December 2022 Public Humanities Newsletter
A monthly newsletter from Humanities for All, an initiative of the National Humanities Alliance.
In this newsletter:
December spotlight: Publishing Values-based Scholarly Communication
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).
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 the spring. Pitch a blog post to us here.
Calls for Proposals
Cultural and Community Resilience program
The Cultural and Community Resilience program from the National Endowment for the Humanities supports community-based efforts to mitigate climate change and COVID-19 pandemic impacts, safeguard cultural resources, and foster cultural resilience through identifying, documenting, and/or collecting cultural heritage and community experience. The program prioritizes projects from disadvantaged communities in the United States or its jurisdictions, and NEH encourages applications that employ inclusive methodologies. Optional draft due December 1, 2022 with a final deadline of January 12, 2023.
“I, Too, Am America”—American Association for State and Local History National Conference
The American Association for State and Local History invites proposals for its 2023 annual conference. The theme “I, too, am America” is inspired by Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes’s 1926 poem “I, Too,” where he stakes his claim on the evolving promise of an inclusive nation by stating “I, too, am America.” The 2023 AASLH Annual Conference theme draws on the broadening concept of American identity that is found in Making History At 250: The Field Guide for the Semiquincentennial. Session proposals are due by December 9, 2022. Learn more and apply here.
Save America’s Treasures Grant Program
Save America's Treasures is a National Park Service grant program offered in collaboration with the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Designed to support the preservation of nationally significant historic properties and collections, the grant program is competitive and requires a dollar-for-dollar match. Learn more and apply by December 20, 2022 here.
Upcoming events
Citizen Science of the Past (PHACS) project virtual symposium
December 7, 2022 | Virtual—programming begins at 9:00am Central European Time
Organized by the Public History as New Citizen Science of the Past project at the Université du Luxembourg, the 2022 symposium focuses on groups and communities becoming active participants in the production of history in museums. The symposium will explore topics such as what groups and communities can bring to the production of history in museums and their impact on historical narratives and on the institutions representing them. It will also delve into the limits and challenges of participatory practices and co-production processes in history museums. Learn more and register here.
2023 MLA Annual Convention
January 5–8, 2023 | San Francisco, California and virtual
The Modern Languages Association will be hosting its 2023 Annual Convention January 5–8, 2023, with sessions available in person and online. The 2023 presidential theme is “Working Conditions” and asks us to reflect on what our teaching and research tell us about transforming our working conditions so that they do not hold us back as they do now and instead help us do what we need and want to do. The MLA has curated a list of public humanities-related sessions that will be available at the convention. Learn more and register here.
Publication and Project News
Recently on the Humanities for All website:
On the Humanities for All blog, Diego Ellis Soto, a PhD student in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at Yale, writes about his work on developing a public-facing project that integrates music composition, music theory, electrical engineering, and environmental science. The project, Collective Pulse, aims to uncover hidden dimensions of nature by utilizing advances in technology and artificial intelligence to make music out of the sounds of animal collectives in the natural world. Read more on the blog here.
The Palgrave Handbook of Digital and Public Humanities is a new volume edited by Anne Schwan and Tara Thomson from the department of English at Edinburgh Napier University. It is the first handbook to present the digital and public humanities as necessarily interconnected fields. The book examines the possibilities and challenges of publicly engaged scholarship in the digital humanities and beyond and assists scholars and practitioners in arts and humanities in producing socially relevant work with external partners.
Imagining America has produced two reports that share the work of their Mellon Foundation-funded Leading and Learning Initiative exploring publicly engaged scholarship. Read the research reports here:
"Critical Intersections: Public Scholars Creating Culture, Catalyzing Change" by Erica Kohl-Arenas, Kal Alston, and Christina Preston.
"Navigating the Joys and Challenges of Public Scholarship in Graduate School: An Imagining America Research Report," by Lizbeth De La Cruz Santana and Alana Haynes Stein.
A recent article in California History by Caroline Collins highlights a new public history project, We Are Not Strangers Here: African American Rural Histories in California, which examines hidden histories of African Americans who have shaped California’s food and farming culture from early statehood to the present. The article details the project’s archival content, including an overview of its methodological framework and the stories featured in its public components.
