July 2023 Public Humanities Newsletter
A monthly newsletter from Humanities for All, an initiative of the National Humanities Alliance.
In This Newsletter:
If you haven’t already, please consider subscribing to our Substack (for free!) so that you receive the newsletter in your email inbox and don’t miss any news in the future. We also encourage you to submit items to share. If you have any questions or would like to connect about the newsletter, please email Humanities for All Project Director Michelle May-Curry (mmaycurry@nhalliance.org).
July Spotlight: Florida International University’s Wolfsonian Public Humanities Lab
The Wolfsonian Public Humanities Lab (WPHL) is a hub for the humanities and public-facing and community-engaged work at Florida International University (FIU) in Miami.
At the start of 2022 WPHL director Rebecca Friedman and deputy director Julio Capó wrote about the Wolfsonian’s public humanities methodology for the Humanities for All blog, exploring the importance of surfacing counter-narratives as a central tenet of doing community-partnered humanities work.
Since the writing of this piece, the work of the Wolfsonian Public Humanities Lab has expanded exponentially. Thanks to additional support from funders such as the Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, Florida Humanities, and the Miami Dade County Office of Cultural Affairs, WPHL has been able to record stories, digitize archival collections, curate exhibitions, create curricula, teach students, mentor interns, and host workshops and conversations, all in the area of public humanities and community engaged scholarship.
Over these past few years, the WPHL has established relationships with individuals and institutions around Greater Miami and beyond. The Mellon Community Data Curation grant has been the backbone for much of this work and the catalyst for sustained university-community partnerships resulting from bonds of trust that allow additional collaborations to emerge that will outlive any particular funding stream. Whether engaging in a multidisciplinary story collecting project that resulted in a podcast series (also available on Apple and Amazon Music) collecting stories from the Coconut Grove neighborhood or working with the Historic Hampton House on its Greatest Weekend Celebration, the WPHL team has been able to leverage the university’s resources to co-create projects with their community partners, to listen and ofttimes step to the side so that the community may lead.
Humanities for All has also partnered with the WPHL on a surveying effort to document project impacts on partnering organizations and participants. In a survey of local residents who gave their oral histories as part of a program at the historic Ward House, 100% of the respondents shared that the experience enhanced both their sense of connection to their community and their appreciation of their own heritage. As one respondent stated, “Our record of legacy matters.”
Interested in learning more about our public humanities partnerships and our work to support higher ed-based public humanists? Visit the National Humanities Alliance’s website for more information.
Calls for Proposals
Equitable Access Grants for the 2023 National Humanities Conference
Applications due July 8, 2023
The Federation of State Humanities Councils and the National Humanities Alliance (NHA) have opened the 2023 NHC Equitable Access Grants call for applications, which will close on July 8. These grants, made possible by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), will support the attendance and travel expenses of up to 30 attendees of the 2023 National Humanities Conference in Indianapolis, October 25–29. Grants of up to $1,895 will reimburse recipients for conference registration, travel, and lodging expenses to, from, and while in Indianapolis. Applications will be particularly encouraged from individuals from marginalized populations and communities previously underrepresented at the National Humanities Conference. Individuals selected to be part of the 2023 cohort will meet with senior staff from the NEH while getting to know each other and their humanist colleagues over the course of five days. Learn more and apply here.
Call for Course Instructors: North Dakota Humanities Public University Program
Proposals due September 15, 2023
North Dakota Humanities’ Public University program offers lifelong learners across the country the opportunity to take virtual classes on a variety of humanities topics. North Dakota Humanities is currently contracting instructors for the spring 2024 semester. A list of fall 2023 courses include: “Classical Chat: Meet the Orchestras of North Dakota,” “Learn Hidatsa!,” “Remembering Americana,” “Reading Early James Joyce/Preparing For Ulysses,” and “Bite-sized Memories: Writing a ‘Micro’ Memoir.” Proposals for Spring 2024 classes are due September 15, 2023. Learn more and submit here.
