October 2024 Public Humanities Newsletter
A monthly newsletter from the Department of Public & Applied Humanities at the University of Arizona.
In this issue:
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 Giulia Negretto at giulianegretto@arizona.edu.
Calls for Proposals
Grant Opportunities
The National Historical Publications & Records Commission invites applications for four of their grant programs: archival projects, discovery and access to congressional records collections, capacity building for historical black colleges and universities archives, and publishing historical records in collaborative digital editions. Learn more and apply here. Applications are due November 7, 2024.
Call for Papers
Public Humanities invites submissions for the upcoming themed issue “Literature and Science in the Public Sphere.” Public Humanities is a new international open-access, cross-disciplinary, peer-reviewed journal at the intersection of humanities scholarship and public life. The journal invites proposals for themed issues that pose urgent questions on contemporary public issues that require rigorous and relevant humanities knowledge. The deadline for submissions is 31 March 2025.
Call for Posters
The National Council on Public History invites proposals for poster sessions. A poster session is a two-hour block of time at the annual meeting where presenters can share their projects with attendees in the form of a poster. It offers an alternative for presenters eager to share their work through one-on-one discussion, can be especially useful for works-in-progress, and may be a particularly appropriate format for presentations where visual or material evidence represents a central component of the project. Learn more and apply here. Submissions are due October 10, 2024.
Call for Working Groups
The application process is now open for discussants to join the National Council on Public History’s 2025 working groups. Working groups are seminar-like conversations which aim to create an end product (report, article, website, or exhibition) and cover a variety of topics in which public humanists may be interested in. Ten working groups are seeking discussants. Learn more and apply here. Submissions are due October 15, 2024.
Call for Pop-Ups
The the National Council on Public History seeks proposals for pop-up exhibits, activities, and skills labs to set up in the exhibit hall over the course of the 2025 Annual Meeting in Montréal, Québec, Canada. Pop-ups provide the opportunity to take part in less formal programming while spending time in the exhibit hall, and for presenters to get on the program in Montréal and share their work or knowledge with fellow conference attendees in a casual, visual, and interactive way. Apply here. Submissions are due November 15, 2024.
Call for Dine Arounds
The National Council on Public History is looking for volunteers to propose a topic to be the focus for a dinner conversation, select a nearby restaurant, make your group’s dinner reservation, and lead your group to dinner from the hotel. If you’d rather talk shop over dinner and drinks, this is the format for you! Apply here. Submissions are due November 15, 2024.
Upcoming Events
2024 National Humanities Conference
Providence, Rhode Island | November 13-17, 2024
Registration is now open for the 2024 National Humanities Conference (NHC)! 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. The deadline to register for NHC is Friday, November 1. Learn more and register here.
2025 National Council on Public History (NCPH)
Montréal, Québec, Canada | March 26-29
On November 1 registration opens to all at the early bird rates. Click here to learn more about registration rates.
Publications and Project News
“Collaborative LGBTQ+ Public Humanities Scholarship: Expanding Educational Access Through Community Archives and Public History Exhibitions” is a recent book chapter by Mary C. Foltz, published in The Routledge Companion to Public Humanities Scholarship (2024). It provides an overview of various university-community partnerships, as well as collaborations among higher ed institutions, supporting the development of LGBTQ+ public humanities scholarship and programming.
“The Florence Arquin Slide Project: Art, Pan-Americanism, and the Digital Humanities” is a recent article by Emily A. Fenichel and Camila Afanador-Llach, published in Panorama: Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art. It describes a digital humanities project of a curated collection of slides by documentary photographer, scholar, and artist Florence Arquin (1900-1974) which was meant to educate the public on Latin America. Visit online at the Arquin Slide Collection.
