The University of Michigan’s Arts Initiative has appointed Professor Rafael Neis, a historian, scholar of visual culture and practicing artist who has led efforts to integrate art in both scholarship and pedagogical practice, to a new cross-campus leadership position, effective Sept. 1.

The Arts Initiative’s faculty director of student learning will expand, emphasize and integrate the arts in teaching and learning across the university.

“The creation of this position at the Arts Initiative, and the appointment of Professor Neis, are particularly welcome at this time,” said Sara Blair, vice provost for academic and faculty affairs & arts and humanities. “As a scholar, educator and practitioner, they will lend a tremendous depth of experience and vision to the work of embedding the arts in learning across all disciplines, in practices that foster dynamic inquiry, student experience, and new modes of discovery.”  

Neis will serve as a creative, collaborative arts leader for the university, working to expand and integrate curricular arts pathways for students, while establishing pedagogical opportunities and training for instructors. They will work with U-M faculty, staff, and students across the U-M arts ecosystem, to amplify and elevate arts-centered teaching and learning and will play a key role in coordinating cross-campus collaborations related to arts learning.

“As a historian and practicing artist who has long brought the arts into their classroom, Professor Neis will be an inspiration for all U-M faculty,” said Mark Clague, executive director of the Arts Initiative. “Their teaching is a model of how art making and art thinking can deepen learning and student success across the curriculum, particularly in courses in which the arts have not traditionally been a teaching tool.”

A professor in the History Department and Frankel Center for Judaic Studies, Neis holds the Jean and Samuel Frankel Chair in Rabbinics. They have initiated interdisciplinary collaboration across departments, libraries, museums and units in their teaching, research and administration at U-M, since their arrival in 2007. 

Neis’ own art and research consider ancient worlds, non-normative bodies and classification systems. They work in painting, mixed media, and comics. An award-winning author, Neis has published two books, the second incorporating their comics and drawings. Their art exhibition, “KIN: Us & Our Kinds,” was featured at the Lane Hall gallery of the Institute of Research on Women and Gender in Ann Arbor in fall 2024. 

“As a longtime educator, scholar and artist, I know the internal barriers and external challenges facing arts teaching and learning, especially for instructors and students in non-arts fields,” Neis said. “These need to be addressed in order to increase student access to the enormous pedagogical opportunities of arts learning, including the ways it enhances critical thinking, creative analysis, cognitive skills, and wellbeing.”

The faculty director of arts learning will work in partnership with a wide array of faculty and leadership across U-M’s schools and colleges to generate and implement ideas, and support the efforts of campus arts units — including LSA, the School of Music, Theatre & Dance, the Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design, the A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, the U-M Museum of Art and University Musical Society — and will coordinate with other U-M campus units, including but not limited to the College of Engineering, the Stephen M. Ross School of Business, Michigan Medicine, School of Social Work, and other U-M programs.