March 2023 Public Humanities Newsletter
A monthly newsletter from Humanities for All, an initiative of the National Humanities Alliance.
In This Newsletter:
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Calls for Proposals
2023 Association of African American Museums conference
Proposals due March 13, 2023
The theme for the 2023 Association of African American Museums (AAAM) conference, being held in Nashville, Tennessee, July 26–28, 2023, will be “Museums, Music & Movements.” This theme acknowledges the contributions of African and African American-focused museums and cultural institutions to the AAAM community throughout the diaspora through music and movements. Learn more about the conference and submitting a proposal here.
The Humanities for Our Times: New Perspectives on Humanistic Methods and Social Justice
Proposals due March 15, 2023
As a recipient of the Mellon Foundation’s Humanities For All Times Grant, Colorado College is hosting an academic conference June 14–17, 2023, with the goal of bringing together educators, artists, and activists to consider the relationship between humanities methods and social justice today. This conference will take a hybrid format with panel sessions in the morning followed by events such as symposia, workshops, round tables, film screenings, and/or performances in the afternoon and evening (the full conference schedule will be published soon). All events will focus on epistemologies and knowledge production, humanistic methodologies, liberatory creative practices, and social justice. The conference is currently seeking papers on any of these topics. Participation in the conference is not limited to individuals appointed in Humanities divisions, and we welcome interdisciplinary and creative approaches, as well as papers describing social justice projects. Learn more about submitting a proposal here.
2023 National Humanities Conference
Proposals due April 3, 2023
The Federation of State Humanities Councils and the National Humanities Alliance are excited to announce the 2023 National Humanities Conference, which will be held in Indianapolis, Indiana, October 25–29, 2023. This annual conference brings together representatives from colleges, universities, state humanities councils, cultural institutions, and other community-based organizations to explore approaches to deepening the public’s engagement with the humanities. In keeping with the state motto of Indiana, “The Crossroads of America,” the 2023 conference theme is “Crossroads.” The deadline for proposal submission for offsite sessions, workshops, interviews, roundtables, panels, working groups, and individual presentations is April 3, 2023. Learn more about submitting a proposal here.
March Spotlight: Guidelines for Broadening the Definition of Historical Scholarship
On January 5, 2023, the American Historical Association (AHA) Council approved their Guidelines for Broadening the Definition of Historical Scholarship, published in the latest edition of its Perspectives on History magazine. These guidelines were made by the AHA’s Ad-Hoc Committee on Broadening the Definition of Scholarship, formed in January 2022, and build on the AHA’s previously published Guidelines for the Professional Evaluation of Digital Scholarship in History (2015) and Guidelines for the Incorporation of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in the Work of the History Profession (2019). For previous discussions of AHA’s emphasis on the many ways of being a historian, read James Grossman’s essay on The Diffusion of Knowledge, published in December 2020.
For more on the guidelines, read Beyond the Monograph, an article by Ryan Quinn published in Inside Higher Ed that includes insights from public historians and advocates across the field.
Upcoming Events
Humanistic Dimensions of Environmental Advocacy
March 1, 2023 | 3:00–4:30pm EST | Virtual
In this discussion, panelists will consider the role that the humanities can and should play in our collective efforts to preserve the health of our planet and build equitable communities. Panelists will include Brooke Larsen (Community Engagement Coordinator, University of Utah Environmental Humanities Program), Cameron Oglesby (environmental justice storyteller and advocate; Master of Public Policy candidate, Duke University), and Emily Sample (Program Director, Fund for Peace). This event is part of Restoring Our Vitality, a series of events celebrating the ten-year anniversary of the landmark Heart of the Matter report and reflecting on the issues it raised about the state of the humanities and social sciences. Learn more and register for upcoming events here.
The Children of the People: Writings by and about CUNY students on race and social justice
March 3, 2023 | 6:00–7:30pm EST | Virtual and in person
In 1849, Horace Webster, the first president of the Free Academy said of the radical social experiment that would eventually become the City University of New York: “The experiment is to be tried, whether the children of the people, the children of the whole people, can be educated, and whether an institution of the highest grade, can be controlled by the popular will, not by the privileged few, but by the privileged many.” More than 170 years later The Children of the People offers the perspective of past and present CUNY students—some, now faculty—on the success of this experiment. The Children of the People emerged from Autoethnographies of CUNY, a public humanities project funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Seminar on Public Engagement and Collaborative Research at the Center for the Humanities at The Graduate Center. Learn more and register here.
