Co-chairs named for Dean of the College search
In a message to the campus community this week, President Susan R. Wente announced a national search for Wake Forest’s next Dean of the College. The search begins as current Dean Michele Gillespie transitions to the role of Provost on July 1. Gillespie and Professor Dean Franco will co-chair the search.
“I have great confidence Dr. Gillespie and Dr. Franco will lead an effective and inclusive search process for the next Dean of the College,” Wente said. “The role of Dean is absolutely critical to our academic leadership team and our co-chairs recognize that.”
“The College is a vibrant, outstanding, diverse community of teacher-scholars that I am proud to be part of. I am committed to ensuring we find the right leader to steward the College into the future,” said Gillespie, who in addition to her leadership of the College, has been a faculty scholar at Wake Forest for more than 20 years — experiences that will serve the campus well as she co-leads the search process.
Franco, the Winifred W. Palmer Professor of English, joined the College faculty in the English department in 2001 and leads the University’s Humanities Institute. He also co-chairs the Slavery, Race and Memory Project at Wake Forest.
“Dean is an exceptional teacher-scholar, and his institutional leadership has well-acquainted him with faculty and departments across the College,” Gillespie said. “He understands both our strengths and our challenges and will be an insightful partner in the work of this search.”
The full composition of the search committee will be announced during the week of April 11.
Categories: Faculty News, Presidential News, University Announcement
WFU Humanities Institute celebrates 10 years
The Humanities Institute is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year by gathering stories from faculty about their collaborations with the Institute over the past decade.
Founding faculty leadership for the Wake Forest Humanities Institute, from left, Mary Foskett, David Phillips, Sally Barbour and Dean Franco.
Building on its liberal arts tradition, Wake Forest established the Humanities Institute to support innovative scholarship and collaboration in October 2010. The Humanities Institute publicly celebrated its launch in March 2011.
Mary Foskett, Wake Forest Kahle Professor of Religious Studies; Dean Franco, Winifred W. Palmer Professor in Literature, English; Sally Barbour, professor of Romance Languages; and David Phillips, associate professor of Interdisciplinary Humanities laid the groundwork and secured the funding that made the Institute possible. The National Endowment for the Humanities awarded Wake Forest a five-year, $500,000 challenge grant – the largest NEH grant Wake Forest had ever received. Original programming included faculty seminars, symposia, professional development, and support for collaborative faculty research and teaching.
In February 2013, Wake Forest alumnus Wade Murphy (’00) donated $1 million to support the Institute, extending the reach and impact of humanities and the liberal arts. Murphy was the youngest person in the University’s history to make such a large gift. Read more
Categories: Faculty News, Inside WFU, Staff News
Humanities Institute publication: "How We Know, What We Know: The Humanities Responds to Pandemic"
In November 2020, the Wake Forest University Humanities Institute released “How We Know, What We Know: Humanities Responds to Pandemic.” 
This collection of essays by Wake Forest faculty was commissioned by the Humanities Institute at the end of spring 2020; it includes historical, critical, interpretive and reflective essays from across the humanities, shedding light on the past, present and future of our emergency.
In an announcement, the Humanities Institute said:
The pandemic and resulting travel restrictions disrupted many of our colleagues’ research plans, while quarantine, outrage over racism, and the ever-changing contingencies of work and family life meant that many of us found our intellectual attention for scholarship overwhelmed. Still, our faculty have copious knowledge and a lot to say about the history, art, literature, and lived experience of quarantine, emergency, and diseases, as a result of our scholarly training in the humanities. Seeking to document and publish this base of knowledge, the Humanities Institute put out a grant for short essays which would direct disciplinary knowledge and scholarly training to some aspect of the current emergency. We are thrilled and grateful for what our colleagues produced, and this collection is the result.
Eighteen Wake Forest faculty contributed essays—and even a film—to the collection, which was edited by Aimee Mepham, Humanities Institute associate director. Dean Franco, director of the Humanities Institute and professor of English, wrote the book’s introduction.
You can read the publication online or download it as a PDF by clicking the link here.
Categories: Faculty News, Staff News
Franco awarded the new 'Palmer Professorship in Literature'
Dean Franco, Professor of English and Director of the Humanities Institute at Wake Forest University, has been awarded the new Winifred W. Palmer Professorship in Literature.
Arnold Palmer’s Trust funded the professorship in memory of Palmer’s late wife. Her passion for literature will be remembered through this generous gift.
Dean of the College Michele Gillespie chose Franco for his outstanding excellence within the English Department and his tireless pursuit of scholarship, mentorship and leadership.
