Newhouse Center for the Humanities

The Susan and Donald Newhouse Center for the Humanities at Wellesley College was made possible by a generous gift from Susan Marley Newhouse ‘55 and Donald Newhouse in 2003. This gift marked the crucial transition between a several year process of brainstorming and lobbying by a small cadre of Wellesley faculty members and the more focused and formal planning process that began when the Newhouses stepped forward to make their gift and thus to make the center a reality.
Most prominent among those who first imagined a humanities center at Wellesley were Mary Lefkowitz, from the Department of Classical Studies, Kathryn Lynch, from the Department of English, and Guy Maclean Rogers, from the Departments of History and Classical Studies. The later planning process was led by Andrea Levitt, Associate Dean of the College and Professor of French and Linguistics, working with a committee that included, Kathryn Lynch, as well as Martin Brody, Professor of Music; Carol Dougherty, Professor of Classical Studies: Yoon Sun Lee, Associate Professor of English: Ifeanyi Menkiti, Professor of Philosophy, David Mickenberg, Director of the Davis Museum and Cultural Center; Tiffany Peace, a Davis Scholar; and Brendon Reay, Assistant Professor of Classical Studies. Working together through the academic year, 2003-2004, that group crafted the mission statement.

The planning committee met throughout the year with one another, with various constituencies within the college, and with faculty and directors of humanities centers elsewhere. In the course of that year, the second floor of Green Hall, a space formerly occupied by the Office of Admissions, was selected as the home of the Newhouse Center for the Humanities. In the spring of 2004, Timothy Peltason, Professor of English, was selected as the first Director of the Newhouse Center. The final report of the planning committee served as the guiding document for the Center as it entered its first year in 2004-05 and began work in earnest on programming and renovation plans. The renovated space, designed by Einhorn, Yaffe, Prescott and Associates, includes office space for the director, an administrative assistant, and eleven resident fellows, as well as a variety of seminar and meeting spaces and a faculty lounge. Construction was completed in the late winter of 2006 and the Newhouse Center welcomed its first class of Newhouse Resident Fellows in the fall of 2006. Since that time the fellows program has flourished as have the other programs of the Newhouse Center for the Humanities.