January 2022 Public Humanities Newsletter
A monthly newsletter from Humanities for All, an initiative of the National Humanities Alliance.
Welcome to the new Humanities for All Public Humanities Newsletter! Since 2018, Humanities for All, an initiative of the National Humanities Alliance, has been working to connect scholars and practitioners interested in the publicly engaged humanities to create a national community of practice dedicated to advancing community partnership through the humanities.
To continue connecting the ever-growing public humanities community, each month on our Humanities for All Substack we will share higher ed-based public humanities news including (but not limited to):
CFPs for public humanities-related journals, book publications, blogs, conferences, etc.
Humanities for All news, including recent blog posts, reports, projects, and profiles from our website
Public humanities job ads relevant to those based in higher education
National events, resources, and grant funding opportunities
Articles about public humanities scholarship
Please consider subscribing to our Substack (for free!) so that you don’t miss any news in the future. And please consider sharing it with your networks. 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).
In this newsletter:
Upcoming public humanities events—Humanities for All Winter Webinar Series
Recently on the Humanities for All blog
November 16: Catherine Besteman of Colby College shared a piece on Freedom & Captivity, a Maine-based public humanities initiative that brings critical perspectives from the humanities to the interrogation of incarceration.
November 30: Lori Lefkovitz of Northeastern Humanities Center wrote about the Pandemic Teaching Initiative, a library of publicly accessible educational modules that explore the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.
December 14: J. Michael Hogan from Pennsylvania State University offered an overview of Voices of Democracy, a digital humanities initiative providing texts and curriculum resources for the study of great speeches and debates in US history.
January 4: Ann Killian from the University of Notre Dame shared how the Medieval Institute’s new public humanities initiative aims to facilitate community engagement with medieval culture through public programming and teaching.
Write about your public humanities work on the blog!
Pitch a post to us here.
Publication News
Storylistening: Narrative Evidence and Public Reasoning is a new volume by Sarah Dillon and Claire Craig from Routledge. The book focuses on the cognitive and collective functions of stories, showing how they offer alternative points of view, create and cohere collective identities, function as narrative models, and play a crucial role in engaging the public.
Next Generation Dissertations is a new resource that engages with authors of notable dissertations in non-traditional formats, exploring the opportunities and challenges of this new approach to dissertation work. Resources include video interviews, an innovative dissertation rubric, and a series of guidelines to assist future scholars. Next Generation Dissertations is a project of Syracuse University and Katina L. Rogers funded by a National Endowment for the Humanities Next Generation Humanities PhD planning grant.
"Public Humanities and the Arts of the Present" is a new cluster of public humanities writings in ASAP Journal’s open access platform edited by Kyle C. Frisina, Maryam Ivette Parhizkar, and Adena Rivera-Dundas.
Upcoming Events
Humanities for All Winter Webinar Series
The National Humanities Alliance is offering a virtual event series designed to support the higher ed community in launching, scaling up, and documenting the impact of public humanities in higher ed. Panelists from a range of institutions share how they built successful programs, distill lessons learned along the way, and answer questions from the audience. Each event is an opportunity to connect with a community of colleagues committed to public engagement through the humanities. Learn more about the series here.
Supporting Humanities Faculty in Creating Engaged Courses
Thursday, January 13th from 1-2pm EST. Please click here to register.
Scaling Up: Growing Public Humanities Projects Beyond Higher Ed
Thursday, January 27 from 1-2pm EST. Please click here to register.
Measuring Impact: The Role of Assessment in the Publicly Engaged Humanities
Wednesday, February 16 from 2–3pm EST. Please click here to register.
Did you miss the first webinar in the series, “Starting Points: Higher Ed Perspectives on how to Begin a Publicly Engaged Humanities Practice?” Check out the recording below or click here to view on YouTube.
National Institutes
The Public Digital Humanities Institute
Hosted by the Institute for Digital Research in the Humanities at the University of Kansas, the Public Digital Humanities Institute is a week-long summer institute funded by the National Endowment of the Humanities to be held June 6-11, 2022.
The workshop aims to provide foundational knowledge, skills and resources to successfully advance 12 public humanities projects. The Institute invites one academic and one community partner per project to apply by Monday, January 31, 2022. Learn more about the program and how to apply here.
Job and Fellowship Postings
The Humanities Research Institute at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign invites applications for a Pre-Doctoral Fellow in Public Humanities for the 2022–2023 academic year. This fellowship is supported by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Deadline to apply is February 4, 2022.
The Yale University Department of History invites applications for a Cassius Marcellus Clay Postdoctoral Associate in Public Humanities. The successful candidate may specialize in any subfield within history but will have experience/credentials in one or more of the following areas: digital humanities, documentary studies, public history, public writing, museums/collections, or space & place. Review of applications will begin March 4, 2022.
The Penn Program in Environmental Humanities (PPEH) at the University of Pennsylvania invites applications for a one-year postdoctoral fellowship. PPEH Postdoctoral Fellows are expected to pursue their own research agendas as well as actively participate in the Program’s signature public environmental humanities projects, in Philadelphia and beyond. Applications are due Tuesday, February 1, 2022.
The Newberry Library seeks a program assistant to help plan and administer multiple programs in its Center for Chicago Studies and Scholarly and Undergraduate Programs.
The Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere at the University of Florida, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences invites applications for a full-time, twelve-month, non-tenure-accruing position at the rank of Lecturer, beginning May 16, 2022, for the position of Humanities Programmatic Administration (Associate Director). Learn more and apply here.
The History department at the University of North Alabama invites applications for an Assistant Professor of Native American/SE North American Public History. Review of applications for this tenure-track position will begin January 14, 2022 and continue until the position is filled.
As always, check out the latest postings on the National Council of Public History’s job board, which provides a list of opportunities that might be of interest to those trained in the public humanities.