Humanities Spotlight

The Humanities Center names Dr. Vinodh Venkatesh as our Spring 2025 Scholar-in-Residence

The Humanities Center has named Dr. Vinodh Venkatesh, Professor of Spanish at Virginia Tech University, as its Spring 2025 Scholar-in-Residence. For more on Dr. Venkatesh and his work, click here.

The Humanities Center names Dr. Adriel M. Trott as inaugural Scholar-in-Residence for Spring 2024

The Humanities Center has named Dr. Adriel M. Trott, Professor of Philosophy, Andrew T. and Anne Ford Chair in the Liberal Arts, of Wabash University as our inaugural Scholar-in-Residence for the Spring 2024 semester. 

Dr. Trott will be engaged in research at the Texas Tech campus between February and May and will lead academic workshops for faculty and graduate students in the humanities.

Click here for more on Dr. Trott's research.

Humanities Graduate Students Share Their Experiences with the National Humanities Center

Yerko Sepulveda (Classical and Modern Languages and Literatures) and Ahmet Aksoy (College of Media and Communication) are two of the Texas Tech graduate students in the humanities we have sponsored for residencies with the National Humanities Center in the past year. Here, they recount their experiences with the NHC.

Yerko Sepulveda:
Participating in the summer residency at the National Humanities Center this past summer was one of the most enriching experiences I have had during my doctoral studies. During the residency, we specifically concentrated on creating meaningful online learning experiences for our undergraduate students, and we did so with the vision of passionate teaching in the research environment. This topic could have not been more fitting since we were experiencing the first effects of the pandemic in our everyday life, teaching, and research. I appreciated how the entire residency was focused on bridging theory and practice. We learned from researchers and practitioners who take pride in effective learning beyond traditional lecturing. My biggest takeaway was the power of collective thinking since we explored topics considering the diverse perspectives of the residents who were representing different fields in the humanities. If we do not embark on transdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research and practice, we will never achieve a systemic view of the world that will give us the tools to continue exploring the complexities of the societies we live in today.

Ahmet Aksoy:
As instructors, we play an essential role in educating the future generations of our societies. Whether in a small, large, or online classroom instructors, must be up to date on the most effective and best pedagogical practices. We have seen this even more prominent in these times, with online learning. At the National Humanities Center's Graduate Winter Residency, I learned this firsthand. Not only has this experience aided in enhancing my teaching abilities but, it has also supported my research endeavors. Through their educational sessions and projects, I can examine effective communication pedagogical practices in hopes to better understand the most effective ways our students take in information and learn.

I am grateful to the Humanities Center at Texas Tech for giving me this opportunity. As a result, I am ever more connected to the frameworks and practices to research and implement effective ways to teach humanities to future generations.

Graduate Student Achievement

The Humanities Center at Texas Tech congratulates graduate students Brody Shappell and Ahmet Aksoy on their recent achievements.

Out of a state-wide call for artists, Brody--a first-year Ph.D. student in English--was selected to participate in a series of collaborative workshops culminating in a group exhibit and book entitled In a Time of Change: Boreal Forest Stories. The transdisciplinary exhibit will be presented at the Bear Gallery in Fairbanks, Alaska in May, 2022 and will feature multiple artists and humanists working in a variety of media, following regular interactions with scientists, to produce original works that communicate narratives rooted in the boreal forest, including its ecology, its inhabitants, and their interactions.

Ahmet, a Ph.D. student in Media and Communication, will represent Texas Tech at the National Humanities Center's online Winter 2020 graduate student residency, "How to Create Meaningful Online Learning Communities." Ahmet will interact in that residency with notable researchers from all over the country.

2022 Alumni College

Homecoming Week on the Texas Tech campus has included the Humanities Center's annual Alumni College event for the past five years. Alumni College showcases the excellent research of Texas Tech humanities scholars. Each year, the Humanities Center selects up to twelve fellows, who receive funding and who present their work at Alumni College. This year's sixth annual Alumni College will look a little different since the Center is unable to hold our in-person, public event. This years event will be held on October 19th, 2022 from 6-9 PM in the Playa, Traditions, and Mesa Room in the Student Union Building. 

Please visit 2022 Alumni College Fellows to learn more about these amazing scholars and their work.

