ASU Institute for Humanities Research announces interim director, associate director

Arizona State University's Institute for Humanities Research has announced the appointment of Cora Fox as interim director, following the departure of director Sally Kitch on July 1.

Fox is an associate professor in ASU's Department of English and has served the institute as associate director for the past three years. In addition to directing the institute, she will continue working on the medical humanities initiative and the imagining health project — a collaboration between the institute and the Center for Humanities in Medicine at Mayo Clinic in Arizona.

Fox's research has focused on English Renaissance literature and culture, with particular attention to classical intertextuality, the history of emotions and gender studies. Her publications include "Ovid and the Politics of Emotion in Elizabethan England" (Palgrave, 2009) and "Approaches to Teaching the Works of Ovid and the Ovidian Tradition" (co-edited, MLA, 2010).She has also published essays on Spenser, Ovid, Reginald Scot and Isabella Whitney, and recently on the blazon and how classical texts define sexuality and gender in the Renaissance.

Her current research focuses on the history of well-being and happiness, particularly as these emotions are defined and redefined through Shakespeare. She is engaged in cultural analysis of the history of positive emotions through the integration of affect studies and intertextuality and reception studies.

The Institute for Humanities Research has also announced that Victoria Thompson will serve as associate director. Thompson is currently an associate professor of French and European history in the School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies.

Thompson's research interests include the history of urban space, travel and travel writing, the history of women, gender and sexuality, political culture, and the role of emotion in the formation of collective and individual identities. She is the author of "The Virtuous Marketplace: Women and Men, Money and Politics in Paris, 1830-1870" (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000) and, with Rachel G. Fuchs, "Women in European History" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2004).