U of A Forms New Arkansas Humanities Center, Names Center Leadership

The University of Arkansas has established a new research center — the Arkansas Humanities Center — and named new leadership and steering committee members for the center.  The center will support faculty research in the humanities disciplines of the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences — communication, English, history, journalism, philosophy, and world languages, literatures and cultures.

Professor Tricia Starks will serve as the center's director, taking over from professor Kathryn Sloan, who supervised the center's creation and was appointed the U of A's vice provost for faculty affairs in October.

"I am excited to foster humanities scholarship and bring that research to the community," said Starks, whose own research is in the history of Russian and Soviet public health. "Humanities research helps us to consider our actions informed by knowledge of the past, culture and context."

The new center can trace its beginnings back to a 1980s National Endowment for the Humanities Grant, which encouraged interdisciplinary teaching and research at the U of A, founded the Honors Humanities Project (H2P), and gave development funds to Gender Studies, the Tesseract Center for Immersive Environment and Game Design, and other interdisciplinary programs.

Starks said her work with the new medical humanities minor has shown her that ethical issues informed by history and culture surround our interactions with medicine and science.

"Humanities are the basis of a better functioning, more equitable, and more just society," Starks said.