Call for Papers: Western University Graduate Symposium On Music
Proposals due June 30, 2023
The 24th annual Western University Graduate Symposium On Music (WUGSOM) will be held August 25–26, 2023, virtually and in person on the Western University campus. The conference is continuing its tradition of showcasing excellent graduate student research on music from a variety of disciplines, including works with a focus on public scholarship and engagement. The theme of this year’s conference is “Music and Interdisciplinarity: What Connects Us Makes Us Stronger.” WUGSOM welcomes proposals from graduate students that express any form of collaboration between music and another discipline or field. Learn more and submit a paper proposal by June 30th here.
Upcoming Events
Sustainability, Relevance, and the Future of Historic House Museums
July 11–12, 2023 | Virtual
In 2002, the American Association for State and Local History, the American Alliance of Museums, the American Architectural Association, and the National Trust for Historic Preservation (NHHP) held their first joint summit to talk about the future of historic sites. In 2007, the group gathered again to discuss the sustainability of the historic house field. The second meeting resulted in articles, a technical leaflet entitled How Sustainable is Your Historic House Museum, a special issue of NTHP’s Forum Journal, and numerous sessions at conferences. Now in 2023, it is time to ask the question again: how sustainable is the historic house museum field? The virtual summit will build on the work done in 2007 to answer the question of what makes a historic site not only sustainable but relevant in 2023 and beyond. Learn more and register here.
Public Humanities Training Deep Dives: A Humanities for All Webinar Series
July 18, 2023 | 1:00 PM EDT | Virtual
Calls for publicly engaged humanities courses that center community partnership and project-based learning are increasing across college and university campuses. Undergraduate and graduate students are seeking training that centers applied critical thinking and storytelling methodologies and builds skills in the digital humanities, oral history, and publication, among others. Some colleges and universities are beginning to create degree credentials and departments that explicitly work toward these goals. To deepen our understanding of this work, this moderated conversation will be a deep dive into the University of Arizona’s new Department of Public and Applied Humanities, which offers undergraduates the curricular support and training to receive a BA in the Public Humanities. Humanities for All project director Michelle May-Curry will be joined by University of Arizona faculty members Jacqueline Barrios, Assistant Professor of Public and Applied Humanities, and Judd Ruggill, Head of the Department of Public and Applied Humanities. Register here.
Workshop on Documenting Impact
July 25, 2023 | 3:00 PM EDT | Virtual
With the launch of its new resource, Documenting the Impact of the Public Humanities in Higher Education: A Toolkit, the National Humanities Alliance is pleased to offer a virtual workshop on documenting the impact of the humanities. Building on the content of the toolkit, this workshop will provide attendees with an overview of documenting the impact of the humanities, tips and tricks for getting started, and help thinking about impact research as it relates to their own work. Learn more and register here.
Community College Humanities Association Leadership Forum
August 3, 2023 | 3:30 PM EDT | Virtual
On August 3, 2023, the Community College Humanities Association Deans’ Committee will host a virtual Humanities Leadership Forum. This interactive symposium addresses the challenges and opportunities facing faculty and administrative humanities leadership at community colleges. Learn more and RSVP here.
Data Matters
August 7–11, 2023 | Virtual
Data Matters is a week-long series of one- and two-day courses that gives attendees the chance to learn about a wide range of topics in data science, analytics, visualization, curation, and more from expert instructors. Those in the public humanities may be particularly interested in courses on data visualization, surveying, and geospatial data (including storytelling with maps). Learn more and register here.
American Association of State and Local History 2023 Annual Conference
September 6–9, 2023 | Boise, Idaho
Early bird registration is open and available through July 28, 2023 for the American Association of State and Local History Annual Conference. The theme is “I, Too, Am America.” This conference is an in-person experience that engages and connects history professionals and volunteers and inspires them in their work. Learn more and register here.