Chicago Cultural Alliance Activating Heritage Conference
March 6, 2023 | University of Illinois at Chicago campus
Activating Heritage is the Chicago Cultural Alliance’s annual professional development conference for cultural heritage and nonprofit professionals. The conference invites experts in a variety of fields to engage with topics that will promote resilience in the cultural heritage sector and enhance attendees’ knowledge, capacity, and skills. Session areas will include collections, fundraising, community engagement, and more. This in-person conference will take place at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) campus. Learn more and register here.
Preparing for the Public: A Conversation with Xine Yao and Danielle Wong
March 7, 2023 | 1:00pm EST | Virtual
What should a scholar consider when preparing to take their work public or when the public becomes a focus of their research? What are the risks, concerns, and rewards of being a public scholar or doing scholarly work in public? Join the University of British Columbia Public Humanities Hub for a conversation between Dr. Xine Yao and Dr. Danielle Wong as they discuss popular culture, new media technologies, self-care, and what it means to do scholarly work in, with, and for the public. Learn more and register here.
Item Not Found: Accounting for Loss in Libraries, Archives, and Other Heritage and Memory Organizations
March 8–9, 2023 | Virtual
This virtual conference considers the ongoing reassessment of memory and heritage work and heritage ownership—as it is understood by libraries, archives and related organizations—through an examination of the multiple meanings, complexities, and resonances of loss. Learn more and register here.
Data Matters: Spring Ahead
March 13–16, 2023 | Virtual
Data Matters is a week-long series of one- and two-day courses aimed at students and professionals in business, research, and government. The short course series is sponsored by the Odum Institute for Research in Social Science at UNC-Chapel Hill, the National Consortium for Data Science, and RENCI (Renaissance Computing Institute). Data Matters: Spring Ahead, will feature a selection of the series’ most popular two-day courses that may appeal to publicly engaged scholars interested in the digital humanities, including Introduction to Effective Information Visualization, Visualization for Data Science, Basics of R for Data Science and Statistics, and Introduction to Python. The deadline for registration is March 8 for Monday/Tuesday courses and March 9 for Wednesday/Thursday courses. Learn more and register here.
GIS Basics Course
March–April, 2023 | Virtual
GIS Basics is a 6-week virtual course offered through Misericordia University as an introduction to the world of spatial data. Students will learn about different types of spatial data, GIS Software (QGIS, ArcGIS, and R), database management and queries, cartography principles, and spatial analysis tools, methods which may appeal to publicly engaged scholars interested in the digital humanities. Meetings will take place on Tuesdays: March 14, 21, 28, and April 4, 11, 18 from 6:00pm to 7:30pm EDT via Zoom. Learn more and register here.
Essential to the Public: Libraries at the End of the World featuring Emily Drabinski
March 21, 2023 | 6:30pm–8:00pm EDT | Virtual
Join the Barnard Center for Research on Women and Project NIA for a discussion on the importance of libraries in public life and their centrality to current debates over book bans and censorship across America. The conversation will be led by Emily Drabinski, who is the Critical Pedagogy Librarian at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. Drabinski publishes and presents widely on power and politics in libraries with a focus on organized labor. Drabinski's term as President of the American Library Association will begin in June 2023. Learn more and register here.
Planning Inclusive Futures: The Next Decade of the Humanities
April 4, 2023 | 3:00pm–4:30pm EDT | Virtual
In a fractured world marked by anti-democratic sentiment, threats of economic recession, and the spread of false and inflammatory information, the humanities are more important—and more imperiled—than ever before. This panel discussion between Robert D. Newman (President and Director, National Humanities Center), acclaimed author Amitav Ghosh (The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable; The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis), Shelly Lowe (Chair, National Endowment for the Humanities), and Nancy MacLean (William H. Chafe Professor of History and Public Policy, Duke University) will ask what steps humanities influencers and practitioners must take to secure the future of the humanities while realizing the ambitions initially articulated by the Heart of the Matter report. This event is part of Restoring Our Vitality, a series of events celebrating the ten-year anniversary of the landmark Heart of the Matter report and reflecting on the issues it raised about the state of the humanities and social sciences. Learn more and register for upcoming events here.
