The Trowbridge Initiative is also dedicated to forwarding major events on campus and supporting other initiatives. Recently Trowbridge, in connection with IPRH and more than a dozen other sponsors, developed the campus-wide program on big data and the humanities. A symposium on Lincoln and cultural value was partly funded through the Provost’s initiative, celebrating the Lincoln bicentennial, and included speakers from the Law School and Communication Department. Trowbridge has also been a willing partner with other campus units in cosponsoring events such as a MillerComm visit by Leonard S. Marcus, as well as a History Department’s Center for Historical Interpretation lecture by Michael Isikoff on human rights. In addition, Trowbridge has contributed to a CAS Interpreting TechnoScience initiative.

Special Trowbridge events include a symposium titled A New Deal for the Humanities, which was cosponsored by no fewer than 14 other units. Its proceedings were ultimately published as book by the same title by Rutgers University Press (2016). Other past events have included a reading by the celebrated Korean American writer, Chang-rae Lee (supported by a variety of student groups, the Union, and several academic units), a poetry reading and lecture by David Bergman, and a forum on the midterm elections with Glenn Altschuler (Cornell) and Mark Crispin Miller (NYU), with support from Political Science, Communication, and History. Trowbridge has also brought the late Henry L. Henderson, Chicago’s first director of Environmental Resources and then Executive Director of the Midwest chapter of the Natural Resources Defense Council to UIUC, as part of our Sustainability in America program, in cooperation with the Sustainability Studies in the Humanities office. Trowbridge has also contributed on two occasions to support Odyssey Project events.