“Learning from Those Who Teach the Publicly Engaged Humanities”
By Amanda Lautermilch, HumanitiesX Coordinator
This past summer, DePaul University’s HumanitiesX and the University of Arizona’s Department of Public & Applied Humanities co-sponsored the first annual Teaching the Publicly Engaged Humanities to Undergraduates Workshop Series. This online series brought together 11 faculty presenters, representing five different institutions, who presented and led attendees through collaborative exercises and small-group conversations on three different topics: Collaboration in Public Humanities Courses and Partnerships, Studio and Design-Thinking Methods in Public Humanities Courses, and Creative Arts with and for Partners in Public Humanities Courses.
Attendees across the workshops represented 27 unique institutional affiliations and logged in from 17 different states and three countries. At HumanitiesX, we were thrilled to connect our faculty fellows to others doing similar work at different institutions and across many disciplines in the humanities.
If you missed the workshops, you can see presenter slides and session recordings, as well as the resources shared by presenters, at the series recap posted by HumanitiesX.
We will offer the online workshop again next June and July, and thanks to the generous funding of the Mellon Foundation, presenters will again be paid stipends for their participation. If you teach the publicly engaged humanities and are interested in sharing your work with others, keep an eye out for the call for presenters, which we anticipate circulating in Spring 2025. We’ll be promoting the sessions and registering participants next spring and hope you’ll join!
For more information, please contact the HumanitiesX coordinator, Amanda Lautermilch. You can also subscribe to the HumanitiesX newsletter or the Public Humanities Newsletter for information about this and other future events.
Employment and Funding Opportunities
The University of Massachusetts Boston Department of History seeks applicants for a tenure-track assistant professor in the history of race in Colonial and Revolutionary America, beginning September 1, 2025. Apply by October 14, 2024.
Munson Museum in Utica, NY, seeks applicants for a Museum Educator for Public Programs within the Education Department to produce a range of interpretive adult and family public programs that are creative, relevant, thoughtful, accessible, and engaging.
The Jackman Humanities Institute at the University of Toronto invites applications for a Visiting Public Humanities Faculty Fellowship (VPH) to be held in 2025-26. The VPH will be a mid-career, tenured faculty member from another institution who has a demonstrated track record of bringing humanities research out of the classroom and university press, and into the broader public realm for discussion, debate and examination across multiple media platforms, and who is experienced in addressing audiences outside the academy. The Fellowship provides funding of $50,000 CAD plus benefits. Apply by November 28, 2024.
The Jackman Humanities Institute at the University of Toronto, in partnership with the Critical Digital Humanities Initiative, offers a twelve-month (2025-26) Postdoctoral Fellowship in Digital Humanities, with a project that fits the Institute’s annual theme, Dystopia and Trust. Apply by November 28, 2024.
Syracuse University invites applications for a Community Engagement Coordinator. This position is responsible for supporting the work for Community Engagement office with the external community by coordinating the programs and opportunities with community partners. Job posting date July 14, 2024.
Internet Archive is seeking a Program Assistant, Community Programs to work in the Archiving & Data Services group. The Archiving & Data Services group builds and manages a variety of products, programs, and services used by over 1,500 libraries, archives, museums, and cultural heritage organizations around the world to preserve and provide access to digital materials. This is a full-time, permanent, remote-first position working in a distributed team. Posted on September 27, 2024.
Athabasca University Press is currently recruiting for the position of OER Project Coordinator. The OER Project Coordinator will oversee the planning, development, and production process of open educational resource (OER) projects supported by Athabasca University Press, including those published under AUP’s OER imprint. The full job description can be viewed at Open Educational Resources (OER) Project Coordinator.
The Santa Barbara Museum of Art (SBMA) is accepting applications for the position of Director of Institutional Advancement. The Director of Institutional Advancement is a newly created role designed to enhance engagement, philanthropy, and awareness of the Museum and its mission and role in the cultural and educational landscape of Santa Barbara and beyond.
The College of Design at the University of Minnesota is recruiting for the position of Kusskee Design Initiative Director. The Director leads, manages, and furthers the core mission of the Kusske Design Initiative (KDI), which involves three primary tasks: (1) developing and furthering the strategy of KDI in close collaboration with the dean and the KDI core team, (2) managing programs and projects, and (3) managing people at KDI.
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.