September 2022 Public Humanities Newsletter
A monthly newsletter from Humanities for All, an initiative of the National Humanities Alliance.
In this newsletter:
September Spotlight: National Endowment for the Humanities
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 fall and winter. Pitch a blog post to us here.
Calls for Proposals
Library of Congress Connecting Communities Digital Initiative
The Library of Congress invites applications for grants offered via its Connecting Communities Digital Initiative, which encourages creators in Black, Indigenous, and communities of color to combine library materials with technology to connect Americans with a more expansive understanding of our past and future. Grants of up to $50,000 each are available to minority-serving higher education institutions, libraries, archives, and museums. Learn more and apply by September 30, 2022 here.
The National Historical Publications and Records Commission Public Engagement with Historical Records Grant
The National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) seeks projects that encourage public engagement with historical records, including the development of new tools that enable people to engage online. The NHPRC is looking for collaborative projects that create models and technologies that other institutions can freely adopt. In general, collaborations between archivists, documentary editors, historians, educators, and/or community-based individuals are more likely to create a competitive proposal. Projects that focus on innovative methods to introduce primary source materials and how to use them in multiple locations are also more likely to create a competitive proposal. Learn more and submit grant proposals by October 6, 2022 here.
The Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Innovation Fellowship
The Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Innovation Fellowship program is designed to support emerging scholars as they advance bold and innovative research in the humanities and interpretive social sciences. The program is made possible by a grant from the Mellon Foundation and will make awards to doctoral students who show promise of leading their fields in important new directions. The program seeks to expand the range of research methodologies, formats, and areas of inquiry traditionally considered suitable for the dissertation, including publicly engaged humanities elements, with a particular focus on supporting scholars who can build a more diverse, inclusive, and equitable academy. Learn more and apply by November 2, 2022 here.
Humanities Without Walls Grand Research Challenge
The Humanities Without Walls Grand Research Challenge funds collaborative and interdisciplinary humanities research projects that demonstrate a commitment to methodologies of reciprocity and redistribution. The Grand Research Challenge provides grants of up to $150,000 over a two-year period (January 1, 2023–December 31, 2025) for teams pursuing research with a commitment to methodologies of reciprocity and redistribution. Learn more and apply for funding by November 15, 2022 here.
Humanities Without Walls Career Diversity Workshop
Humanities Without Walls (HWW) seeks applications from doctoral students pursuing degrees in the humanities and humanistic social sciences for the HWW Predoctoral Career Diversity Summer Workshop, to be held July 17–28, 2023 in Minneapolis, MN. Hosted by the University of Minnesota College of Liberal Arts, the workshop is an intensive, student-centered career exploration program of values discernment and practical preparation for jobs in a variety of sectors, both beyond and within the academy. Students must submit their applications to their home universities' humanities center director, graduate school dean, or equivalent by November 1, 2022; nominating directors must submit their nominations by December 6, 2022. Learn more about the workshop here.
Upcoming events
American Association for State and Local History 2022 Annual Conference
September 14–17, 2022 | Buffalo, New York
November 1–4, 2022 | Virtual
Since 2021, the American Association for State and Local History (AASLH) has offered two annual conferences: one in-person and one online, joined by a single theme but with distinct and separate programs. The 2022 AASLH Annual Conference will be held September 14–17 in Buffalo with the 2022 Virtual Conference following on November 1–4. This year’s conference theme, “Right Here, Right Now: The Power of Place,” suggests many questions. What place is important to you? To your community? Do you see these stories reflected in your museums, historic sites, and the local cultural sector? Who decides what places are saved or interpreted and what ends up being worth saving? Learn more and register here.
