Seth Lerer, the new Dean of Arts and Humanities, is one of the nation’s leading literature scholars. He is widely recognized for his research in the area of medieval and Renaissance studies, comparative studies, the history of scholarship and children’s literature. He’s been a professor at Stanford University and Princeton University, and he’s also served in numerous positions of academic leadership. Lerer has been lauded for his vision regarding the opportunities, challenges, and priorities in the arts and humanities.

Lerer: My top priorities lie in building on the rich traditions of scholarly and creative work at UC San Diego in order to enhance the place of arts and humanities on our campus and nationwide. In the current economic climate, the challenges are to retain and recruit the best faculty available and to maintain the academic and artistic excellence of our programs. My hope is to work with the faculty to pursue new venues for development — not only fundraising, but outreach to the community at large and innovations in teaching and curriculum. There is a social mission to the practice and study of art, literature, music, theater, philosophy and history. I hope to find the best way of realizing that mission so that we may have the most effective impact on our students and our community.

Lerer: I hope to reach out to prospective students to recruit them to the brilliance and creativity of these departments. I hope to work with our growing alumni community to stress the importance of the arts and humanities in a large public university-to rely on their experiences here and get them involved in supporting and promoting these programs. And I hope to work with the faculty to highlight their remarkable achievements in scholarship and creative activity-to get the word out publicly that this is one of the most inventive and stimulating places to be a working artist, a researcher and a teacher.

Lerer: Courses in the arts and humanities teach students the basics-how to understand the world; how to read and interpret; how to develop a sense of the aesthetic; how to express experience and feeling. And they go beyond the basics to help students find themselves in the world most broadly-as participants in history; as contributors to culture; as social and political actors. What it means to be a person is a question that has been asked by artists, historians, philosophers and writers since the beginning. The study and practice of these disciplines helps each of us answer the question.

Lerer: Degrees in arts and humanities prepare students for a range of careers. For example, the study of history, literature and philosophy builds interpretive skills central to law, government and public life. The study of arts, especially here at UC San Diego, trains students in technology and culture, in expression as well as computation. But the pursuit of these degrees can prepare students for careers at the interface of these disciplines. For example, they can help students understand that politics is theater in the modern world; that medicine is an art as well as a science; that business and public service require (now more than ever) a commitment to ethics.

Lerer: I grew up in a home of readers and teachers, and much as I wanted to rebel by becoming a scientist, in the end, I succumbed to the seductions of literature, art and music. Medieval literature, in particular, entranced me, and I began my career as a scholar of early poetry and the history of language. But more recently, I’ve branched out to focus on the history of children’s literature, the role of language in society and the history of the book.

Lerer: UC San Diego is unique. There is no other campus in the country with the departmental organization we have in Arts and Humanities. There is no other campus with this kind of strong commitment to creative artistic practice in its academic departments. There is no other campus with the kind of single, large Literature Department that we have here. As a public university, too, there is a tradition here of strong faculty governance, of bottom-up decision making and of a freshness that comes from working on a new and ever-growing campus.

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