Center Leadership, Advisory Board, and Remembrance

Center Director: Dr. Darci Gardner

Dr. Darci Gardner is a professor of French in the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, with a B.A. in Comparative Literature from Vanderbilt University and a Ph.D. in French with a minor in Italian from Stanford University. She specializes in nineteenth‑ and twentieth‑century French literature, and her research and teaching draw on cognitive approaches to literature while emphasizing intersections between literary texts and other arts.

Since 2023, Darci has served as the founding director of High Country Humanities, a college–community partnership that has quickly become a central hub for humanities engagement. Under her leadership, the initiative has secured external grants, built strong relationships with local nonprofits, organized dozens of public events, and created new opportunities for faculty scholarship.
Her career has been dedicated to an interdisciplinary approach to learning – focusing on how narrative, media, and culture shape interpretations of justice, memory, and identity. Her scholarship on Jewish authors, cultural memory, and the Polish-French writer Marie Krysinska addresses historical mechanisms of hate, misinformation, and prejudice. Her monograph under review examines the rhetoric and narrative tactics behind propaganda and conspiracy theories, and explores how audiences become susceptible to irrational behaviors such as scapegoating, antisemitism, and Holocaust denial.

Darci has also demonstrated a deep commitment to transforming this scholarship into public action. She has led multiple study abroad programs that brought students to sites of remembrance, ensuring that the history of the Holocaust is never forgotten. Furthermore, she has spent years delivering public-facing programs on Jewish culture and history in collaboration with the Center and regional congregations — ranging from interactive seminars on Marc Chagall’s diaspora art to musical programs confronting the Reich’s censorship of so-called “degenerate” music.

As an educational leader with seven years of administrative experience and a strong background in K-12 teacher development, she is uniquely prepared to strengthen the Center’s mission and expand its impact across our campus, our region, and our state. Her deep-seated dedication to preserving Holocaust memory and combating antisemitism is both a professional mission and a personal calling rooted in the legacy of family members lost in the Shoah.