Imagining America National Gathering
October 14–16, 2022 | New Orleans, Louisiana
Organized in partnership with Tulane University, the Ashé Cultural Arts Center, and a local steering committee, Imagining America’s 2022 National Gathering will be held in person on October 14–16, 2022, in New Orleans, Louisiana. This year's theme of “Rituals of Repair and Renewal” invites participants to engage in joyful celebration of the magic in being together. Taking place in New Orleans, this event convenes artists, scholars, and culture bearers from across the country for three days of learning, sharing, and experiencing “Rituals of Repair and Renewal.” This year, the gathering will feature a track for engaged graduate scholarship in the arts, design, and humanities. Learn more and register here.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation PastForward National Preservation Virtual Conference
November 1–4, 2022 | Virtual
The National Trust for Historic Preservation’s PastForward National Preservation Virtual Conference is the nation’s premier conference for those who work to save, sustain, and interpret historic places. The conference events will explore three themes: “Historic Preservation is Climate Action,” “Encouraging Inclusion and Diversity Through Preservation,” and “Understanding Preservation’s Role in Real Estate Development.” Learn more and register here.
National Humanities Conference
November 10–13, 2022 | Los Angeles, California
We are pleased to invite you to experience change in kinetic California! This year’s program will include two days of virtual sessions on November 3rd and 4th, with in-person activities in Los Angeles taking place November 10–13. Registration is available with early bird rates now through September 30, 2022. Plan to gather with humanities professionals throughout our entire community: representatives from humanities councils, museums, libraries, and community organizations will be present to discuss, explore, and reflect on the public humanities. Visit the National Humanities Conference website to register today!
September Spotlight: The National Endowment for the Humanities
In August, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) announced $31.5 million in grants for 226 humanities projects across the country. This round of funding, NEH’s third and last for fiscal year 2022, supports vital humanities research, education, preservation, and public programs. Under the “Public Humanities Projects” granting category, nine grants totaling $2.4 million went to support museum exhibitions, discussion programs, and interpretations of historic places that bring the ideas and insights of the humanities to life for general audiences. Read more about this work in NEH’s press release.
Publication and Project News
Recently on the Humanities for All website:
Humanities for All has a new project profile! "Sovereignty & Climate Change in Guåhan: Creating Sustainable Futures," a public humanities project directed by University of California, Irvine professor Tiara Na’puti in collaboration with Independent Guåhan, addresses climate change and democratic governance on Guam.
On the blog, St. Olaf College undergraduate student Monica Wohlhuter writes about spending the 2022 summer working with Professor Timothy Rainey II on the Black Church Archives Project, which aims to create a national archive that tells the histories of Black congregations.
In the Summer 2022 issue of Daedalus, editors Carin Berkowitz, Norman Marshall Bradburn, and Robert B. Townsend collect essays on The Humanities in American Life: Transforming the Relationship with the Public. Through 17 essays from scholars across humanities disciplines, the volume looks at the public faces of the humanities, exploring the state of the humanities today, where the academic humanities are (and should be) heading, how to build bridges to new audiences and historically marginalized communities, and how the humanities help us understand urgent public concerns, such as climate change, racial justice, and public health.
The Modern Language Association’s Guidelines for Evaluating Publicly Engaged Humanities Scholarship in Language and Literature Programs seeks to help departments, institutions, and faculty members in languages and literatures value and assess public humanities work. Created by the MLA Ad Hoc Committee on Valuing the Public Humanities, the document articulates core principles for the evaluation of public humanities scholarship, provides guiding questions for evaluators to consider, and offers advice for departments, university committees, administrators, and candidates for evaluation.
“Redreaming Boundaries and Community Engagement: John Edgar Wideman and the Homewood Reading Series” is a new article in Kalfou: A Journal of Comparative and Relational Ethnic Studies by Esohe Osai and Dan Kubis. The article details the work of a collaborative reading series that brought together the members of two Pittsburgh neighborhoods: Homewood, a Black neighborhood where Wideman was raised, and Oakland, which is home to the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt). Through exploring the works of John Edgar Wideman, the project created an opportunity for conversation between Black high school students from Westinghouse Academy in Homewood and mostly non-Black university students from Pitt.
Culture Work Folklore for the Public Good is a new volume from the University of Wisconsin Press edited by Tim Frandy and B. Marcus Cederström that asks how culture workers construct public arts and culture projects that are effective and transformative. Culture Work takes up real-world examples of cultural and public humanities projects through case studies that demonstrate the vast numbers of creative possibilities in culture work today—in all their complexities, challenges, and potentialities.