Oral History Association Annual Meeting and Call for Poster Proposals
October 18–21, 2023 | Baltimore, Maryland
Registration is now open for the 2023 Oral History Association (OHA) Annual Meeting. The theme for 2023 is “Oral History As/And Education: Teaching and Learning in the Classroom and Beyond.” The submission portal for presenting at OHA 2023 is closed, but the submission portal for the poster session and project bazaar is now open. Deadline for submissions is July 15, 2023. Learn more, submit, and register for the annual meeting here.
Imagining America National Gathering
October 20–22, 2023 | Providence, Rhode Island
In partnership with College Unbound, AS220, the City of Providence, and a diverse local steering committee, Imagining America (IA) invites participants to gather in Providence, Rhode Island, for the in-person 2023 IA National Gathering: “Radical Reckoning: Invoking the Elements for Collective Change.” Invoking the cleansing work of fire, the changing form of water, the steadiness of the earth, and the ethereal nature of air, the 2023 IA National Gathering conjures the elements to guide the radical work of reckoning with the past to create a future of collective liberation. Register by August 15, 2023, to take advantage of early bird registration discounts. Learn more and register here.
Publication and Project News
Recently on the Humanities for All website:
Anne Basting, Jennifer Johung, and Nicole Welk-Joerger of the Center for 21st Century Studies at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee shared how they reimagined what a humanities center could be, framed around a guiding question: What is a 21st-century humanities center?
Brown University has published a report on its survey of alumni from the Master’s Program in the Public Humanities. This report includes charts summarizing alumni’s responses, qualitative lists of the main thematic patterns from the open-ended questions, and a selection of quotes illustrating alumni’s comments.
Explore the new Mapping the Black Digital and Public Humanities website, an interactive and searchable map of digital and public humanities projects related to Black history and culture. Learn more about this project, explore the map, search the database, and check out some sample data visualizations.
“Theorizing the Rust Belt” by Ed Simon is a piece on the public humanities work of the Rustbelt Humanities Lab at Ursuline College. Published in Belt Magazine, a digital publication by and for the Rust Belt and greater Midwest, the piece describes the work of the lab in the region, and their current National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute “Co-Creating Regional Humanities Ecosystems.”
What Does It Mean to Build Digital Ethnic Futures? is an article detailing the work of the Digital Ethnic Futures Consortium (DEFCon), a collection of four regional public universities: Salem State University, New Jersey City University, Texas Southern University, and Cal State Fullerton. Together, these institutions are leading a growing network of faculty and librarians at regional public universities, Hispanic Serving Institutions, Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and Tribal Colleges and Universities who are working at the intersections of digital humanities and community-engaged ethnic studies.
“A ‘Good’ University: Community-Based Critical Participatory Action Research, University-Community Relations, and Affordable Housing” is a chapter in the new Handbook of Critical Education Research by Walter Heinecke, Sarah Beach, Hunter Holt, Alexis M. Johnson, and Kristan L. McCullum that public humanists may find relevant to their scholarship. This chapter examines the nature of resistance, activism, and advocacy in the context of higher education and low-income housing policy through examining the historical relationship between a university and its community.
Fallen Monuments and Contested Memorials is a new Routledge collection edited by Juilee Decker that examines how the modification, destruction, or absence of monuments and memorials can be viewed as performative acts that challenge prescribed, embodied narratives in the public realm. Bringing together international, multidisciplinary approaches, the chapters in this volume interrogate the ways in which memorial constructions disclose implicitly and explicitly the proxy battle for public memory and identity, particularly since 2015.
Research Handbook on Public Sociology is a new collection through Edward Elgar Publishing edited by Lavinia Bifulco and Vando Borghi. This research handbook explores the critical authors, texts, and research perspectives foundational to the discipline of public sociology. Multidisciplinary in approach, it advances dialogues between diverse scientific and environmental perspectives and considers how best to design and conduct research in different scientific fields.
