June 2022 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).
Recently on the Humanities for All blog
May 10: Victoria Gallagher wrote about the Virtual Martin Luther King (vMLK) Project, a digital humanities project that recreates Dr. King's "A Creative Protest" speech, of which no known recording exists.
May 24: Deborah Siegel-Acevedo wrote about HumanitiesX, DePaul University’s new experiential humanities collaborative, by sharing her conversations with the initiative’s three inaugural Community Fellows.
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 summer 2022. Pitch a blog post to us here.
Calls for Proposals
Imagining America National Gathering
New Orleans, LA | October 14–16, 2022
In partnership with Tulane University, Ashé Cultural Arts Center, and a diverse Working Group, Imagining America (IA) invites proposals for interactive sessions (including roundtables, workshops, performances, and exhibitions) for IA’s National Gathering. The call invites proposals that address the general theme of “Rituals of Renewal and Repair”, as well as proposals that focus specifically on the promises of engaged graduate education in building a pathway toward more egalitarian relationships between universities and communities. This track will highlight generative relationships between graduate scholars and community culture keepers in the Tulane Mellon Graduate Program in Engaged Community Scholarship and feature national discussions on the future direction of engaged graduate education, including research from Imagining America’s Leading and Learning Initiative and PAGE scholars, as well as other similar graduate programs. The submission deadline is Friday, June 10, 2022, at 11:59 PM PT.
The Museum Scholar
The Museum Scholar is a free peer-reviewed international journal that publishes research by museum students and emerging professionals and invites submissions of original, unpublished work that explores all topics important to the museum community. Submissions are reviewed on a rolling basis year-round.
NHPRC-Mellon Planning Grants for Collaborative Digital Editions in African American, Asian American, Hispanic American, and Native American History and Ethnic Studies
The National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC), with funding provided by the Mellon Foundation, seeks proposals for its planning grant program for Collaborative Digital Editions in African American, Asian American, Hispanic American, and Native American History and Ethnic Studies. With an overarching goal to broaden participation in the production and publication of historical and scholarly digital editions, the program awards grants to collaborative teams consisting of at least two scholar-editors, as well as one or more archivists, digital scholars, data curators, and/or other support and technical staff. Deadline for optional draft review began April 1, 2022, with a final deadline of June 8, 2022. Learn more and submit a proposal here.
NEH Public Humanities Projects
The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Division of Public Programs is accepting applications for the Public Humanities Projects program. The purpose of this program is to support projects that bring the ideas and insights of the humanities to life for general audiences through in-person, hybrid, or virtual programming outside of the classroom. The deadline to submit an optional draft is July 6, 2022, with final application due August 10, 2022.
Publication News
Through a collection of essays written over three decades by award-winning historian Marc Stein, Queer Public History: Essays on Scholarly Activism charts the evolution of queer historical interventions in the academic sphere and explores the development of publicly oriented queer historical scholarship. A manifesto for renewed partnerships between academic and community-based historians, strengthened linkages between queer public history and LGBT scholarly activism, and increased public support for historical research on gender and sexuality, this anthology reconsiders and reimagines the past, present, and future of queer public history.
“Careers in the Public Humanities” is a podcast exploring the broad range of positions and prospects open to humanities scholars beyond the tenure track. Produced by graduate students in the University of Rhode Island English Department and with funding support from the National Endowment for the Humanities’ Next Generation PhD initiative, each episode features an interview with a scholar in the humanities who uses their disciplinary knowledge in unique ways. The most recent episode features a conversation between Michael Landreth and Rhiannon Sorrell, Instruction and Digital Services Librarian at Diné College on the Navajo Nation and Diné Coordinator for the NEH-funded project "The Afterlife of Film: Upgrading and Tribesourcing Southwest Materials in the American Indian Film Gallery."
For the 2022 CHCI Annual Meeting, the Public Humanities Network posed a question to its membership, “How do you do Public Humanities?” Partner centers and institutes submitted media highlighting their public-facing efforts as well as individual projects. Enjoy these innovative examples of public engagements in the humanities across the globe. View the full exhibit here.