Humanities Working Group:
The Medieval and Renaissance Studies Center

The Humanities Center at Texas Tech is proud to announce its newest funded Working Group, The Medieval and Renaissance Studies Center. Working Groups are three-year funded projects sponsored by the Humanities Center and the Office of Research and Innovation. These awards support innovative thinking and a trans-disciplinary research culture at Texas Tech. The Medieval and Renaissance Studies Center joins earlier working groups funded by the Humanities Center on The Animal in the Humanities and Chicanx Feminism.

The Medieval and Renaissance Studies Center (MRSC) working group is co-directed by Dr. Janis Elliott, Associate Professor of Medieval Art History and Dr. Angela Mariani, Professor of Musicology. The MRSC is dedicated to the advancement of Medieval and Renaissance studies at Texas Tech, in the State of Texas, and in the lands beyond. It currently supervises a graduate certificate program in medieval and Renaissance studies, provides some conference participation support for students working in these areas, and sponsors guest lectures and other activities related to medieval and Renaissance studies. Whereas traditional academic programs are organized to support their own specific perspectives and programs, the Center seeks to unite faculty and students interested in medieval and Renaissance area studies that transcend disciplinary boundaries. It seeks to enhance campus, state, and national knowledge about Texas Tech programs already in place. The Center, approved in 2011, is located administratively within the College of Arts and Sciences and is also funded in part by the College of Arts and Sciences and the Office of Research and Innovation.

Janis Elliott is Associate Professor of Art History in the School of Art. Her research focuses on 14th-century Italian church decoration and art patronage in Southern Italy under the first four rulers of the Angevin monarchy (1266-1382). Her interests relate to kingship and queenship, circles of art patronage and prosopography across the kingdom. She co-edited the highly-acclaimed book, The Church of Santa Maria Donna Regina: Art, Iconography and Patronage in Fourteenth-Century Naples, 2004, and Import/Export: Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in the Kingdom of Naples, 1266-1713 - Special Issue of Art History 31, 4 (2008). Dr. Elliott is a proponent of Digital Art History. She has used ArcGIS to create ground plans of churches and maps of their towns. Her website, Mapping Angevin Southern Italy: Royal and Aristocratic Church Patronage, offers information on patrons and artworks with relevant bibliography for several churches in Naples and the Kingdom of Naples.

Angela Mariani is Professor of Musicology and director of the Texas Tech Collegium Musicum at the Texas Tech University School of Music. She received her doctoral degree from the Historical Performance Institute at Indiana University's Jacobs School of Music. Dr. Mariani studied medieval music with Thomas Binkley, Benjamin Bagby, and Barbara Thornton, and was a founding member of Altramar medieval music ensemble, who toured internationally and recorded seven CDs for the Dorian label. Since 1991, she has hosted the nationally syndicated public radio program Harmonia. Her book Improvisation and Inventio in the Performance of Medieval Music was published by Oxford University Press in 2017. A more complete bio can be found at Angela Mariani.

Click The Medieval and Renaissance Studies Center for more information about the Center.

National Humanities Center Summer Residency Program

This summer, the Humanities Center at Texas Tech sponsored three graduate students' participation in the National Humanities Center's Graduate Student Summer Residency. While the COVID-19 pandemic forced this year's residency to move to completely virtual delivery, Texas Tech doctoral students Khaleel Abusal (English), Meghalee Das (English), and Samantha Lack (History), were all fortunate to participate from a distance between July 13-17. Entitled "Passionate Teaching in the Research Environment: How to Create Meaningful Online Learning Experiences," this year's iteration of the NHC residency offered our graduate students a week of intensive training in digital pedagogy from nationally recognized humanities scholars. As Khaleel Abusal summarized at the close of the residency, participation "helped me in building effective online teaching environment, creating accessible syllabi, teaching in diverse contexts, developing visual note-taking strategies, wringing meaningful information from course evaluations and using it to improve my teaching." Meghalee Das agreed, noting that the experience "was intense but we covered so many important topics, and had a chance to interact with speakers and participants from different fields in the humanities." Samantha Lack adds: "The program will help me when I am on the job market and I am already planning on working with the center in the future."

The Humanities Center is grateful for this collaboration with the National Humanities Center, and congratulates these exemplary graduate students again on their participation in this important initiative.

Pictured above: top right Khaleel Abusal; bottom left Meghalee Das; and bottom right Samantha Lack.