March 2025 Public Humanities

A monthly newsletter from the Department of Public & Applied Humanities at the University of Arizona.

In this issue:

• Call for proposals

• Upcoming events

• Publication and project news

• March spotlight: Q&A with Dr. Jeffrey Wilson

• Employment and funding opportunities

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 Giulia Negretto at giulianegretto@arizona.edu.

Call for Proposals

The 2025 National Humanities Conference’s call for proposals is now open! The NHC will be held in Detroit, Michigan, November 12-16. This annual conference brings together representatives from colleges, universities, state humanities councils, cultural institutions, and community-based organizations to explore approaches to deepening the public’s engagement with the humanities. The Planning Committee especially welcomes proposals incorporating the theme of roots, exploring the way rootedness—the sense of connection to our homelands, our ancestors, our cultures, and how that impacts how we interact with this world—reveals itself through the public humanities. To learn more about guiding questions to consider for proposals, main themes, and session formats (e.g., panel, roundtable, workshop, etc.), see here. Submissions are due April 10, 2025.

Events

• The Humanities in Class Webinars 2024-2025 series offers a variety of live, interactive, and free webinars that connect educators with scholars and experts in humanities fields to discuss compelling topics. Re(Thinking) and Re(Designing) the Celebration of American Women’s History, led by Emily Krichbaum (Director of the Center for Girls’ & Young Women’s Leadership at Columbus School for Girls), will be held on March 6th, 2025, 7pm EST. Building on a TED Talk, Krichbaum will reiterate the importance of American women’s history, shed light on several less familiar stories from that history, and provide concrete ways to thoughtfully and intentionally celebrate girls and women inside and outside of the classroom year-round. Humanities in Class Webinars are free of charge but require registration.

• Museums and Civic Season: Inspiring Community Connections is a live webinar hosted by the American Association for State and Local History (AASLH). Join Raina Melvin (Director of Programming & Engagement at Historic Locust Grove) and Candace Bay (Community Engagement Manager at the Hull-House Museum) on March 13, 2025, 12pm MST to learn how museums can take part in Civic Season, a nationwide initiative connecting communities to history and civic engagement. Whether you are looking to build on existing programs or create something new, this webinar will provide inspiration and practical tips to help your institution get involved. Registration is $10 for members and $15 for non-members. Click here for instructions on how to register.

Projects and Publications

• In a recently published feature titled “Research: Writings on the Wall,” the National Humanities Center (NHC) highlights three outstanding projects produced by their 2024-2025 Fellows: “Enslaved Childhoods: Survival and Storytelling in the Atlantic World” (Annette K. Joseph-Gabriel) examines what writings by enslaved children can teach us about history and narrative; “Divest from English: Eco-Translation and Translingual Repair” (Isabel C. Gómez) addresses the intersection of multilingual creativity and climate justice; and “Bewildering Coloniality: Austin Clarke and the Twentieth Century Black Atlantic World” (Aaron Kamugisha) explores the work of the famous Barbadian author. Click here to learn more about these powerful experiences.

• Ricardo Velasco Trujillo’s “Building a Model of Sustainable Digital Ecologies for Archiving and Showcasing Grassroots Memory and Symbolic Reparation Initiatives” appears in the latest issue of Magazén: International Journal for Digital and Public Humanities. The article is based on a practice-research project, draws on activist research methodologies for the development and implementation of creative practices integrating digital archiving and storytelling, and centers questions of access, transparency, and knowledge democratization. Trujillo argues that digital ecologies offer new possibilities for the sustainability of grassroots memory and symbolic reparation initiatives developing in contexts of precarity.

March Spotlight: Q&A with Dr. Jeffrey Wilson

Jeffrey R. Wilson is editor-in-chief of Public Humanities. A Shakespeare scholar at Harvard University, he has been featured by CNN, NPR, MSNBC, The New York Times, Harvard Gazette, Smithsonian Magazine, Salon, JSTOR Daily, Zocalo Public Square, Academe, CounterPunch, Inside Higher Ed, and The Chronicle of Higher Education. This month, we are excited to highlight his perspectives as a public humanities practitioner via a brief Q&A.

How did you become interested and involved in the public humanities?

