March 2022 Public Humanities Newsletter
A monthly newsletter from Humanities for All, an initiative of the National Humanities Alliance.
Welcome to all our new subscribers! Since we launched the newsletter in January, we’ve seen a lot of enthusiasm for this resource across the humanities community. Thank you for your support!
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).
Recently on the Humanities for All blog
February 15: Erica Barreto, Brianna Christie, and Odiase Williamson of the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts wrote about INSCAPES, a creative campaign from MCLA and The Mastheads that invited people to reflect and write about "What defines the Berkshires for those who live here?"
March 1: Gab Alderete-Cruz, a graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin, wrote about the Mexican American Art Since 1848 (MAAS1848) portal, an online, open-source collection of Mexican American visual art that virtually unites digital files of art and related documents from libraries, archives, and museums.
Interested in contributing to the Humanities for All blog?
We are currently soliciting short posts that highlight public humanities initiatives and projects for publication in March and April 2022. Pitch a blog post to us here.
Calls for Proposals
Inclusion and Public Humanities: Challenges and Opportunities for Justice-Oriented Teaching and Learning
Proposals due March 7, 2022
The Dresher Center for the Humanities at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and the Anti-Racism and Action Faculty Working Group invite proposals for the Inclusion Imperative Humanities Symposium, “Inclusion and Public Humanities: Challenges and Opportunities for Justice-Oriented Teaching and Learning.” The virtual symposium is open to students, faculty, and community members and will be held on April 8, 2022. Proposals are due by March 7. Learn more about the symposium here.
2022 National Humanities Conference
Proposals due April 1, 2022
The Federation of State Humanities Councils and the National Humanities Alliance are excited to announce the 2022 National Humanities Conference, which will be held in Los Angeles, California, November 10-13, 2022. See the full call for proposals here. Proposals are due by April 1, 2022.
Take the Survey of Public Humanities Projects and Infrastructure
Do you have insights on the state of the public humanities on your campus?
The National Humanities Alliance has launched a major surveying effort that aims to collect publicly engaged humanities projects (including experiential learning and other high-impact humanities initiatives) and learn more about the campus-based infrastructure that supports this work. Please take the survey and share it widely!
Take the Survey of Public Humanities Projects and Infrastructure
Publication News
Inkcap Collective: Toward a Better Higher Ed is a new email newsletter by Katina Rogers, co-director of the Futures Initiative at The Graduate Center, City University of New York. Building on her recent work on grad ed reform in places such as Putting the Humanities PhD to Work: Thriving in and beyond the Classroom and Graduate Education at Work in the World, this newsletter will help readers think through how to build a higher education system that supports equity, sustainability, and community. Subscribers will receive monthly-ish emails with details for a reading group focused loosely on improving higher ed; reflections; and information about upcoming talks and workshops.
From the Ground Up: Building an Arts Organization Interpandemic is a blog post by Ash Marinaccio, PhD candidate in theater and performance at the CUNY Grad Center, on her public humanities initiative Docbloc. The mission of Docbloc is to experiment with documentary form by bringing together artists working across documentary genres for conversation and collaborations in live performance.
"Why Should You Care?" is a new podcast by University of Michigan Public Humanities Interns at the Institute for the Humanities. The podcast seeks to answer the question, “Why should you care about the humanities?” by utilizing a humanities lens to look at pressing issues of our time including racism, politics, and public health.
“Digital public history as folk music hootenanny,” by Michael J. Kramer, is a three-part post published on the National Council on Public History’s History@Work blog that explores the development of the Berkeley Folk Music Festival Project, a multimodal digital public humanities project.
Behind the Big House: Reconciling Slavery, Race, and Heritage in the U.S. South is a forthcoming (March 2022) book from Jodi Skipper, associate professor of anthropology and Southern studies at the University of Mississippi. The book explores her eight-year collaboration with the Behind the Big House program, a community-based slavery interpretation model started in Mississippi. Part memoir and part ethnography, the book interweaves her experiences as a Black woman and a southerner to imagine more sustainable and healthy spaces for interracial collaborations around historic preservation and slavery tourism in the U.S. South. Read Humanities for All’s profile of the Behind the Big House project here.
“Walking the Talk: Toward a Values-Aligned Academy” is a new white paper from the HuMetricsHSS team at Michigan State University. The paper is the culmination of 18 months of research interviews across the Big Ten Academic Alliance and offers a set of recommendations for making wide-scale change to address systematic injustice, erasure, and devaluation of academic labor in order to strengthen the positive public impact of scholarship.
