Morna O’Neill HI Tenth Anniversary Tribute

I have always associated the Humanities Institute with my life at Wake Forest, as we both arrived here in 2010, and I cannot imagine Wake Forest without it. One of the first events that I attended as a new faculty member was “Humanities in the 21st Century,” the inaugural symposium for the Humanities Institute. After listening to Stanley Fish consider “Are the Humanities Good for Humanity,” I came away energized, secure in the realization that I could answer in the affirmative. My mind went back to the remarks of Edward Ayers, the other speaker at the symposium, and his call to position the humanities as a powerful force in the twentieth-first century, to “make sure in every venue available to us that we embody what the humanities can be.” Over the last decade, the intellectual community and financial support of the Humanities Institute have encouraged me to meet this challenge. As an art historian whose work addresses the interplay of art and craft, I like to think of the Humanities Institute as a loom that allows faculty to weave their own fabric from the threads of teaching, research, and community engagement. It has provided me with conversation and collegiality through reading groups, working groups, and symposia. It has underwritten critical summer writing, enabling me to finish my book on the art dealer Hugh Lane and the global art market in a timely fashion. It has allowed me to present my work to a public audience through the digital humanities site Home Subjects. It has connected my students with expertise through visiting speakers. Crucially, it has allowed students to become experts through its support for student-curated exhibitions at Reynolda House Museum of American Art. I’m delighted to celebrate a decade of the Humanities Institute and to recognize the powerful and diverse ways it highlights what the humanities can be in the twenty-first century.

Morna O’Neill
Associate Professor, 18th c. and 19th c. European Art
Rubin Faculty Fellow, 2018-2021
Department of Art