Dr. Elizabeth Engelhardt is Vice Provost for Arts and Culture and the Senior Associate Dean for Fine Arts and Humanities in the College of Arts and Sciences.
As the inaugural Vice Provost for Arts and Culture, Dr. Engelhardt oversees a unified structure for arts initiatives across Carolina, streamlining arts infrastructure that enables more students, faculty, and the public to engage with the arts. The Ackland Art Museum and Carolina Performing Arts report to this position. As Senior Associate Dean, PlayMakers Repertory Company and the academic arts departments of Art and Art History, Dramatic Art, and Music report to her.
Also as Senior Associate Dean, Engelhardt serves the departments of American Studies, Classics, Communication, English and Comparative Literature, Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures, Linguistics, Philosophy, Religious Studies, Romance Studies, and Women’s and Gender Studies. Her responsibilities also include oversight of the Institute for the Arts and Humanities, Medieval and Early Modern Studies, Carolina Public Humanities, the Carolina Center for Jewish Studies, and the Center for the Study of the American South.
Engelhardt, Kenan Eminent Professor of Southern Studies, joined the UNC American Studies faculty in 2015, returning to her home state after more than a decade at the University of Texas at Austin. She served as chair of American Studies from 2017 to 2019 before becoming senior associate dean for fine arts and humanities in 2019.
In fall 2023, Engelhardt published Boardinghouse Women: How Southern Keepers, Cooks, Nurses, Widows and Runaways Shaped Modern America (UNC Press), which received the Ragan Old North State Award for Nonfiction in 2024 from the North Carolina Literary and Historical Association.
Engelhardt is a proud graduate of the Hendersonville, North Carolina, public school system. She received master’s and doctoral degrees from Emory University and a bachelor’s degree from Duke University.
Executive Assistant: Duywuna Millner