Russ Castronovo
Position title: Director
Email: rcastronovo@wisc.edu
Phone: 608-890-1055
Address:
432 East Campus Mall, Madison, WI 53706

Russ Castronovo is Tom Paine Professor of English and Dorothy Draheim Professor of American Studies at UW-Madison, where he began directing the Center for the Humanities in 2019. He has been recognized with awards for distinguished teaching and transformative research.
Working with the College of Letters & Science and the Center’s Advisory Board, Castronovo is emphasizing diversity on two fronts. First, the Center’s programming and events feature intellectual diversity by promoting public-facing scholarship from a range of disciplines from art history to philosophy. The many crises and issues we as a society face today—climate change, the erosion of democratic norms, the influence of social media, to name only a few—need to be met with a wide and robust understanding of the humanities. Second, the Center seeks to provide a public forum to scholars, artists, filmmakers, and writers who draw on cultural diversity in ways that break down the barriers between specialist and generalist and between expert and citizen. This approach recognizes that intellectual and cultural diversity go hand in hand in enhancing public knowledge. The Center’s emphasis on the public humanities envisions new audiences for research in literature, history, philosophy, and culture and is part of the reinvention of graduate education in the 21st Century.