between the humanities and cultural affairs.

CCA Faculty Director, Joanna Woronkowicz, and Advisory Board Member, Bill Ivey, are co-principal investigators on this project.The CCA has selected 7 co-chairs for our upcoming series. In collaboration with the CCA, these interdisciplinary humanities scholars from English, Anthropology, History, and East European and Language Studies will lead workshops on areas including: Difficult Art; Cultural Exchange; Cities and Museums; Literary Translation; and Racial and Social Justice in Public Art.

This group of humanities academics and social scientists at IU will work on a program that will investigate the connections between the humanities and public engagement with arts and culture. Participation in these workshops entails submitting a paper related to the topic in their area of expertise and committing to delivering the paper during a two-day workshop in Bloomington among a group of scholars and practitioners with relevant interests.

The series will run during the 2022-2023 academic year. We will update this page as additional details develop.

Judith Brown, Associate Professor, English; “Difficult Art”

Colin R. Johnson, Associate Professor, Gender Studies; “Subculture and Democratic Pluralism”

Jane Goodman, Professor, Anthropology and Stephen Selka, Associate Professor, Religious Studies; “Can Art Change the World? New Perspectives on the Problems and Possibilities of Cultural Exchange”

Eric Sandweiss, Professor, History; “Cities and Their Museums: A Critical Re-examination”

Russell Scott Valentino, Professor, Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures; “Cultural Affairs in Translation”

Alex Lichtenstein, Professor, History and American Studies; “Bringing Racial and Social Justice to the Public Sphere: A Cultural Program”