Upcoming Events
Next Generation Dissertations: New Projects For An Engaged Academy
March 7, 2022 | 2:00 pm–3:30 pm Eastern
Join several humanities and social science scholars and the advisors who have supported them to learn how humanities PhD programs can support students in creating new ways to share their scholarly research beyond the traditional dissertation format. This event is co-sponsored by the Graduate School at Syracuse University and the Mellon-funded Humanities for the Public Good Initiative at the University of Iowa Obermann Center for Advanced Studies. It celebrates the launch of the Next-Generation Dissertations website and adds to the ongoing reflections on graduate education reform taking place through the Humanities for the Public Good program (Iowa). This virtual event is free and open to the public. Learn more and register here.
Developing a Toolkit for Community-Engaged Research—Feeding City Lab
March 9, 2022 | 11:00 am–1:00 pm Eastern
Join members of the Feeding City Lab for a lively discussion on building a community-engaged research project. This 2-hour online workshop will share some tools and practices from the Feeding City Lab, which documents grassroots pathways of provisioning during the pandemic in order to foster more inclusive, equitable, and resilient food systems. This event is sponsored by the Jackman Humanities Institute at the University of Toronto. Learn more about the webinar event and register here.
NHA Annual Meeting and Humanities Advocacy Day
with keynote speaker Shelly C. Lowe, Chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities
March 14–15, 2022
Shelly C. Lowe, recently confirmed by the Senate as Chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities, will discuss her goals and vision for the NEH with Jim Grossman, president of the National Humanities Alliance and executive director of the American Historical Association. This event is part of the virtual NHA Annual Meeting and Humanities Advocacy Day. Registration includes the full Annual Meeting as well as the keynote event and closes on March 7th. Learn more and register here.
Hoʻokaiāulu: Public Humanities in the Pacific Speaker Series
Next event: March 23, 2022 | 10:30am HST
This series of one-hour events is live streamed for the public and showcases inspiring individuals who are actively engaged in public humanities. The events are co-hosted by Craig Santos Perez, UH Mānoa associate professor of English, and Brandy Nālani McDougall, UH Mānoa associate professor of American studies. This speaker series is sponsored by the Mānoa Center for the Humanities and Civic Engagement (MCHACE) and the Mellon/ACLS Scholars and Society Fellowship. Learn more about the upcoming events and register here.
Employment and Funding Opportunities
The Newberry Center for Renaissance Studies seeks an early career scholar in Premodern Critical Race Studies to serve as a Public Humanities Postdoctoral Fellow for one year (with the possibility of renewal for a second year pending grant funding) to support Seeing Race Before Race, a multi-year project including an exhibition, public and scholarly programming, a publication, and digital initiatives. Review of applications begins March 8th.
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 begins March 4th.
St. Mary’s College of Maryland is accepting resumes for the one-year position of National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Public Humanities Fellow. The Public Humanities Fellow is charged with building on national attention for the College’s recently dedicated Commemorative to Enslaved Peoples of Southern Maryland by leading a one-year NEH grant-funded project. Review of applications begins April 15th.
Minnesota Historical Society seeks a community engagement specialist to advance the work of establishing and nurturing community relationships—cultural entities, community based entities and individual community leaders. This position is open until filled.
HumanitiesDC is hiring the following positions:
Director of Programs
Director of Operations
Communications Coordinator
Community Grants Program Manager
PT Development Manager
PT Public Programs Coordinator
Applications were encouraged to be submitted by Feb 25 but may be accepted later. Learn more and apply here.
The University of Houston Libraries and the Hewlett Packard Enterprise Data Science Institute seek a Public Humanities Data Librarian to coordinate public humanities data initiatives and technology infrastructure that will meet the needs of the research community at the University of Houston. Applications will be accepted until the position is filled.
Johns Hopkins University Sheridan Libraries and Museums seeks a curatorial fellow for slavery and justice. Reporting to the Director of JHU Museums, and working closely with the Center for Africana Studies and the Billie Holiday Center for Liberation Arts, the Curatorial Fellow will conduct research, create exhibitions, and develop educational programming related to the history of slavery and segregation in Baltimore in collaboration with the university’s two nineteenth-century historic house museums, Homewood Museum and Evergreen Museum & Library. For consideration apply no later than March 4th.
The Department of Public & Applied Humanities at the University of Arizona is seeking a full-time career-track lecturer to serve as Internship & Engagement Coordinator. This position will work closely with the Internship Director to teach a pre-internship career readiness course focused on practical skills and advice for students, as well as an internship course focused on documenting student learning during the internship. The target hire date is August 15, 2022.
The Monument Lab is seeking an Administrative Coordinator to serve as an integral member of the Monument Lab team, helping support and strengthen a strong foundation for Monument Lab’s core administrative operations. This position is open to candidates who have experience in arts administration, higher education, museum studies, and/or nonprofit management. Applications will be accepted through Friday, March 18th.
As always, check out the latest postings on the National Council on Public History’s job board, which provides a list of opportunities that might be of interest to those trained in the public humanities.
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