LAS names Institute for the Humanities director

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences has appointed Professor Ellen McClure as the new director of the Institute for the Humanities.

Professor McClure is a member of the French and Francophone studies department and the history department. She is an interdisciplinary thinker whose scholarly work and teaching interests lie at the intersection of literature, history, religious studies and political thought. In addition to her numerous articles and essays, she is the author of “The Logic of Idolatry in Seventeenth-Century French Literature” (D.S. Brewer, 2020) and “Sunspots and the Sun King: Sovereignty and Mediation in Seventeenth-Century France” (U. Illinois Press, 2006). She is also the co-editor of “Teaching French Neoclassical Tragedy” (Modern Language Association of America, 2021).

Professor McClure’s administrative experience includes serving as director of the Mellon-funded Engaged Humanities Initiative, head of the French and Francophone studies department, coordinator of the religious studies program, and associate director of the School of Literatures, Cultural Studies and Linguistics.

As part of her considerable service to LAS and the broader university, Professor McClure has served on the Faculty Senate and the Executive Committee for the Institute for the Humanities, and has been an Honors College Faculty Fellow for over two decades.

Founded in 1982, the UIC Institute for the Humanities is one of the oldest in the United States and serves as a hub of humanities research on campus and off. Each year, the Institute sponsors fellowships for faculty and graduate students, public lectures from visiting and UIC faculty fellows, conferences and a variety of interdisciplinary working groups.