Move over Jacory Harris, here comes Sven Beckert!
In a coup for nerds across Miami-Dade County, the University of Miami announced the formation of its brand-new Center for Humanities this week.
If you don't know what a Center for Humanities does for a university and the surrounding community, think of it in football terms. You've got your home squad of professors, who use the center as their Orange Bowl (not associating the U with LandShark just yet) for Game Day lectures and panels that the general public-not just students-can come and enjoy. Then you've also got your visiting scholars-like Beckert-who present talks, readings, papers, etc., almost like if you could have Tom Brady and Randy Moss come to campus to run full-contact drills.
You'd go see that, wouldn't you? Of course you would.
According to Associate Director Kyle Siebrecht, the Center is currently being run out of temporary offices, but will be moving to 123 Ashe very soon. And hopefully, in the long run, the Center will have its own building, much like similar institutions at Wesleyan, Stanford, and Washington.
The inaugural weekend for the Center isn't until November 4-6, but their events have already started. Check out their calendar or watch these videos from a Center for Humanities proto-event last Spring, held in honor of the 400th anniversary of the birth of John Milton. (No offense to the rest of the profs on the panel-Feisal Mohamed especially-but Stanley Fish throws out a Jim Brown-style stiff arm and takes it the house.)
Congrats to the U for bringing this project to the greater Miami-Dade community.
