The Center for the Humanities, along with colleagues from the University of Miami, would like to invite you to attend a lecture by by Alain-Philippe Durand, Dorrance Dean of the College of Humanities at the University of Arizona. Dean Durand's lecture is titled, “The Contrarian Entrepreneurial Guide to Humanities Leadership, Advocacy, and Branding,” and this program is the first of the 2025-2026 academic year for the Henry King Stanford Distinguished Professors in the Humanities Lecture Series.

Humanities administrators and faculty know well that the general public, news media, and even many K-12 and university administrators often think of the humanities as a set of useless disciplines that are a thing from the past. Their intellectual pursuits are solipsistic, so the story goes; their degrees detrimental to post-graduation employment; their scholars lazy, privileged dilettantes living the life of the mind and largely disconnected from “the real world.”  

​However, there is another story—told less often and with less drama: the humanities are thriving, particularly in places where teachers and researchers have re-energized the humanities’ perpetual raison d’être, namely, to preserve pasts, invent futures, collaborate with other disciplines, and work to make the world better. Dean Durand will tell that other story, recounting how he and his colleagues are using new techniques and communication channels to become contrarian entrepreneurial humanists  who prepare the future leaders of the global economy. 

Dr. Alain-Philippe Durand is the Dorrance Dean of the College of Humanities, Professor of French, and affiliated faculty in Africana Studies, Applied Intercultural Arts Research, Latin American Studies, LGBT Studies, and Public and Applied Humanities at the University of Arizona. 

His research interests include French and Brazilian literatures and cultures, French Cinema, Hip-Hop studies, and the promotion of the Humanities disciplines in the professions. He is the author and editor of six books and many chapters and articles in journals and volumes published in the United States, France, and Brazil. Dean Durand is a member of several professional organizations. He has served and continues to serve on the editorial boards of numerous journals, is Associate Editor of the journal Contemporary French Civilization, and has been a member of the Board of Directors of the Arizona Council for the Humanities, Eller Executive Education Board of Directors, the American College of the Mediterranean's Board of Trustees, and the Modern Language Association’s Executive Council. He is regularly invited to lecture at institutions in the United States, Brazil, and France.
 
The French Government awarded Durand the Palmes Académiques. The University of Arizona awarded Durand the Five Star Faculty Award, the Richard Ruiz Diversity Leadership Faculty Award, and the African American Community Council’s Distinguished Faculty Award. The French publication France-Amérique named him among its list of fifty French talents living in the United States. 
 
Dean Durand earned a Ph.D. in French Literature from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill after completing two Master of Arts in French Literature and in Latin American Studies at the University of Kansas, and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Business, French, and Spanish from Emporia State University.

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