OHC director Leah Middlebrook shares some thoughts

Greetings from the Director’s office! As I write this report, summer is drawing to a close. The birds are flocking, and in the afternoons the sun takes on that deep gold cast that lets us know autumn is on the way. While the Oregon summer is beautiful, we at the Humanities Center love the start of fall term. It’s wonderful to welcome researchers and friends back to campus. We are eager to hear what everyone has been working on and thinking about during the summer break from classes. In addition, we have an invigorating year of programming ahead: endowed lectures, Work-in-Progress talks, Books-in-Print talks, Wine Chats, co-sponsored events and more. We are eager to share it all with you!

Having celebrated the Center’s 40th anniversary last year, and having successfully completed a transition between OHC Directors, we chose Re-imagine as this year’s theme. Reimagining opens alternatives, options, and possibilities we haven’t noticed before. It prompts new questions and spawns new approaches and methodologies. The speakers in our endowed lecture series this year represent a range of disciplines, perspectives, and backgrounds, but what they have in common is a commitment to engaging problems, challenges, and obstacles as prompts to creativity: to re-envisioning and reimagining. They will help us ask: How might we use the power of human imagination to engage generatively and critically with the circumstances of our lives? And they will model how new insights and new avenues of research are uncovered in the reimagining process. Details on this year’s endowed lectures can be found here. Mark your calendars! 

Our 2024–25 invited speakers foreground re-imagining. But devising creative, innovative, interdisciplinary, and transmedial approaches to established truths, actively analyzing the knowledges, systems, practices, and methodologies that shape our worlds, is central to the twenty-first century humanities. And at the University of Oregon, we excel at this kind of work. This summer, a friend of the OHC called my attention to the strong position UO Arts and Humanities hold in the 2024 world rankings of research quality (timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/university-oregon). 

You can experience the relevance and vibrancy of UO humanities research by attending the OHC’s Work-in-Progress and Books-in-Print talks. These take place most Fridays at noon during the academic year. We also hold Wine Chats that meet off campus and feature UO faculty speakers. These events provide opportunities for connection and conversation across disciplines and between UO researchers and the Eugene community. 

The OHC will be hosting an open house on Wednesday, October 9, 2024 from 11 a.m.–1 p.m., at the Center, 154 PLC. The OHC staff and I will be there to show you around, answer questions, and share information about our plans and programs.

Also, check the OHC’s calendar and social media frequently for a wide and diverse range of talks, seminars, symposia, performances, screenings, pop-ups, and exhibits co-sponsored by the OHC. The humanities are flourishing! We hope that reading these pages will inspire you to fill your calendar with thought-provoking learning and community-building opportunities. 

Perhaps you will also be inspired to extend us a gift of financial support. The OHC’s ability to fund innovative research, new course development, and public programming depends a great deal on the generosity of our donors. This year, we are hoping to raise $40,000 in support of faculty research. As belts tighten and budgets are cut, seemingly everywhere, support for humanities projects has been affected disproportionately, nationwide. If you are able to help us reach this goal, you will be assisting professors as they work to bring meaningful, important projects to fruition. In addition, you will be supporting their students. Faculty bring the fruit of their research into the classroom. It informs our syllabi and our seminars. Many faculty involve students in their projects, hiring them to assist with their research and mentoring them in important skills. 

Thank you, on behalf the faculty, graduate, and undergraduate humanities research community, for considering this request for support. 

And to all our many friends and contributors: the Faculty Advisory Board, our external Board of Visitors, the many members of the campus and Eugene communities who attend our events, and our wonderful staff, Melissa Gustafson, Peg Freas Gearhart, and Jena Turner: thank you, most sincerely, for all you do to expand and enrich the culture of the humanities at Oregon, via the OHC. In so many ways, you are the Center. 

In my new capacity as the OHC director, it has already been exciting to connect with so many supporters of the center and hear about the incredible work that has been done here. I look forward to continuing the important work of the center and seeing all of you at our events this year.