From Director Lori Lefkovitz

FROM THE DIRECTOR LORI LEFKOVITZ

As I reflect on the nine years during which I directed the Humanities Center at Northeastern University, my overwhelming emotions are awe and gratitude.

I am awed by the achievements of my colleagues who received support from the Humanities Center and the power of their collaborations across disciplinary, generational, and geographic boundaries. I am awed to have worked with the distinguished faculty who have served on the Advisory Board and who have shaped a remarkably full slate of programs characterized by excellence. Thank you for your friendship, thoughtful discussions, efficiency, generosity, and tireless goodwill. The board, the Office of the Dean, under the leadership of Uta Poiger, and our staff, especially Gabrielle Fiorenza-Hagopian, created the conditions and opportunities for our colleagues to do their best work. I am personally and deeply grateful for how much I have learned in this role, working with groups of faculty fellows and our finest graduate students in the annual resident fellowship program, most recently on the theme of “Reckonings,” under the leadership of Professor Ángel David Nieves the incoming Director. With expertise in Public History, Digital Humanities, Africana Studies, and more, Professor Nieves will sustain the work of the Humanities Center and lead us in promising new directions. Our regular faculty works-in-progress and other series and the annual events we sponsor — from the Women’s and Gender Studies Symposium (this year on the topic of “Feminism for the Future: Constructive Conversations on Lesbian and Trans Identities and Politics”) to the programs on Holocaust and Genocide Awareness — contribute to the intellectual vitality and activism on campus. Directing the Center has allowed me to swim in oceans of ideas and daily witness how knowledge is produced in conversation. Professor Patricia Williams has effected some of our most extraordinary collaborations, and we are delighted that she will be convening next year’s fellowship on the theme of “Re-imaging/Re-forming,” a theme born out of distress as we look at developments in the world and the need for creativity and hope. I am proud of the nimble ways that our Center responded to world events, exemplified by the astonishing database of teaching modules created in response to the global pandemic. I am especially gratified by the development of a minor and an initiative in Health, Humanities, and Society, under the leadership of Professors Sari Altschuler and Chris Parsons, who have secured NEH grants to elaborate curricula in this vital interdisciplinary field. I am proud of our faculty fellows who won Guggenheim awards to complete projects that they developed at the Center, and Professor Shalanda Baker, who left our fellowship mid-course to join the U.S. Department of Energy. I want to thank those colleagues who followed up on the Humanities Center themed year on “Space and Place” by hosting successful NEH Summer Institutes on “Engaging Geography in the Humanities,” including this summer (p.19). Our Center has benefited from participation in international consortia, and we are pleased to have been among the founding centers in the New England Humanities Consortium (NEHC). These wider circles of engagement have been personally delightful and enriching. I have taken special joy in finding our way to “yes” when colleagues asked for support for their important work. The humanities help us lead meaningful lives, fostering habits of reading and writing, encouraging understanding, empathy, critical thinking, and involvement. Thank you for your partnership in building the Humanities Center at Northeastern University.

LORI LEFKOVITZ

Director, Northeastern Humanities Center Ruderman Professor and Director of Jewish Studies Program Professor, Department of English