For more information, please refer to CHCI's website: http://chcinetwork.org/

If you are a faculty member at KU and are interested in RSVPing, please contact the Hall Center Associate Director  at 785-864-7823 or sutech@ku.edu to discuss registration guidelines.

The 2013 CHCI Annual Meeting will explore the philosophical, political, and pragmatic dimensions of public humanities in the context of both current challenges to the university and emerging responses. What is the public mission of the university? What role should the university play in the political and social transformation of the state of which it is part? What is the relationship between the humanities center and the publics it serves? How can we restore the democratic vision of the university's service to the social and public good?

The role and value of public humanities is an especially urgent topic at this time. The threats are familiar: declining state support for public education; the growing strength of instrumental attitudes to education; the broader devaluation of the arts, humanities, and social sciences. These issues take different forms across institutions and in diverse international situations, but the urgency of their force is a shared concern.

Keynote speakers

Christopher Newfield, U.C. Santa Barbara: "The Future of the Public University

"Christopher Newfield is a Professor in the English Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He received his Ph.D. in American literature from Cornell University in 1988, and his central interests include: American culture after 1830, with particular attention to fiction since 1940; race; sexuality; affect; crime; California; and corporate culture. Professor Newfield is currently at work on two projects: The Empowerment Wars, which explores the literature, management theory, and everyday life of cubicle dwellers in corporate America; and Starting Up, Starting Over, an eyewitness account of the underside of the "New Economy" in Southern California.

Helen Small, Pembroke College, Oxford: "The Humanities and the Public Good"

Helen Small is a Tutor and the Jonathan and Julia Aisbitt Fellow in English Literature at Pembroke College at the University of Oxford. Her central interests include English Literature, 1700 to present; critical theory; gender and writing; and literature and emotion. She recently contributed a chapter on 'Subjectivity, Psychology and the Imagination' to the Cambridge History of English Literature and an essay on the two cultures debate, with special reference to the poetry of Miroslav Holub and Roald Hoffmann.

What is CHCI?

Established in 1988, the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes serves as an arena for the discussion of issues germane to crossdisciplinary activity in the humanities and as a network for the circulation of information and best practices related to the organizational and management dimensions of humanities centers and institutes. CHCI currently has a membership of 154 organizations in the US, Europe, Asia, and Pacific Rim. CHCI produces a major Annual Meeting of its membership, maintains a content-rich website, produces an annual print directory, and serves as a re-circulator for information about its members via listservs and its website. Members of the Consortium also assist one another with ideas, evaluation, and other forms of service. The organization is headed by a President, and is governed by an International Advisory Board of member directors and other leaders in the humanities. Victor Bailey, Hall Center Director, is a member of the International Advisory Board.

FRIDAY, APRIL 26 (ANNUAL MEETING DAY ONE) The Commons, Spooner Hall

9:30 – 11:00 am Plenary 2: Christopher Newfield, University of California, Santa Barbara The Future of the Public University Chair: Sara Guyer, Center for the Humanities, University of Wisconsin-Madison

11:00 – 11:30 am Break

11:30 am – 1:00 pm Panel 1: Global Humanities & the State

• Premesh Lalu, Center for Humanities Research, University of the Western Cape, South Africa: The Absent Center: Homo Oeconomicus, Nationalism and the Humanities after Apartheid
• Rudiger Klein, ALL European Academies (ALLEA): Global Humanities in Europe and its paradox settings: states, nations, communities, markets
• Angela Schindler-Daniels, Net4Society: Taking the Humanities (and Social Sciences) to Europe - the trials and tribulations of securing  EU research funding
• Alan Chan, College of Humanities, Arts & Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore: Arts and Humanities in a Global Asian University
• Chair: Debjani Ganguly, Humanities Research Center, The Australian National University

4:00 – 5:30 pm Panel 2: Public Role of the Arts Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Lens II

• Julian Zugazagoitia, Director, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City: Are Museums the New Public Square?
• Doris Sommer, Cultural Agents, Harvard University: Pre-Texts for Moving In and Out of Class
• Tim Murray, Society for the Humanities, Cornell University: Politics, Arts, and the University
• Chair: Saralyn Reece Hardy, Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas

5:30 – 6:30 pm Docent Tours of Museum Collections Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

SATURDAY 27 APRIL (ANNUAL MEETING DAY TWO) The Commons, Spooner Hall

9:00 – 10:30 am Plenary 3: Helen Small, Pembroke College, Oxford: The Humanities & the Public Good Chair: Margaret Kelleher, Anglo-Irish Literature and Drama, University College Dublin

10:30 – 11:00 am Break

11:00 am – 12:30 pm Workshop 1: Collaborating with Public Knowledges

• Gillian Harkins, Transformative Education Behind Bars, University of Washington: Higher Education, Prison, and the Abolition Undercommons
• Don Stull, University of Kansas
• Chair: Teresa Mangum, Obermann Center for Advanced Studies, University of Iowa

Alumni Center 2:00 – 3:30 pm Workshop 2: Virtual Research Environments/Networks Spencer Museum of Art Auditorium

• Kevin Franklin, Illinois Center for Computing in Humanities, Arts, and Social Science (I-CHASS): Networking the Networks: Building Inter-American Collaborations Through Cyber-HASS
• Arienne Dwyer, Institute for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Kansas: Balancing Access, Participation, and Security in Virtual Research Environments
• Sharon Daniel, Film & Digital Media, University of California, Santa Cruz: Political Environments: making things public
• Chair: Robert Gibbs, Jackman Humanities Institute, University of Toronto

3:30 – 4:00 pm Break

4:00 – 5:30 pm Mellon Project Session Spencer Museum of Art Auditorium Chair: Ian Baucom