The Bloomsbury Handbook to the Digital Humanities is a new volume that reconsiders key debates, methods, possibilities, and failings from across the digital humanities, offering a timely interrogation of the present and future of the arts and humanities in the digital age. Comprising 43 essays from some of the field's leading scholars and practitioners, this comprehensive collection examines key contemporary debates within DH, focusing on pressing issues of perspective, methodology, access, capacity, and sustainability.
The History Communication Institute (HCI) released a new report that examines the ethics, practices, and consequences of communicating historical information on TikTok. The report offers an overview of TikTok, articulates several concerns that HCI has about the app, details case studies of usage within the history profession, and offers differing views on the ethical usage of the platform.
December Spotlight: Publishing Values-based Scholarly Communication
Publishing Values-based Scholarly Communication is a new contribution to the Scholarly Communication Notebook. The Open Education Resource (OER) works to increase understanding of how a values-based approach to scholarly communication can address the challenges of publishing publicly engaged scholarship, with particular emphasis on humanities and social sciences. The OER is a collaboration between members of the HuMetricsHSS (Humane Metrics in Humanities and Social Science) initiative and the Publishing and the Publicly Engaged Humanities working group.
Employment and Funding Opportunities
The Department of English at the University of Wyoming seeks an Assistant Professor of Early Modern/Renaissance literature and culture. The successful applicant will be an innovative teacher-scholar who can teach courses in 16th/17th century literature, including Shakespeare, and in one or more of the following areas: race and ethnic studies; gender and sexuality studies; decolonial studies; film studies; and/or environmental studies. The successful applicant would also have opportunities to teach in the English Department public humanities graduate track and contribute to the UW School of Culture, Gender, and Social Justice. This position will remain open until filled. Complete applications received by November 21, 2022 will receive full consideration.
The Department of Romance Languages at Hunter College invites applications for a full-time tenure-track Assistant Professor in French beginning in Fall 2023. The area of specialization is open, although they are especially interested in candidates with scholarly expertise in Francophone literature, particularly as it relates to the Caribbean, the Maghreb, Sub-Saharan Africa, Quebec, and the Indian Ocean, and with research and teaching interests related to literary and political theory, Marxism, and aesthetics. This position can also entail opportunities for collaboration with Hunter’s Honors Colleges, its Public Humanities initiative, and the CUNY Graduate Center. The search will remain open until the position is filled but the committee will begin reviewing complete applications on December 1, 2022.
The Claude Moore Health Sciences Library at the University of Virginia seeks a Historical Collections Manager and Curator to lead its Historical Collections and Services Department. Reporting to the director of the Health Sciences Library, this position will be responsible for stewarding the library’s special collections and supporting programs at the University of Virginia related to the history of the health sciences. The department seeks out opportunities to support education programs, readily making collections available to faculty for course instruction. Opportunities to develop exhibits and support research initiatives at the university, related to the history of the health sciences, are also explored. Priority review of applications will begin on December 2, 2022, but this position will remain open until filled.
Bridwell Library at Southern Methodist University is seeking applicants for the position of Curator of Methodist-Wesleyan Collections and Head of the Center for World Methodism (non-faculty position). The occupant of the position will provide research and programming leadership in Methodist-Wesleyan Studies among a thoughtful, engaged, and diverse community of academic researchers, church congregations, and public visitors. The position will serve the university and greater research community by engaging the heritage, legacy, and future of worldwide Methodism, especially in relation to Bridwell’s acquisition of the World Methodist Museum. Through thoughtful conservation, community relationship-building, studied exhibition curation, active archival processing, and reflective outreach and promotion, the position will provide leadership and direction on the cultural historical preservation of Bridwell’s holdings and how that supports Methodist Studies at SMU with a priority on re-establishing the World Methodist Museum Collections at Bridwell in the next few years. The position will remain open until filled, but applications submitted by December 8, 2022 will receive priority consideration.
Vanderbilt University’s College of Arts and Science invites applications for the Collaborative Humanities Postdoctoral Program (CHPP). The three-year fellowship period will support early career scholars’ efforts to transform and expand humanistic study and education in one or more of the three following areas: urban humanities, environmental humanities, and global humanities. Apply by December 12, 2022.