Employment and Funding Opportunities
The Center for the Humanities at Washington University in St. Louis seeks an Assistant Director of Student Engagement. The position involves developing and supporting programs in public humanities. Review of applications began June 23, 2023, but the position will remain open until filled.
The Museum of Natural and Cultural History (MNCH) at the University of Oregon seeks an Education Coordinator. Reporting to the Education Manager, the Education Coordinator is a member of the education team in the public programs division at the museum. The MNCH education team facilitates engaging experiences for all museum audiences that 1) highlight the museum’s unique role as a center of learning and research and 2) inspire curiosity about the past and responsibility for the future of natural and cultural resources of Oregon, the Pacific Northwest, and the broader world. Review of applications begins June 30, 2023.
The Canadian War Museum has created a Research Fellowship program to begin in 2023. The program will host on-site work by postgraduate scholars and provide unique research access to Museum collections and experts. The fellowship is open to any postgraduate scholar conducting original research into the broad field of Canadian military history, including material culture and intangible cultural heritage. Fellows’ projects will enhance the Museum’s standing as a center for leading scholarly research and public history. Apply by June 30, 2023.
The Community Montana Division for the Department of Commerce is looking for a Historic Preservation Program Specialist with experience working with Montana’s communities and administering projects to support historic preservation, history museums, local community revitalization, planning, and economic development goals. Community MT employs a comprehensive approach to community building, coordinating programs such as the Montana Main Street Program, Montana Historic Preservation Grant Program, CDBG Economic Development, CDBG and Community Facilities to spur impactful community-wide improvements. The first review of applications will begin on July 5, 2023.
Virginia’s Department of Historic Resources (DHR) is seeking a Community Outreach Coordinator (COC) to cultivate and maintain productive, positive relationships with African American communities and communities of color with the goal of identifying, evaluating, and protecting historic resources associated with these constituencies. The position offers a career opportunity for a self-motivated individual to design a program to increase outreach, engagement, and recordation of historic sites associated with these targeted and underserved communities. Apply by July 7, 2023.
The Tulane University History Project invites applications for two postdoctoral fellow positions to begin in fall 2023. Candidates must have a Ph.D. in history or closely related fields by fall 2023. The Tulane University History Project is a long-term effort to research and develop a detailed history of the University and its campuses, with respect to its racial history and founding, including the impacts from segregation and slavery. Apply by July 7, 2023.
The Austin History Center seeks an African American Community Archivist. This position provides public programming related to Austin’s African American Community, provides reference services to the public, and processes archival collections related to Austin-Travis County African American Community. Apply by July 9, 2023.
Brown University seeks an Assistant Director of its Community-Engaged Data and Evaluation Collaborative. The Assistant Director provides program leadership and management to a community engagement initiative aimed at achieving mutual benefit to Brown University’s educational mission and the capacity of community partners to advance their goals through data and evaluation projects. The Assistant Director will be responsible for launching and ensuring the integrity and rigor of the Community-Engaged Data and Evaluation Collaborative; developing outreach and recruitment strategies and managing application processes both for data-centric and evaluation project proposals from community members and students; and supporting operational systems, documentation, assessment, and communications functions related to the programs. Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis with a priority deadline of July 12, 2023.
Monument Lab is seeking a Senior Project Manager to work across its community engagement projects. Monument Lab is a nonprofit public art and history studio based in Philadelphia that works with artists, students, educators, activists, municipal agencies, and cultural institutions on participatory approaches to public engagement and collective memory. Apply by July 21, 2023.
The Paul Revere Memorial Association, which owns and operates the Paul Revere House and other historic properties, seeks candidates for the position of Research and Adult Program Director. This position ensures that the organization has a vibrant research program that meets the needs of staff training and program development, while facilitating the work of outside scholars. Apply by July 31, 2023.
The Pratt Institute is seeking a Digital Preservation Outreach and Education Network (DPOE-N) Program Manager. DPOE-N is a network of training resources available to cultural heritage professionals nationwide to enhance their digital preservation knowledge and skills with a significant outreach and recruitment component. DPOE-N was created by the Library of Congress in 2010 to provide digital preservation training across the U.S. This position is expected to start on July 31, 2023.
