Mississippi Humanities Award Presented to Dr. Jonathan Koefoed

March 1, 2022 (Jackson, Miss.) - Associate Professor of History and Director of the Honors Program Dr. Jonathan Koefoed was awarded the prestigious 2022 Mississippi Humanities Council Teacher Award. This special honor recognizes the contribution of humanities faculty at each of the Mississippi's colleges and universities.

Each honoree is required to deliver a public lecture of their choosing and relevant to their expertise. Koefoed will give his presentation March 8 at 2 p.m. His lecture, entitled “The'Instructor and Inspirer': Christian Romantic Contributions to Nineteenth-Century American Art and Education” will stream at this link on Zoom and is open to the public.

Koefoed's talk will highlight an alternative discourse, American Christian Romanticism, and explain how certain nineteenth-century American artists and intellectuals self-consciously fused Romantic ideals with Trinitarian Christianity. These professors, writers, and artists created an underappreciated Christian intellectual movement that contributed much to the dissemination of Romantic ideas in America. They also provided timeless reflections on the nature and purpose of art and education. These latter contributions will be explored with a view toward a wide and multi-disciplinary university audience.

Koefoed received his B.A. from Arizona State University, M.A. from Saint Louis University, and his Ph.D. from Boston University.

All award recipients will be recognized at the Mississippi Humanities Council's annual awards banquet in the spring. The Mississippi Humanities Council is a private nonprofit corporation funded by Congress through the National Endowment for the Humanities, and provides public programs in traditional liberal arts disciplines to serve nonprofit groups in Mississippi.