Cool Anthropology: How to Engage the Public with Academic Research is a new volume from the University of Toronto Press edited by Kristina Baines and Victoria Costa. Through a series of case studies by leading anthropologists, Cool Anthropology highlights the many different approaches that scholars have used to engage the public with their research. Baines and Costa showcase efforts to make meaningful connections with communities outside the walls of academia, moving anthropological thinking beyond the discipline. Through their focus on collaborative efforts, contributors push against the exclusivity of "knowledge production" to ask how engaging communities as both producers and consumers of academic research helps to promote anthropology better and do anthropology better.
“Beyond Activity, Place, and Partner: How Publicly Engaged Scholarship Varies by Intensity of Activity and Degree of Engagement” is a new article in the Journal of Community Engagement and Scholarship by Diane M. Doberneck, Chris R. Glass, and John H. Schweitzer. The authors contend that most publicly engaged scholarship is described by activity (e.g., service-learning; community-based, participatory research; public humanities), by place (e.g., rural communities, urban neighborhood), or by partner (e.g., non-governmental organization, school). In contrast, this study explored whether two process-oriented constructs—level of activity and degree of engagement—were useful descriptors of how faculty members go about their scholarly collaborations with the public.
“From ‘Oregon Trail’ to ‘Uncharted,’ video games make history fun” is a new Made By History piece in the Washington Post by Julio Capó, associate professor of history and public humanities at Florida International University. Capo explores how the video game industry has utilized and distorted stories of the past and the role of historical education through entertainment.
“Everyone is No One: The ‘Public’ in 'Public Humanities'” is a new essay by Queenie Sukhadia, writer-in-residence at the Center for the Humanities at the CUNY Graduate Center. Sukhadia reflects on a series of interviews she conducted with public humanities practitioners and who the ‘public’ in ‘public humanities’ is, and how one might go about identifying the publics for their work.
Employment and Funding Opportunities
The University of Arizona Libraries seeks a Digital Project Archivist for a 30-month initiative on Reclaiming the Border Narrative funded by the Ford Foundation. As the archival partner for the project, the Confluencenter and UArizona Libraries Special Collections will engage with 40+ Reclaiming the Border Narrative grantees. The Digital Project Archivist will be responsible for working with the Archival Partner Team to create and activate a community-led and ethically operated archive ensuring the goals of the initiative are met. This position has a target hire date of September 19, 2022. Application review began on August 24, 2022 and will continue until the position is filled.
The Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas seeks a Learning Engagement Coordinator. The coordinator will report to the Mellon Director of Academic Programs and work closely with Public Practice, Curatorial, and Collections colleagues to coordinate learning activities that make use of the Museum’s collections, both on display and in storage. The coordinator will manage the day-to-day operations of the Museum’s new Lee Study Center—a 2000-square-foot open storage and object-based learning facility prominently located within the galleries—and work to develop and facilitate innovative cross-disciplinary engagement opportunities that realize the full potential of this hybrid classroom space. Application review begins Tuesday, September 6, 2022 and continues until a pool of qualified applicants is identified.
Vermont Humanities is hiring a Community Program Officer to serve as team lead/project manager for programs such as Veterans Book Groups, Literature and Medicine, Speakers Bureau, and public Reading & Discussion groups. This position also participates in development activities in support of public humanities programs including data collection, grant research, writing, and reporting, program underwriting, and fundraising meetings and events as requested. Apply by September 19, 2022.
The Department of English at Washington University in St. Louis is seeking to fill two tenure-track positions, one at the rank of Assistant Professor and one at the rank of Associate Professor or (full) Professor. They seek scholars whose critical work lies in any of the historical fields of literatures in English and who bring to their scholarship the dimension of “creative practice,” including an interest in public humanities. Apply by September 20, 2022 for the assistant professorship and November 15, 2022 for the associate/full professorship.
The Minnesota Historical Society (MNHS) seeks an Oral History Program Manager. This position will 1) establish and lead the Oral History Program at MNHS; 2) work with colleagues across MNHS to promote access to and engagement with the MNHS Oral History Program; 3) represent MNHS broadly, including as a member of professional organizations and contribute to the advancement of the field of oral history locally and nationally; 4) collaborate across MNHS to advance MNHS strategic plan objectives, including contributing to MNHS’s commitment to sharing Minnesota history through community engagement and partnerships; and 5) Provide management oversight to unit staff. Apply by September 30, 2022.