Imagining America Dissertation Dish: “When There’s Good, There’s Good. When There’s Harm, There’s Harm”: Diverse Voices on Community Engagement
April 6, 2023 | 12:00pm EDT | Virtual
Join Carmine Perrotti and Imagining America for their next Dissertation Dish, a webinar event showcasing Perrotti’s dissertation on service learning and community engagement (SLCE). Perrotti is Assistant Director of Community-Engaged Scholarship at the Swearer Center for Public Service at Brown University, where he works to support students and faculty interested in the integration of academic study with community-engaged learning and research. Carmine also is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Education at Brown University and a faculty member at College Unbound. Carmine received his Ph.D. in higher education from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities and a Master in Public Policy from American University. Perrotti’s community-based case study, drawing on theories of whiteness and neoliberalism, aims to engage a multivocal account of how one community described and understood their experiences with SLCE by one college. As a result of the community knowledge and contributions shared, this dissertation aimed to (re)imagine more equitable possibilities for the future of SLCE with those who have often been left out of research. Learn more and register here.
National Council on Public History Annual Meeting
April 12–15, 2023 | Atlanta, Georgia
General registration for the National Council on Public History’s Annual Meeting is now open! The theme for this year is “To Be Determined.” Browse the preliminary program and register by March 30, 2023 here.
Publication and Project News
Recently on the Humanities for All website:
On the Humanities for All blog, co-creators Joshua Calhoun and Sarah Marty wrote about their project Holding History, a mentoring-driven, inter-generational public humanities program focused on the history of media and book arts.
Read the latest issue of The Public Historian, a journal publication of University of California Press. The Public Historian publishes the results of scholarly research and case studies and addresses the broad substantive and theoretical issues in the field. Articles in the most recent volume include “Reaching into the Community to Interpret Labor History: A Museum-Labor-University Collaboration;” “Digital Editing Workshops for Building Campus Public History Communities and Developing Student Leaders;” and “‘People First’: Interpreting and Commemorating Houselessness and Poverty,” among others.
View a recording of the National Humanities Center’s most recent webinar event, “Reforming the Academic Reward System,” held on Feb 13, 2023. Invited panelists discussed how institutions of higher education can reimagine their protocols for faculty advancement to account for the increasing importance of public engagement, collaborative research, and to recognize new interdisciplinary models of intellectual inquiry across humanities fields. Panelists included Karida L. Brown (Professor of Sociology, Emory University), Jeffrey Cohen (Dean of Humanities, Arizona State University), and Elizabeth (Elee) Wood (Nadine and Robert A. Skotheim Director of Education and Public Programs, The Huntington Library).
We the Museum is a new podcast for museum workers discussing the state of the museum field with invited guests. Hosted by Hannah Hethmon, each episode features museum workers in the U.S. and beyond, exploring ideas, programs, and exhibitions that inform and inspire, including everything from digitization and collections management to unionization and decolonization.
What Is a Criminal? Answers from Inside the US Justice System is a new Routledge collection edited by Katherine Gaudet that explores the category of "criminal" through the human stories of those who bear and administer that label. It brings together the perspectives of justice-impacted people, those who work in law enforcement and social services, and scholarly researchers. Each chapter shares the experience and perspective of a unique person with knowledge of the justice system. This book will be of interest to anyone who wants to know more about criminality, the US justice system, and the people involved in it. It is an effective text for college and high school courses about crime and criminality and provides excellent fodder for discussion in law enforcement and social services training programs or professional development workshops.
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 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 series aims to inspire current and prospective graduate students to embrace cross-disciplinary learning and to consider engaging in research that serves diverse literary and cultural publics.
Confluence: Humanities in the Public Sphere is a podcast sponsored by the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at SUNY's Binghamton University. The podcast reflects a belief that scholarly work inevitably benefits from engagement with publics beyond university walls. Recent episodes include “A Journey of Engaged Public Humanities with Dr. Lisa Yun,” “Ladino Collaborative: Language, Linguistics and Beyond,” and “Public Archaeology Facility: Bearing the Bones of Public Humanities.”
Employment and Funding Opportunities
The University of Nebraska Omaha seeks a Program Coordinator for the Tell All the Truth Project (TATP). TATP aims to increase understanding across economic, racial, and ethnic divides in the metropolitan community of Omaha by providing meaningful opportunities for collaborative truth-telling through diverse forms of literary expression informed by critical analysis of the nation’s intersectional histories. The Program Coordinator will work to assure smooth delivery of the project’s course offerings and coordination of its community partnerships. This position will remain open until filled; however, initial review of applications begins March 1, 2023.
The University of California Santa Cruz seeks an Experiential Learning Coordinator. The incumbent will be responsible for the development and administration of curricular and extracurricular-based experiential learning opportunities in the Humanities Division and in partnership with other campus units, predominantly serving undergraduate humanities majors, providing professional development for undergraduate students and to help facilitate their readiness for the job market. In this capacity, the coordinator is responsible for conducting outreach to community and campus partners, development and administration of experiential learning opportunities, program communications and alumni outreach, event marketing, and coordination including related budgetary management. Apply by March 14, 2023, for fullest consideration.