Paths in Publishing (PIP) is a free mentorship program to help prepare early career applicants (moving into or out of entry-level jobs) for the work of applying to, interviewing for, and navigating negotiations of new positions in scholarly publishing. In their inaugural monthly Substack newsletter, PIP shares resources for navigating the scholarly publishing world, including resume and cover letter support, a book club, and job listings.
In “Looking Deportation In The Face,” Lizbeth De La Cruz Santana, doctoral candidate in the Spanish and Portuguese department at the University of California, Davis, chronicles her work directing the Playas de Tijuana Mural Project, a community engaged art project on the U.S.-Mexico Border.
In a report from Shannon Mattern’s graduate course “Redesigning the Academy” at The New School, Mattern describes the course-based final projects that her students conducted. The course, which is a part of the Anthropology + Design graduate minor, identifies the academy’s contemporary challenges and opportunities, and recognizes the power that students possess to reimagine and reshape the academy. Student projects include the creation of websites, publicly accessible K-12 curricula, zines, job materials, and other digital humanities materials.
In “Facing Justice Through Connecting French Literature and Service Learning to the Adjunct Problem,” Vanessa Arnaud makes a case for addressing social justice issues through both service learning and the study of early modern French literature while exploring the institutional inequity of adjunct instructors. It focuses on the pathway of the General Education Honors Program at California State University, Sacramento. This interdisciplinary program immerses students in the past in tandem with service-based pedagogy while focusing on a selected "wicked" problem for several years. This approach helps students understand how they read through their own social position and how they can use this knowledge to drive the creation of engaged projects for the common good.
In “Creating Oral Histories that Humanize Immigration,” student fellows in DePaul University’s HumanitiesX program write about a spring course that partnered with a community organization on Chicago’s Southwest side called the Brighton Park Neighborhood Council (BPNC). In the course, titled Sharing Their Stories: Latinx Immigrants Activists’ Oral Histories, students interviewed immigrant activists and will edit those interviews into an online anthology for BPNC.
In a second edition of Public History: A Textbook of Practice, Thomas Cauvin provides an updated guide to the many opportunities and challenges that public history practitioners can encounter in the field. New chapters have therefore been added on the definition, history, and international scope of public history, as well as on specific practices and theories such as historical fictions, digital public history, and shared authority.
Employment and Funding Opportunities
Knox College invites applications for a Digital Humanities Media Specialist / Postdoctoral Fellow to begin July 1, 2022. This position will be an active participant in a collaborative social justice and civic engagement project funded by the Mellon Foundation. The appointment is for three years, beginning July 1, 2022 through June 30, 2025. Review of applications began on April 15, 2022 and will continue until the position is filled.
Northern Kentucky University seeks a dynamic, patron-focused, early-career librarian to participate in a 2–3-year diversity residency program as a Digital Humanities Resident Librarian. Review of applications began on April 24, 2022 and will continue until the position is filled.
The U.S. Department of State is hiring a historian who will work within the Policy Studies Division in the Office of the Historian of the Foreign Service Institute. This position will research topics relating to the history of U.S. bilateral relations with other nations and the conduct of U.S. diplomacy in those nations and regions, as well as provide professional historical analysis, perspective, and insight to policymakers and diplomats. Apply by June 9, 2022.
The Division of Preservation & Access at the National Endowment for the Humanities is hiring two Humanities Program Officers with specialized experience in archives or preventive conservation. Apply by June 15, 2022.
The Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art at Auburn University is seeking a Public Practice and Community Partnerships Manager. The manager will provide leadership in the design and delivery of innovative learning opportunities that expand the understanding of art’s impact on the public sphere and that grow and enrich the relationship of the museum with its surrounding communities, the region, and the state. Apply by June 19, 2022.
The Valdez Museum and Historical Archive invites applications for a Curator of Collections & Exhibitions. This full-time position located in Valdez, Alaska is responsible for the care, preservation, security, and storage of the Museum's collections, as well as creating, organizing, and maintaining all records relating to the permanent collection and records relating to incoming and outgoing artifact loans. This position also provides overall leadership in planning, creating, and overseeing the development and maintenance of permanent and temporary exhibits. Apply by June 20, 2022.
The Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice at Brown University invites applications for a one-year postdoctoral fellowship (2022–2023) in Slavery and the Public Humanities. The primary responsibility of the postdoctoral fellow will be to serve as project manager and to guide the coordination and implementation of a digitally published platform in support of the documentary film series Creating the New World: The Transatlantic Slave Trade in collaboration with Firelight Media and directed by Stanley Nelson. Apply by July 4, 2022.
The American Conservation Experience, a nonprofit Conservation Corps, in partnership with the National Park Service is seeking a Collections Management Fellow interested in dedicating 52 weeks to support the Heritage Documentation Program with processing, cataloging, and transmitting completed documentation to the Library of Congress. The Heritage Documentation Programs prepare and process documentation of historic buildings, structures, and landscapes for inclusion in the Historic American Buildings Survey, Historic American Engineering Record, and Historic American Landscapes Survey collections at the Library of Congress. Apply by July 16, 2022.
Sixth College, one of the seven undergraduate colleges at the University of California, San Diego, seeks an outstanding educator to serve as Associate Director of Digital Humanities & Co-Curricular Programming. The Associate Director is responsible for collaborating with the Director of Academic Programs and Culture, Art, and Technology (CAT) leadership on the administration of the CAT program as well as in curriculum development in the Writing Program. They are looking for someone with experience and knowledge of teaching writing and digital humanities, who has an interest (and experience) in programming for student-centered events that foreground the college’s commitment to culture, art, and technology. They are especially interested in candidates with experience foregrounding equity, diversity, and inclusion both in their teaching and their approach to community engagement and events management.
Johns Hopkins University seeks an Africana Archives Curatorial Fellow who will report to the Associate Director of the Billie Holiday Center for Liberation Arts and work closely with the Center for Africana Studies and the Sheridan Libraries. During this three-year appointment, the fellow will serve as a vital member of the team implementing a new Mellon Foundation-funded project, Inheritance Baltimore: Humanities and Arts Education for Black Liberation. Specifically, the fellow will contribute to the “Baltimore Africana Archives” initiative within Inheritance Baltimore, dedicated to historical recovery and the belief that the arts and humanities have a central role to play in the continued revitalization of Baltimore.
Northeastern University seeks a program coordinator for Reckonings: A Local History Platform for the Community-Archivist. Reckonings is an 18-month Mellon Foundation-funded project that aims to empower individuals and cultural/historical organizations to excavate and re-interpret underrepresented histories of BIPOC communities in Greater Boston. The central goal of this position is to facilitate communication among stakeholders and convey the interests of community partners, manage logistics, and plan and coordinate activities for community-engaged projects.
The Tulane University History Project seeks an Executive Director to lead 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. In collaboration with other researchers, historians, archivists, subject-matter experts, and community members, the successful candidate will ultimately serve as editor of a chronological biography of the University’s racial history. Candidates with appropriate credentials and experience may be considered for a faculty appointment in an academic department.
The American Studies Program at Bard College, in collaboration with the Center for Experimental Humanities and the Center for Human Rights and the Arts, invites applications for a 2-year Mellon Foundation postdoctoral fellowship in conjunction with Bard’s Rethinking Place: Bard-on-Mahicantuck/Humanities for All Times grant. Applicants for this position may specialize in any aspect of Native American and Indigenous Studies and American Studies, so long as the focus is on arts and visual culture. Review of applications will begin as soon as possible and will continue until the position is filled.
The Humanities Center at Syracuse University seeks applications for an Assistant Director. This position will support the Center’s programming and administration, including community partnerships and engagement.
The William L. Clements Library at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor seeks applications for a two-year residential fellowship for a recent master’s degree recipient in library/information science or a humanities field relevant to the Clements Library’s holdings. This early career fellowship is designed to provide the recipient with a broad familiarity with pre-1900 American graphic materials and a grounding in cataloging materials in different formats. Review of applications will begin as soon as possible and will continue until the position is filled.
The Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities seeks a Program Manager for the Institute for Louisiana Culture and History and 64 Parishes encyclopedia. The Institute is a member of the Division of Public Programs and is responsible for overseeing planning and implementation of statewide educator workshops designed to support professional development of Louisiana social studies teachers. The ideal candidate will be able to identify experts in the field who are well suited to contributing to the encyclopedia and delivering talks and workshops to history teachers on a variety of Louisiana/U.S. history topics.
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.
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