I grew up in Kansas far away from the academic circuits of knowledge production. Since infiltrating academia, I’ve been stunned by how blisteringly intelligent my colleagues are and, equally, how frequently terrible we are at creating knowledge that is accessible and useful to the folks that I grew up with.

So we created this journal, Public Humanities, to serve as a meeting place for people who are hungry for knowledge but don’t have time for academic self-indulgence and the thinkers and doers who are ready to serve those readers with writing that is fun, fearless, and actively engaged with the lives we’re living day-to-day.

What are some of the challenges involved in public humanities projects?

The idea of public education is under attack in the United States. We as educators need to ask some hard questions about why people don’t see value in that system.

On a smaller scale, public humanities projects are (for me) the most meaningful part of the intellectual life. I think that’s because public humanities is deeply collaborative work, which means you’re always making new friends and learning new things. At the journal, we think that knowledge created through collaboration is generally stronger than that created in isolation (which is often the default setting for the scholarly life).

So collaboration answers many of our problems, but in doing so it creates new and different challenges: community building, sharing authority, managing disagreements. Those things don’t come naturally to me (as a super shy introvert), so I try to work really hard on that stuff because the results of collaborative creativity in the humanities are so magical. I’ve found it helpful to go to organizational behavior theorist Amy Edmondson’s work on the science of teamwork, psychological safety, and failure—plus Shakespeare!

What future directions do you envision for your work as a public humanities practitioner?

We’ve got the journal up and running: it was five years in the making, so I’m just enjoying the moment. But we know that the way people consume knowledge is changing. We’re excited about building up the multimedia capabilities of Public Humanities (we just had our first webinar).

Basically, I’m just looking to sink my fangs deeper and deeper into Cambridge University Press (and any other wealthy institutions that want to join the party) in an effort to get them to direct their resources toward education of, by, and for the people. Our leadership team at the journal is spending our energy fighting to get power into the hands of the next generation—some folks who can make more ethical decisions than the humanities scholars who got us into this mess. Sorry not sorry.

Employment and Opportunities

• The Monuments Project team at the Mellon Foundation, New York, NY, is hiring a summer intern. Reporting to the Program Associate and working with the full team, the intern will provide a wide range of administrative, organizational, and research support. This internship is ideal for a student seeking to gain exposure to and experience with transforming the way our country’s histories are told in public spaces and ensuring that future generations inherit a commemorative landscape that venerates and reflects the vast, rich complexity of the American story. The intern will also have the opportunity to learn about Foundation operations generally and within a cohort of interns across a variety of the Foundation’s departments. This is a full-time, 10-week paid position with a start date of June 2025. Please note that Mellon maintains a hybrid work schedule, with three days per week in person at the Foundation’s Manhattan offices. The deadline to apply is March 10, 2025.

• The University of California, Santa Cruz, CA, is seeking three full-time, fundraising professionals to serve as Directors of Development for the following divisions: Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences. These positions will be hired over time, with applications accepted on an ongoing basis. Interviews will be conducted as needed until all roles are filled. The initial review date is March 12, 2025. All applications received by that date are guaranteed consideration by the hiring unit. For a complete list of qualifications/competencies, use this quick link to access the job posting.

• The Cultural Resource Program at Cane River Creole National Historical Park, Natchitoches, LA, is hiring for the position of Museum Collections Intern. The National Council for Preservation Education (NCPE) Internship Program is a partnership with the National Park Service and other Federal agencies with cultural resource protection and public land management responsibilities. The program’s purpose is to accomplish needed and important work on federally protected lands while providing participants with professional experience in their chosen fields. Interns work under the guidance of agency staff to complete projects or undertake programs to further the park’s mission. Apply by March, 20, 2025.

• The Research Data and Digital Scholarship (RDDS) team at the University of Pennsylvania Libraries, Philadelphia, PA, is looking for a technical consultant and developer on digital scholarship projects. The position requires knowledge of the various methods and techniques necessary in digital scholarship projects, as well as a willingness to explore and develop new skills as necessary.

• The Department of Visual Art & Design at Weber State University, UT, invites applications for a visionary and collaborative Gallery & Exhibitions Director to lead and oversee the department's Mary Elizabeth Dee Shaw Gallery on WSU's main campus and the Dumke Arts Plaza in downtown Ogden. Position open until filled.

  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.