American Council of Learned Societies Leading Edge Fellowships place recent humanities PhDs with nonprofit organizations committed to promoting social justice in their communities for a 24-month tenure. Recent PhDs from across all fields of the humanities and humanistic social sciences are encouraged to apply for this fellowship. Apply by March 15, 2023.
The Frank C. Munson Institute at Mystic Seaport Museum in partnership with Brown University and Williams College is offering twelve summer resident fellowships intended for junior faculty and graduate students. Each of the resident fellowships, set to run from June 26–July 27, will be supported with a $2,000 stipend, accommodations in museum-owned housing, and book purchases. During the summer of 2023, Munson Institute fellows, faculty, and guest speakers will interrogate the region’s maritime past as a part of the multi-institutional Reimagining New England Histories: Historical Injustice, Sovereignty and Freedom project funded by the Mellon Foundation. A distinctive feature of this summer program will be the framing of these topics within the context of New England’s maritime setting, an environment that fostered interaction, mobility, and exploitation. Apply by March 17, 2023.
The Humanities Research Center (HRC) at Rice University invites applications for a one-year postdoctoral fellowship connected with the SlaveVoyages website. SlaveVoyages is the product of years of development by a multidisciplinary team of historians, librarians, curriculum specialists, cartographers, computer programmers, and web designers, in consultation with scholars of the traffic from institutions in Europe, Africa, and the Americas. The National Endowment for the Humanities was the principal sponsor of this work, carried out originally at the Emory Center for Digital Scholarship and the Irvine and Santa Cruz campuses of the University of California. The website is currently hosted at Rice University and the HRC has been a major supporter of the website. Apply by March 20, 2023.
The Library of America is offering a two-year Latino Poetry Fellowship in support of Latino Poetry 1610–2024: Places We Call Home, a multifaceted initiative exploring the Latino poetic tradition and its place in American culture, presented in partnership with the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures, the Poetry Society of America, and the Academy of American Poets, among other organizations. Apply by March 31, 2023.
New Jersey’s Historical Commission seeks a Temporary Project Manager of their Black Heritage Trail initiative. Under the direction of the director, the project manager will initiate the development of guidelines for nominating, reviewing, and approving sites to be included on the New Jersey Black Heritage Trail. The guidelines will include clear criteria for inclusion on the trail, a mechanism for accepting nominations from the public, the process for selection, and approval of marker texts and design. The Project Manager will also serve as the liaison for this project with the New Jersey Black Cultural and Heritage Initiative Foundation, other state agencies, scholars, historical organizations, colleagues at the Commission, and the general public.
The Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture at the University of Washington is looking for a collaborative and organized creative thinker to join their team as an Exhibit Project Lead. This position will work closely with department staff including the Senior Preparator, Content Developer, and Director of Interpretation to coordinate and create new exhibit experiences. They will also facilitate collaboration with Burke collection representatives, educators, and other museum staff as well as community members and content advisors to produce engaging visitor experiences.
The Aspen Institute seeks an Editorial Production Associate to coordinate, produce, distribute, and track/archive readings for 70-80 humanities-based leadership seminars per year. The Leadership Division of the Aspen Institute builds off its 70-year history of developing leaders across generations and place to become more effective, values-based leaders. Today, the Division includes the Seminars Department, the Aspen Global Leadership Network; and Weave: The Social Fabric Project, which connects and supports grassroots community leaders. The position requires exacting attention to detail, the ability to manage multiple projects simultaneously, facility in InDesign and Salesforce, and a passion for public humanities.
The William L. Clements Library at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor seeks a Curator of Maps and Graphics to build on the strengths of a collection of national significance and expand the discoverability of and access to that collection. Including materials that span the 16th to the 20th centuries, the Clements Library’s holdings offer rich resources for researchers, students, and the general public. The Curator will serve scholarship and creative research broadly, encouraging imaginative approaches to visual culture as part of the Clements Library's mission to emphasize in-person, direct examination of original primary source materials.
The Reynolda House Museum of American Art at Wake Forest University seeks a Manager of Community and Academic Learning to develop, coordinate, and facilitate the museum’s public programs that respond to human concerns through intellectual, emotional, and aesthetic experiences. The manager will also serve as academic liaison for the museum to local university departments and institutes.
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.