“Dean Franco is a superb example of the consummate teacher-scholar at Wake Forest. He is a dedicated, demanding teacher; a senior scholar who has shaped his field of 20th century American Literature, and especially American Ethnic Studies; and deeply committed to the equity and wellbeing of our community and the broader community we live in,” Gillespie said.
Franco, who joined the English Department in 2001, has served in a variety of roles, including associate chair from 2010 to 2016. His third book, “The Border and the Line: Race, Literature, and Los Angeles,” was published in January; and he continues to draft, edit and peer review essays and journal submissions. He co-authored the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant for the Engaged Liberal Arts awarded in 2018. He serves as a noted scholar on panels and as a guest lecturer on topics involving race and literature. Most recently, he presented the lecture, “On Race, Scale and Literary History,” at Indiana University Oct. 10.
Inside the classroom, Franco devotes his attention to his students, from their first year through graduation. His first-year seminars on such topics as “Inauthentic, Abnormal and Queer: Social Values in Art, Literature and Film,” “The Sacred and Secular in Public Life,” and “Uncertainty” have expanded the worldview for incoming students and provided an introduction to the Pro Humanitate motto that all Wake Forest students strive to achieve. He continues to mentor and guide English majors through their intellectual pursuits while also serving as the founding director for the Jewish Studies minor that began in 2014. Franco also contributes to the campus community through his role as the director of the Humanities Institute, which establishes programs and provides funding for University faculty in the humanities and other fields of study engaging in humanistic inquiry and scholarship.
Jessica Richard, chair of the English department, calls Franco an invaluable colleague and an exceptional contributor to the department, College and University.
“In his most recent book, Dean Franco examines ‘how we all live in relational proximity to our neighbors,’ and his commitment to understanding what divides and unites us is also the bedrock of his work at Wake Forest,” Richard said. “From his role as a co-founder and current director of the Humanities Institute to his department leadership and his classroom teaching, Dean models how literary study enables us to connect across difference. We’re thrilled to see his nationally recognized scholarship and his outstanding campus leadership and teaching recognized with this professorship.”
Categories: University Announcement
Dean Franco named director of Humanities Institute
Professor of English Dean J. Franco has been named director of the Wake Forest University Humanities Institute beginning January 2017. The Institute, which was established in 2010, supports humanities scholarship which draws on disciplines like philosophy, literature, religion, history, and other fields to interpret the human experience, understand our world, and engage the issues of our time.
In the past six years, nearly 200 College faculty from 35 departments and programs across the humanities, natural and social sciences, and the arts, and 30 faculty from law, medicine, divinity and business, have collaborated with the Institute — helping bring together top scholars and leaders to produce new scholarship, inspire new directions in teaching, and demonstrate how the humanities can inform and impact important issues of our time, such as:
- Envisioning a community that protects the world’s citizens from the effects of climate change — especially the poorest countries and communities.
- Addressing the challenges of mass incarceration and the criminal justice system.
- Recognizing the importance of humanities training for the future of medicine and exploring holistic healing through storytelling and narrative medicine.
Franco along with Mary Foskett, Wake Forest Kahle Professor of Religious Studies; Sally Barbour, professor of Romance Languages; and David Phillips, associate professor of Interdisciplinary Humanities — laid the groundwork and secured the funding that made the Institute possible.
“Having played a leading role in the Humanities Institute since its inception, Dean is perfectly poised to become the Institute’s next director,” said Foskett, the Humanities Institute founding director. “He will not only carry on its mission, which he helped craft, he will infuse the Institute with his unique combination of brilliance, creativity, vision, and energy. I can’t wait to see what the Humanities Institute will do with Dean leading it forward.”
The Institute has also supported transformational programming in the College such as the Interdisciplinary Humanities Pathway to Medicine Program, which offers guaranteed admission to Wake Forest School of Medicine for up to five undergraduates majoring in the humanities or fine arts, and new interdisciplinary initiatives like a growing digital humanities community at Wake Forest.
Wake Forest was recently awarded a $650,000 grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in support of engaged humanities – teaching, learning, mentoring and real-world problem solving that moves beyond the classroom. With support from this grant, the Humanities Institute will offer new programming in narrative medicine and will collaborate with Reynolda House Museum of American Art to host new scholarly conferences.
“I am excited about working with Reynolda House to implement the Mellon Grant funded Reynolda Conferences in 2018 and 2019,” Franco said. “This is a dream scenario — the opportunity to assemble scholars working on the same sets of questions for extended, deep learning.”
Franco joined Wake Forest 2001. He directs the Jewish Studies minor, has recently served as associate chair of the English department, and was the Scott Family Faculty Fellow from 2012-2014. He researches and publishes on race and literature.
Read more…
Humanities Institute established
Humanities Institute lands 500K grant
Humanities Institute receives $1 million donation
Categories: Faculty News, University Announcement