The Oral History Association (OHA) has announced a search for the next editorial team for its journal, Oral History Review, published for the Association by Routledge/Taylor and Francis. The new editorial team will take office January 1, 2024, for a 2024–2026 term. With the start of 2024, the new team will begin to focus on organizing their workflows and processes and begin work on a special issue commemorating the journal's 50th anniversary, with advice from the previous editorial team. This call is open to oral history practitioners—including oral historians, librarians, archivists, freelance/independent historians, instructors, trainers—located worldwide. You may apply for yourself or as part of a team. Deadline for submissions is December 15, 2022.
The American Antiquarian Society seeks a Director of Scholarly Programs and Partnerships. This position manages the Society’s Program in the History of the Book in American Culture as well as the Society’s Center for Historic American Visual Culture and plays a leading role in creating and administering partnerships. Applications are being accepted on a rolling basis but no later than December 15, 2022.
The Center for Presidential History (CPH) at Southern Methodist University invites applications for a two-year Postdoctoral Fellowship to begin in August 2023. The CPH considers "presidential history" as broadly defined and so welcomes applicants from all fields, topics, and time periods in U.S. history, particularly those pertaining to the nation, politics, governance, or executive power. As part of the fellowship, the postdoctoral scholar will participate in the public-face offerings of the CPH, including conducting interviews related to their Collective Memory Project, a public humanities project dedicated to enhancing the historical and archival record of various presidential administrations, beginning with the George W. Bush presidency. Apply by December 31, 2022.
The soon-to-launch Daniel Patrick Moynihan Center at the City College of New York (CCNY) invites applications for the inaugural cohort of the Moynihan Public Scholars Fellowship. The fellowship takes inspiration from Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s celebrated career, which traversed the academy, government, and the media. In his spirit, Moynihan Public Scholars will be chosen from among academic researchers, public service practitioners, and writers or journalists with a demonstrated ability for blending critical thought, political engagement, and popular communication. Moynihan Public Scholars will receive unrestricted awards of up to $100,000 and will spend one year at CCNY writing, teaching, and engaging in public conversations on critical issues in public affairs. The inaugural Fellowship term will commence September 2023. Apply by January 12, 2023.
The Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America at Harvard University seeks a candidate to fill two newly established positions: Curator for African American and African Diasporic collections and Curator for Collections on Ethnicity and Migration. These positions will be part of a cohort of curators committed to building and sustaining collections. The curators play a vital part in the library's ongoing work to build a more complete historical record with the collections of historically excluded communities in order to support research and learning.
The Medieval Institute at the University of Notre Dame invites applications for a two-year postdoctoral fellowship in public humanities. The fellow will devote the majority of the fellowship time to working closely with the Institute’s staff, especially its director of undergraduate studies and engagement, in the Institute’s outreach and engagement efforts directed at local schools as well as potential donors, alumni, and undergraduate majors and minors.
The Tulane University History Project seeks an Executive Director. The 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. The Executive Director will lead a deep and rigorous historical study of Tulane University from its founding as the Medical College of Louisiana in 1834 to present-day. 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.
Johns Hopkins University is seeking a Digital Humanities Librarian who will work with faculty and students in the humanities, as well as librarians and software engineers in the Sheridan Libraries and Museums to foster, shape, and support digital approaches to humanistic research, teaching, and learning. This work includes the successful design and implementation of digital scholarship throughout its entire life cycle, including project design and funding, development, promotion, and preservation.
The Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library at University of Virginia seeks an academic general faculty member for the position of Librarian, to serve as the Curator of Print Culture. This is a tenure-ineligible position. This curator will join a team of committed cultural heritage memory employees who are dedicated to access, instruction, preservation, and reparative collection development. In support of the library’s reparative work, UVA seeks an individual who understands archival and print silences and who brings a commitment to collection development, exhibition curation, and instruction that surfaces under documented and marginalized voices and who will lead students to see collections in new ways.
Washington College’s Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience seeks applicants for the position of Associate Director for Experiential Learning and Programs and Deputy Director. The Starr Center is dedicated to fostering innovative approaches to American history and culture at the local and national levels, with current programs including a major digital humanities project on African American history (in partnership with the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture and others); oral history; a book award; visiting fellowships; a new civic engagement program; and hands-on opportunities in public history, humanities, and civic engagement for undergraduates.
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.
Looking for job postings at state and jurisdictional humanities councils? Check out the Federation of State Humanities Council’s careers page!
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