Sarah Lawrence College is hiring two public humanities fellows. Consideration of applications will begin on October 1, 2022.
In partnership with the Yonkers Public Library, Sarah Lawrence invites applications for a Public Humanities Fellow starting in January 2023. This one-year fellowship is funded by a grant from the Mellon Foundation and will both enhance the work at the Yonkers Public Library and extend curricular and pedagogical innovation for the college. The fellow would manage and streamline projects already underway at the Library and teach courses at the College that will build on this work. While the Fellow’s area of specialty is open, the fellow may teach courses based in history and/or some aspects of the social sciences (urban studies, library/museum studies, sociology, anthropology, public policy, psychology) that will involve undergraduates in oral history projects and/or archival and community research.
In partnership with the Hudson River Museum, Sarah Lawrence invites applications for a Public Humanities Fellow starting either January or June 2023. This two-and-one half year, full-time fellowship is funded by a grant from the Mellon Foundation. At the Hudson River Museum, the Public Humanities Fellow will organize four exhibitions over two years in the Community and Partnership Gallery, and plan and execute programming. At the College, the Public Humanities Fellow will teach one course each fall semester. While the Fellow’s area of specialty is open, the fellow may teach courses based in museum/curatorial studies and/or visual cultures that will engage our students in the exhibitions and in the local community.
As part of an Anti-Racism Faculty Hiring Initiative, the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor invites applications for a tenure-track advanced assistant or beginning associate professor in Black Urban Studies/Urban Humanities with particular emphasis in Black culture and the urban environment and a strong commitment to community-engaged learning. Although prior engagement with Detroit is not a requirement, UM hopes that the successful candidate will want to build partnerships with communities in Detroit as an integral part of their teaching and research. Apply by October 7, 2022 for full consideration.
The University of California, San Francisco is seeking an Oral History Archivist. Under the direction of the Associate University Librarian, the Oral History Archivist will manage and coordinate all aspects of the oral history program. The oral history program aims to better understand and share the history of the health sciences education through recording, transcribing, and preserving oral histories with members of the UCSF teaching and research communities and by making these oral histories available to the public. This interview-based oral history project will capture the history from the architects of curriculum transformation at each of the four schools (Dental, Medicine, Nursing and Pharmacy).
The Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities (LEH) seeks a Grants Director. This position will lead the complete grant cycle for all LEH Public Programs Division grant streams from development and implementation to close out and reporting. The Director will oversee various public programs tied to LEH grantmaking and facilitate and maintain programmatic partnerships across Louisiana. The Director will work closely with the VP of Public Programs to design and implement initiatives that increase all Louisiana residents' access to quality humanities programming and will monitor geographic distribution of grantmaking to ensure equitable access to LEH programs.
Western Carolina University seeks a new Director of the Mountain Heritage Center. The director oversees the daily operations and employee supervision in the Center and assumes some curatorial duties to provide collection maintenance and development, determine the interpretive focus for exhibits, programs, and other outreach activities, subject to disciplinary expertise of the successful candidate.
Dartmouth College seeks a Project Manager to handle the day-to-day coordination and management of the New Hampshire Digital Newspaper Project (NHDNP). This is a term position ending August 2024, with the possibility of renewal. Work will include assisting with title selection, overseeing all technical and administrative activities, managing relationships with external partners and vendors, and leading outreach efforts.
The Confluencenter for Creative Inquiry (CCI) at the University of Arizona is seeking applicants for a full-time Research Scientist. The Confluencenter provides a physical and intellectual home for the arts, humanities, and social sciences, and programming demonstrates a commitment to the artistic and scholarly endeavors of faculty and students addressing some of the grand challenges in society today. The Research Scientist will be expected to help design and implement research projects in the humanities and social sciences.
Looking for job postings at state and jurisdictional humanities councils? The Federation of State Humanities Councils website has a new careers page!
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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