Larry Norman, Professor in Romance Languages & Literatures, Theater & Performance Studies and the College, will serve a second term as Deputy Provost for the Arts, announced Provost Thomas Rosenbaum.
“Larry has defined the position of Deputy Provost for the Arts in his inaugural term, working hand-in-hand with deans, chairs, faculty and staff to integrate the academic, co-curricular and professional arts into the University community and to deepen the University's cultural connections with the city of Chicago,” Rosenbaum wrote in a memo to deans and officers.
With Executive Director Bill Michel, Norman is also coordinating the development of the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts, which is expected to open in spring of 2012.
Norman’s vision for the arts embodies experimentation and multidisciplinary inquiry, teaching, performance, and production. These are reflected in the establishment and launch of the Richard and Mary L. Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry and the facilitation of the Gray Center’s fellowship program for visiting artists and scholars, with support from a four-year award from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
"I look forward to continuing to work with faculty, students, and arts leaders on campus to advance the life of the arts within the University as well as in our engagement with cultural institutions and communities in Chicago," said Norman.
Norman also will continue to facilitate the full engagement of the David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art, the Court Theatre, and the University of Chicago Presents, with the intellectual life of the University.
A scholar of significant note, Norman focuses on 17th- and 18th-century French and European literature as well as theater across the ages. His interests range from theater history, book history, and intellectual and cultural history to literary criticism and theory, and the relation between the visual arts and literature.
Norman has authored The Public Mirror: Molière and the Social Commerce of Depiction as well as his 2011 publication The Shock of the Ancient: Literature and History in Early Modern France. He earned a PhD in French and Romance Philology from Columbia University and joined the UChicago faculty in 1996.
—Prof. Jacqueline Stewart