The Open Source Programs Office (OSPO) at Johns Hopkins University is seeking a Program Manager to expand support for open-source programs and communities at JHU. By creating the first OSPO at a U.S. university, JHU has led the way in defining what it means for an academic institution to embrace open source. The OSPO Program Manager will continue the expansion of OSPO capabilities by collaborating with faculty, researchers, staff, and students who are actively engaged in open-source software development, community management, governance deliberations, and sustainability planning.
The Morgan Library & Museum seeks a curator or special collections librarian to join the department of Literary and Historical Manuscripts. This position will interpret, research, document, and promote the Morgan’s notable collection of primarily handwritten documents spanning more than 500 years, including major collections on prominent writers from the sixteenth through twenty-first centuries. The ideal candidate will demonstrate an ability to develop creative and engaging exhibitions, publications, and programs related to literary history and culture, while also supporting the care, promotion, accessibility, and display of an exceptional manuscript collection.
The Historical Society of Michigan is seeking a Michigan History Day Manager. Michigan History Day, a project-based learning program of the Historical Society of Michigan, is a yearlong educational program that encourages students to explore local, state, national, and world history.
George Washington’s Mount Vernon seeks an African American Community Outreach Coordinator. The Coordinator will assist the Director of Learning in developing and implementing programming and projects done with the League of Descendants of the Enslaved at Mount Vernon and other communities of color.
The Stone Center for Latin American Studies at Tulane University seeks an innovative and highly motivated professional for the position of Archivist and Curator for Centennial Projects. The Archivist and Curator will develop a collecting strategy that defines the critical historical documents in the Stone Center’s archive and related university and private collections, including the Zemurray-Stone Archive, for a digital humanities project that will culminate in 2024. This position will work collaboratively with faculty, staff, and alumni to identify and facilitate new materials to be digitalized and participate in the planning of the Centennial Project.
Colonial Williamsburg seeks a Digital Projects Editor to create and maintain historical content for the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation’s flagship website and blog. The Digital Projects Editor applies their historical and writing skills to generate well-researched, historically sound content about the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, its work, and the historical events, people, and episodes that contextualize the worlds of colonial and revolutionary Virginia and vast early America.
The Humanities Action Lab (HAL) at Rutgers University-Newark seeks an Administrative Coordinator. HAL is a coalition of universities, issue organizations, and public spaces in forty cities and counting. The coalition members collaborate to produce community-curated public humanities projects on urgent social issues. The Administrative Coordinator position helps root this national network in the Greater Newark area by liaising with the Newark community and Rutgers University-Newark partners.
American Conservation Experience (ACE), a nonprofit Conservation Corps, in partnership with the National Park Service, is seeking two Collections Management Members at Shenandoah National Park. The ACE Members will assist the Museum Specialist with management of the park museum collections at the storage repository (Archives Building), Byrd Visitor Center, and two historic house museums: Rapidan Camp, the site of President Herbert Hoover's Summer White House and Fishing Camp, and Massanutten Lodge (part of a late 1800s resort at Skyland).
American Conservation Experience, a nonprofit Conservation Corps, in partnership with Homestead National Historical Park is seeking an intern to contribute to its Cultural Resource and Archival projects alongside NPS Staff. Homestead National Historical Park is dedicated to remembering the many legacies of the Homestead Act of 1862, which allowed any qualified person to claim up to 160 acres of federally owned land in exchange for five years of residence and the cultivation and improvement of the property.
As always, check out the latest postings on the job boards for the National Council on Public History and the American Association for State and Local History, which provide lists of opportunities that might be of interest to those trained in the public humanities.
Interested in careers in scholarly publishing? Check out the Association of University Presses and the Society of Scholarly Publishing job boards.
Interested in careers in museums? Check out the American Alliance of Museums job board.