Burnett Joins Denbo Center as Associate Director of Transdisciplinary Programs
UT Alumna Katharine Burnett joins Denbo Center to help grow research and public-facing programs for humanities and the arts.
Katharine Burnett will join the Denbo Center for Humanities and the Arts in July as Associate Director of Transdisciplinary Programs, a role central to Denbo’s future growth. In this role, she will help support the center’s research projects, coordinate events, and identify and develop new programming opportunities.
“I’m so looking forward to working with Katharine to grow the Denbo Center’s dynamic and collegial culture of arts and humanities research and our public-facing interdisciplinary work,” said Denbo Director Amy Elias. “She already knows this area and this university, and she is an original thinker and a sociable, brilliant educator and colleague.”
A double UT alumna, Burnett earned her undergraduate degree in German and English literature in 2005 and her PhD in English in 2013. She has been an associate professor at Fisk University in Nashville since 2014 and chair of the Arts and Languages Department there since 2022.
“As a former department head and a recognized scholar in Southern studies, Katharine brings knowledge of university organization that will connect beautifully with UT faculty and graduate student experience,” said Elias. “Her passion for community involvement, along with her statewide connections, will also catapult Denbo to new levels of public engagement with local and state partners.”
Burnett appreciates the “full-circle return” to her alma mater and to the Denbo Center, where she was a graduate fellow in years past.
“I directly benefited from the scholarly engagement and interdisciplinary collaboration that are hallmarks of UT Knoxville as an institution and the Denbo Center especially,” she said.
Burnett is excited to engage anew in the center’s ongoing cross-disciplinary connections and to expand on its transdisciplinary focus and public-facing, community-engaged programming at local and national levels.
“I very much look forward to building on Director Amy Elias’s hard work and the growth of the center over the past decade,” said Burnett. “From personal experience, I know I couldn’t have a better group of faculty, staff, and students to work with.”
By Randall Brown