University of Rochester Humanities Center

09/16/2026

Join us September 28 for "Language City: The Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues in New York and Beyond" with Ross Perlin.

Contemporary cities are the most linguistically diverse in history, even as an estimated half of the world's 7000-plus languages are endangered. In comtemporary New York City, the Endangered Language Alliance (ELA) has mapped over 700 of those languages, including many that are indigenous, primarily oral, and little documented. Driven by new forms of mobility, migration, and the diasporization of nearly every ethnolinguistic group, many other diverse cities around the world are not far behind. In this talk, Ross Perlin, ELA’s co-director and author of the recent book Language City, will describe New York's complex linguistic history and ELA’s efforts over the last 15 years, before panning out to discuss the impact of migration, diaspora, and multilingualism on urban linguistic diversity more generally, with a range of political, economic, social, and cultural implications.

Ross Perlin, Lecturer, Department of Slavic Languages, Columbia University, is co-director of the Endangered Language Alliance (ELA), a non-profit research institute focused on documenting and supporting endangered languages in New York City and beyond. At ELA since 2013, he directed the creation of the Languages of New York City map (www.languagemap.nyc) and has managed a variety of projects focused on language documentation, language policy, and public programming around urban linguistic diversity. Himalayan languages are a research focus — for his PhD in Linguistics at the University of Bern, Ross created a trilingual dictionary, a corpus of recordings, and a descriptive grammar of Trung, an endangered language of southwest China, based on several years of fieldwork. Ross has a BA from Stanford, an M.Phil. from Cambridge, and an MA from the University of London (SOAS). Ross is also a writer and translator, whose work has appeared in the New York Times, The Guardian, Harper's, The Atlantic, and elsewhere. His most recent book is Language City: The Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues in New York, published in 2024 by Grove.

09/15/2026

We’re thrilled to announce the arrival of the inaugural volume in the University of Rochester Press’s "Humanities in the World" series, founded by Humanities Center Director Peter Christensen and co-edited by Peter Christensen and Tanya Bakhmetyeva.

After more than four years in the making, "Resilience and the Humanities: Critique and Testing", co-edited by Stephen Hart, Camilla Gatica Mizala, and Nicolas Lema Habash, is now in print.

The volume offers fresh perspectives on the endurance and resilience of the humanities, with a significant focus on Latin America. It marks an exciting step in the Humanities Center’s commitment not only to supporting research, but to generating original scholarship that engages with the humanities’ place in global culture.

The series is supported by the Humanities Center and will be entirely open access. We’re proud to see the University of Rochester Humanities Center and University of Rochester Press taking the lead in this important scholarly conversation.

Congratulations to all involved in bringing this project to fruition!

09/15/2026

Congratulations to the four CNY Humanities Corridor Working Groups recognized for their outstanding collaborations during the 2025–26 academic year!

The inaugural awards celebrate groups whose work demonstrates the power of interdisciplinary scholarship, sustained mentoring, innovative teaching, and regional intellectual community.

We’re especially proud to celebrate the involvement of three University of Rochester faculty members in the winning groups: Maria Teresa Valdez (HF2: Language Program Vitality), Kristin Doughty (LLC39: War Ecologies), and Joel Burges (VAC3: Screen Cultures).

Their contributions exemplify the creativity, collaboration, and shared commitment that make the CNY Humanities Corridor such a vibrant community. Congratulations to all of the organizers and Working Groups!

Read more about the winners and their accomplishments:

Four Working Groups honored as part of the Corridor's new recognition program

09/08/2026

The URochester Humanities Center is proud to annouce the AI & Humanities Initiative (AIHI), which provides a critical framework for navigating the intersection of technology, society, and higher education. This initiative addresses the urgent political, economic, and environmental consequences of AI, while exploring its potential applications in research and teaching. Featuring lectures, a workshop, and a cross-disciplinary panel, the series of events empower participants to lead the conversation and actively reshape the future of the Humanities in the age of AI.

08/14/2026

Congratulations to former Meliora Digital and Interdisciplinary Fellow Victoria Taormina, who successfully defended her dissertation, "Italy’s Others, America’s Whites: On Antiblackness and the Long Invention of Whiteness,” on Tuesday, August 11. Many thanks to committee members Jason Middleton, Sharon Willis, and Joan Saab (University of Richmond), and defense chair Brianna Theobald (History) and adviser Anna Rosensweig. Best wishes as she starts her new position at the Getty Research Institute as their Digital Media & Content Strategy Fellow for 2026-2027.

