LSU College of Humanities & Social Sciences Humanities Center
The College of Humanities & Social Sciences Humanities Center supports faculty, students,
and staff engaged in thought-leading humanistic inquiry. Located in HSS, the intellectual
heart of the campus, the HSS Humanities Center fosters vibrant, innovative conversations
across disciplines and empowers humane, creative thinking to address the world’s most
pressing challenges.
The HSS Humanities Center emerged directly from conversations with faculty, especially
conversations held during the College’s active listening sessions in Fall 2022. These
discussions identified some key priorities for faculty, including the vital importance
of a scholarly culture of human-centered learning and discovery, and the need for
a diverse suite of programming and resources to support researchers’ professional
development at every career stage. This faculty-driven HSS Humanities Center thus
focuses its efforts on advancing these two priorities.
A committee of humanities faculty members is currently developing the initial shape
of the HSS Humanities Center. The members of this committee are:
Chris Barrett
HSS Dean’s Fellow, Associate Professor, Department of English
Sarah Franzen
Assistant Professor, Department of Geography & Anthropology
Susan Grunewald
Assistant Professor, Department of History
Benjamin Kahan
Director of the Program in Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies; Herbert Huey McElveen
Professor of English and Professor in the Program in Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies
Michael Pasquier
Associate Dean, College of HSS; Jaak Seynaeve Professor of Christian Studies in the
Department of Philosophy & Religious Studies and the Department of History
Chris Rovee
Robert Penn Warren Professor of English
In addition to crafting the vision and future programming for the HSS Humanities Center,
the Development Committee is steering two initiatives invested in faculty and graduate
student professional success. These two initiatives launched in academic year 2023-2024:
First, the HSS Humanities Center hosts a Drop-in Faculty Writing Space. This venue
offers faculty members engaged in research a dedicated space in which they can work
in quiet and in community with others in drafting the excellent scholarship for which
our College is rightly known. Complementary light refreshments are provided all hours
the space is open. The Drop-in Faculty Writing Space will be open Mondays, Wednesdays,
and Fridays 10:00 am-3:30 pm, and Tuesdays and Thursdays 1:00 pm-3:30 pm, throughout
the spring semester 2024, starting Tuesday, January 16. The space is located in the
Map Room of the Cartographic Information Center, located at 313 Howe Russell West.
Second, the HSS Humanities Center offers Graduate Course-Based Mini-Residencies for
Visiting Scholars. This pilot program connects faculty members and the graduate students
enrolled in their courses with leading scholars in their fields. In Spring 2024, seven
HSS faculty members were selected to host these mini-residencies, which brought agenda-setting
scholars to campus. If you are a faculty member teaching a graduate course in Fall
2024, the HSS Humanities Center invites you to propose a mini-residency. For more
details, or to submit a proposal for a mini-residency for Fall 2024, click the link
below.
For more information on the HSS Humanities Center, contact Chris Barrett (cbarrett@lsu.edu).