Paul Peppis, an associate professor and associate head of the UO Department of English, will serve as interim director of the Oregon Humanities Center for the 2013-14 academic year, the Office of the Vice President for Research and Innovation announced.

The Oregon Humanities Center has been led by Professor and Vice Provost Barbara Altmann, who said last spring that she would step away from the OHC directorship to focus on her work in Academic Affairs. The OHC board and staff conducted an internal search in the late spring.

Peppis received his doctorate from the University of Chicago’s Department of Language and Literature and been a member of the UO faculty since 1995. He received a Crystal Apple in 2012 as a winner of the UO's Thomas F. Herman Faculty Achievement Award.

He has served as the associate site director for the University Study Abroad Consortium (USAC), as a regional delegate for the Western section of the Modern Language Association, as an editorial board member of the Journal of Modern Periodical Studies (John’s Hopkins Press) and as member of the UO OHC advisory board since 2010.

Peppis' work examines relations between literature and life, and he strives to demonstrate that research and teaching can be well integrated.

He will join the Oregon Humanities Center as interim director on Sept. 16, and can be reached at ppeppis@uoregon.edu or x61508. 

- from the UO Office of the Vice President for Research and Innovation