08/12/2026

Congratulations to the following humanities instructional and tenure-track faculty have received promotions recently:
• Molly Ball, assistant professor in the Department of History, promoted to associate professor with tenure.
• Cory Hunter, assistant professor in the Arthur Satz Department of Music, promoted to associate professor with tenure.
• Alison Peterman, associate professor in the Department of Philosophy, promoted to professor.
• Nora Rubel, associate professor in the Department of Religion and Classics, promoted to professor.
• Rita Safariants, assistant professor in the Department of Modern Languages and Cultures, promoted to associate professor with tenure.
• Myounghee Cho, assistant professor of instruction in the Department of Modern Languages and Cultures, promoted to associate professor of instruction.
• Nicholas Gresens, associate professor of instruction in the Department of Religion and Classics, promoted to professor of instruction.
• Pirooz Kalayeh, assistant professor of instruction in the Department of English, promoted to associate professor of instruction.
• Anne Wilcox, associate professor of instruction in the Dance and Movement Program, promoted to professor of instruction.

08/10/2026

Numerous humanities faculty members at the University of Rochester were appointed to named professorships during the first half of 2026. An honor designed to recognize the national stature of a professor’s work, the named positions are part of a long-standing tradition to celebrate the work of URochester’s faculty as researchers, scholars, and teachers.

Congratulations to the following faculty:

Michael Jarvis, a professor of history, has been jointly appointed as the Dexter Perkins Professor in History. His research spans early Atlantic and maritime history using historical archaeology and material culture to study trade, migration, and colonization networks. The position honors the late Dexter Perkins, a prominent American diplomatic historian who helped establish URochester’s graduate program in history and served as chair of the Department of History for nearly 30 years.

Alison Peterman, an associate professor of philosophy, has been jointly appointed as Arthur Satz Professor of the Humanities. Her research interests include early modern philosophy, philosophy of science, and philosophy of perception. The professorship is among several humanities professorships named for the late Arthur Satz ’51, a music major and the late president emeritus at the New York School of Interior Design.

Brianna Theobald, an associate professor of history, has been appointed as the Joseph F. Cunningham Professor. Theobald is an award-winning teacher and researcher in the fields of US women’s and gender history, Native American history, and the history of reproduction. The professorship was established by the late Joseph Cunningham ’67 (MA) and his wife, Andrea, to support a scholar in history, particularly modern European and American history.

08/03/2026

The Humanities Center is pleased to congratulate our 2026-2028 Postdoctoral Fellow, Liliya Dashevski, on receiving the 2026 Junior Prize for Outstanding Toy Research from the International Toy Research Association (ITRA).

Dashevski received the award for her article, "'Shuffling the Russian Empire': Konstantin Gribanov's Geographical Cards of Russia," which is forthcoming in the edited volume Fragile Matters: The Russian Empire and Material Culture (currently under review for publication by Bloomsbury).

The ITRA Junior Prize recognizes exceptional early-career scholarship based on originality, significance, creativity, methodology, clarity of presentation, and overall contribution to the field. Dashevski is also serving as a keynote speaker at the 10th ITRA World Conference in Augsburg, Germany, where she is presenting her award-winning research.

Congratulations to Liliya on this well-deserved international recognition!

07/30/2026

Humanities Center Director Peter Christiansen’s recent article "The Bağdat Demiryolu: German Topography between Science and Orientalism" has just been published in Muqarnas. You can access it online here: https://brill.com/view/journals/muqj/42/1/article-p227_9.xml.

"The Bağdat Demiryolu: German Topography between Science and Orientalism" published on 10 Jul 2026 by Brill.

07/08/2026

Humanities Center fellow Philip McHarris joined Tavis Smiley on the Tavis Smiley Podcast on June 29. McHarris, an assistant professor of Black studies, explains how the Democratic Socialists of America’s victories in New York’s primary could revive the push to “Defund the Police” and why some Black leaders are already pushing back.

Assistant Professor in the Department of Black Studies and the Frederick Douglass Institute at the University of Rochester, Philip V. McHarris explains how the