Dr. Elise Smith, Millsaps College professor of art history and Art Department chair, is the first recipient of the Sanderson Chair in Arts and Sciences.
The newly endowed chair is intended to recognize and reward full professors in the Arts and Letters or Sciences divisions who have consistently exceeded expected standards and shown outstanding teaching abilities, distinguished faculty leadership, devoted service to students and mature scholarship.
Smith will hold the endowed chair for a renewable five-year term.
“Dr. Smith has consistently exceeded the high standards of the college and not surprisingly has earned many commendations in teaching, scholarship and service,” said Dr. Richard A. Smith, senior vice president and dean of the college. “She is widely recognized by her colleagues as one of the most outstanding faculty members in the College.”
In her time at Millsaps, Smith has received the 1994 Millsaps Distinguished Professor of the Year Award, the 2004 Mississippi Humanities Council Teacher Award and the 2005 Millsaps Distinguished Professor of the Year Award.
Smith began teaching adjunct courses at Millsaps in 1986 and became a tenure-track professor in 1988. She teaches a variety of period courses and specialized topics. Her latest research has focused on 19th-century Victorian painting as well as women and garden imagery in English art and literature from 1750 to 1850. She is the author of “Evelyn Pickering De Morgan and the Allegorical Body” and “The Paintings of Lucas van Leyden.”
She is currently working on a new book “Disciples of Flora: Women and the Domesticated Landscape from Romantic to Mid-Victorian England” with co-author Judith W. Page of the University of Florida. She is the author of more than 30 papers, articles, essays and reviews.
“I'm tremendously honored to have been chosen, especially since I know that so many of my faculty colleagues deserve such recognition,” Smith said. “I'm very grateful to the Sanderson family for establishing this chair, which in my view highlights the importance of the faculty as a whole, not just the one individual who holds the position.”
Smith earned a doctorate degree in art history from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, a master’s degree from Vanderbilt University and a bachelor’s degree from Florida State University.
In her years at Millsaps, she has been director of various programs, including the Ford Fellowship Program, Liberal Studies 1000 and the Millsaps Self-Study. She has served on multiple committees and is currently on the divisional personnel committee and is president of the Millsaps chapter of Phi Beta Kappa. She is also a member of the Acquisitions Committee at the Mississippi Museum of Art and a member of the editorial board of Southern Quarterly.
The Sanderson Chair in Arts and Sciences is part of a $2 million gift from Joe and Kathy Sanderson of Laurel to create a faculty chair position and the Sanderson Endowment for Faculty Excellence. Joe Sanderson is a 1969 Millsaps graduate and chairman and CEO of Sanderson Farms.
