The Center for the Humanities At Tufts (CHAT) promotes critical reflection on and exploration of the significance of the humanities and the arts for Tufts and its surrounding communities, encouraging discourse between humanists and artists, on the one hand, and other Tufts academics, on the other.

Each year CHAT selects a theme around which to organize its central activities: a year long faculty, post-doctoral fellow and graduate student seminar, a lecture series, and a fall or spring symposium. CHAT also supports innovative research and creative work through events with other departments and centers on campus. In addition CHAT plays an important role in supporting graduate education: CHAT grants two Graduate Dissertation Fellowships each year via the office of the Graduate Dean and the Dean of Arts and Sciences.

In March 2008 CHAT will host its first symposium on “The Art and Ethics of Translation.” In Fall 2008 it will host a symposium on “The Humanities and Human Rights” and in Spring 2009 we will welcome our first Visiting Fellow, writer and critic James Wood who will spend a week on campus. All of CHAT’s events are free and open to members of the Tufts community. In addition, some events are also open to the public. Through all of its programs, CHAT works to promote inter-departmental and cross-campus dialogue, to raise the profile of the arts and humanities at Tufts and in our surrounding communities, and to build support for scholarship and creative activity.  More about the center >

CHAT’s Director

Jonathan Wilson has been teaching in the Tufts English Department for twenty-five years. He is Fletcher Professor of Rhetoric and Debate and was, until taking up his position as Director of the Humanities Center, Director of the Creative Writing Program. Professor Wilson is the author of seven books: two critical studies of the fiction of Saul Bellow, two novels, two collections of short stories and a biography of Marc Chagall. He has written for The New Yorker and many other and magazines and journals.

Faculty Board Members

• Joseph H. Auner, Chair and Professor of Music
• Barbara Wallace Grossman, Chair and Associate Professor for Drama and Dance
• Leila Fawaz, Director, Fares Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies, Professor of History
• Hosea Hirata, Department Chair and Professor of Japanese
• Adriana Zavala, Assistant Professor, Art and Art History

Ex Officio

• Andrew McClellan, Dean of Academic Affairs for Arts and Sciences, Professor of Art History and Director of Museum Studies
• Lynne Pepall, Dean of the Graduate School for Arts and Sciences, Professor of Economics
• Vickie Sullivan, Dean of Academic Affairs for Arts and Sciences, Professor of Political Science