Scott Black named new Director
of the Tanner Humanities Center

The College of Humanities at the University of Utah has named Scott Black, Professor of English at the U, as the new director of the Obert C. and Grace A. Tanner Humanities Center.

Black brings to the center extensive leadership experience, having served as Chair of the Department of English from 2017-2024. He takes over for interim director Jeremy Rosen, Associate Professor of English at the U, and former director Erika George.

“Scott brings comprehensive knowledge of multiple humanities disciplines and how innovative research has cleared new research paths for students and scholars,” said Hollis Robbins, Dean of the College of Humanities. That innovation and willingness to meet the contemporary interests of both students and scholars is clear from his tenure leading the Department of English, a period of expansion into new areas such as digital humanities and video game narratives, as well as deepening the Department’s core strengths in British literary history, twentieth-century American literature, and creative writing. 

Black earned a BA with first class honors from McGill University and a PhD from The Johns Hopkins University. He began his academic career at Villanova University and joined the Department of English at the U in 2005. He has been awarded fellowships from the Huntington Library, UCLA’s Clark Library, the Folger Shakespeare Library, and the Ransom Humanities Center at University of Texas at Austin. Beloved by students and colleagues alike, he is also the recipient of numerous teaching awards, including the College of Humanities’ Ramona Cannon Award for Teaching Excellence and the ASUU Student Choice Teaching Award. His scholarship, teaching, and service make him uniquely qualified to lead one of the premier humanities centers in the country.

Black is a noted scholar of eighteenth-century British literature, the history of the novel, and the long global history of prose fiction. His most recent book, Without the Novel: Romance and the History of Prose Fiction (2019) restores the genre of romance, the black sheep of modern literary histories, to its proper place as a centrally important form of storytelling and a vital mode of readerly pleasure. He is currently working on a project about Ursula K. Le Guin’s innovative later work, which challenges familiar forms of heroic narrative from the perspective of Daoism. Black regularly teaches courses on Le Guin, as well as on contemporary global literature, the history of the novel, experimental fiction, and fantasy.

“I am thrilled that a scholar of the global eighteenth-century — one of the most important centuries for peaceful and violent cultural exchange — is leading the Tanner Center," said Dean Robbins. Black’s scholarship rethinks standard literary histories to consider broader global contexts, a wider range of reader experiences, and attention to what he calls “the messy roots of culture, ideas, and scholarship, which flourish from the bottom up in informal networks of collaboration, experimentation, and exploration.”

“I look forward to bringing that ethos of communal trust, innovation, and creative risk-taking to the Tanner,” said Black. “I see the Center as a worksite and a workshop for the College, the University, and the broader community—a place where our various modes of work are nurtured, developed, shared, and we learn from each other how to see, learn, and live as fully and alertly as possible.”