What's new at the Hall Center
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Hall Center raises NEH Challenge Grant funds 2 years ahead of scheduleSeptember 23, 2014
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Investigative journalist Katherine Boo to discuss life in Indian slumsSeptember 15, 2014
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Outstanding undergraduates selected as Hall Center ScholarsAugust 21, 2014
Welcome to the Hall Center
The Hall Center's primary mission is to stimulate and support research in the humanities, arts and social sciences, especially of an interdisciplinary kind, at the University of Kansas. The Center brings together faculty and graduate students with common interests from various disciplines to enable them to build on each others' ideas and to share their knowledge within the university and with the wider community.
The Center's collateral mission is to sponsor special programs that engage the university and the wider community in dialogue on issues that bring the humanities to bear on the quality of life for all citizens. It creates events on and beyond campus that seek to understand our past, present and future, our values and identities and the essential issues we face as individuals and communities.
KU’s Campanile, a 120-foot-tall timepiece that tolls automatically on the hour and quarter-hour, not only sounded in the 2015 New Year at midnight with 12 mighty gongs, but also regularly rings up memories for many Jayhawks – the 277 faculty and students who gave their lives during World War II, the graduates who walk through its doors at commencement, and aspiring students who have strolled through the Lawrence campus. (See http://bit.ly/1xjjwJj).
For nearly 60 years, KU’s 53-bell carillon has been tolling the sounds of peace and serenity across Mount Oread since it was installed in June 1955 inside the landmark World War II Memorial Campanile, which was dedicated in 1951. (See http://bit.ly/1BoL9jv)
The carillon is also a four-octave musical instrument, which is played with a giant keyboard and foot pedals. University Carillonneur Elizabeth Egber-Berghout (http://bit.ly/14fiBPl), associate professor of carillon and organ, climbs 77 steps up a spiral staircase in the bell tower to perform recitals several times a month.