Center for Humanistic Inquiry New CHI Director

I am delighted to announce the appointment of Christopher Grobe, associate professor of English, as the next director of Amherst’s Center for Humanistic Inquiry (CHI).  Chris’s four-year term in this position will begin on July 1, 2023.  Darryl Harper, John William Ward Professor of Music, will complete his term as the director of the CHI at the conclusion of this academic year.

The director oversees the CHI’s operations and programming.  Working with the center’s faculty advisory committee, the director is responsible for recommending to the provost and dean of the faculty the theme on which the center and its fellows focus for a two-year period, ensuring that the theme represents the full range of work being conducted in the humanities on campus, and recruiting and supporting the fellows affiliated with the theme.  Collaborating with departments, programs, and offices across campus, the director hosts and organizes events in support of the theme, as well as other kinds of programming, including the CHI’s weekly salon and Lit Fest.  The director also works with faculty to support collaborative research projects and is the college’s representative to national organizations of humanities centers. 

A widely published author who is on the cutting edge as a humanities scholar, Chris focuses his work on intersections of literature, performance, media, and technology in American culture, topics about which he also teaches.  In his current scholarship, he is exploring the ways in which ideas and people from the arts are imported into STEM research and the tech industry—including the role of MFA writers, dramatists, and actors in crafting voice-user interfaces (e.g., Siri and Alexa); the history of artificial intelligence as a theatrical problem; and the use of dance notation, acting theory, and ideas from puppeteering in the present-day design of social robots.  Chris has also taught and published in recent years on the need for “performance literacy” in politics—that is, for politicians and pundits to understand and use seriously the language of performance theory and the techniques of theatrical performance.  He is the author of The Art of Confession: The Performance of Self from Robert Lowell to Reality TV (NYU Press, 2017) and is currently working on two new monographs, one of which has been supported with a Burkhardt Fellowship.  Chris has also published numerous chapters, articles, essays, and reviews.  An engaged citizen of the college and Five Colleges, Chris, who is currently chairing the English department, the editorial board of Amherst College Press, and the Alpha Delta Phi Committee, has been a member of the ADC Task Force and the Sexual Respect Task force, among other bodies.  He was also a founding member of the Advisory Board of the CHI.  Chris earned undergraduate and graduate degrees (B.A. in English and theater studies; M.A. and M.Phil. in English literature, and Ph.D. in English literature) from Yale University.

In anticipation of this moment of transition, on behalf of the entire college, I want to express my gratitude to Darryl for his stellar work as the director of the CHI.  He has enriched the humanities on campus and the intellectual life of the college more broadly, in myriad ways, including during the pandemic—which presented a unique challenge. 

Please join me in congratulating Chris and celebrating the accomplishments of Darryl.

All best,
Catherine

Catherine Epstein
Provost and Dean of the Faculty
Henry Steele Commager Professor of History
Amherst College