September 2025 Public Humanities
A monthly newsletter from the Department of Public & Applied Humanities at The University of Arizona.
In this issue:
Calls for papers
Calls for proposals
Upcoming events
Publication and project news
September spotlight: Q&A with Dr. Jacqueline Barrios
Employment and funding opportunities
If you haven’t already, please consider subscribing to Substack, a free app, to receive the newsletter in your email inbox and not miss any future news! 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 papers
Public Humanities is an international open-access, cross-disciplinary, peer-reviewed journal that publishes work that intersects humanities scholarship with public life. Public Humanities currently invites submissions for the following themed issues: “AI and Cultural Identity” (deadline is November 1, 2025); “The Rights of Nature” (deadline is December 1, 2025); “Disability Justice in India” (deadline is December 10, 2025); and “Memorial Culture in Public Art” (deadline is June, 2026). Click on the links above to learn more details about each theme, the variety of formats for submission, and guidelines for publication. Learn more here about all present and past calls for papers from Public Humanities.
Calls for proposals
The American Association for State and Local History (AASLH) and the National Council on Public History (NCPH) invite historians to submit proposals to their 2026 joint conference titled “The Work of Revolution,” which is scheduled for September 16-19, 2025 in Providence, R.I. The conference program will reflect on revolutionary practices and work of the past, present, and future. Session formats include experiential approaches, community viewpoints, roundtables, and workshops, among others. The submission deadline is December 1, 2025.
The National Humanities Center (NHC) invites proposals for the Being Human Festival (US), a public humanities initiative for diverse, non-academic audiences across regions and subject areas. Events for this year’s festival will take place from April 18–May 2, 2026, and will be organized around the theme of “Between the Lines”–a space of hidden histories, shifting borders, and unspoken meanings. The NHC is seeking proposals from applicants interested in creatively mobilizing humanities research to design and stage public events. Academic lectures and symposia will not be eligible for inclusion. Grants ranging from $500 to $5,000 will be awarded to successful applicants. The submission deadline is November 5, 2025.
Upcoming Events
The 2025-2026 Humanities in Class Webinar Series, organized by the National Humanities Center, is now open for anyone who wishes to register. Upcoming webinars include: “What is Mexican Freedom in the Age of Abolition?” by María Esther Hammack on Tuesday, September 16 at 7:00 PM EDT and “Mexican Americans and Collective Memories of the US-Mexico War” by Omar S. Valerio-Jiménez on Tuesday, September 23 at 7:00 PM EDT. All webinars are free but require registration.
The Urban Humanities Network will host its second (Un)Conference at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, October 16-18, 2025. Presenters and participants will engage in dialogue around the practice and future of urban humanities through a wide range of formats, including site-specific experiential sessions, workshops, roundtable, lightning talks, and posters sessions. Find more details on the (Un)Conference 2 program and themes here.
Publications and Project News
"Don't Forget to Remember (Me)" is a new monument by Nekisha Durrett that has been installed at Bryn Mawr College. The monument is the culmination of a five-year campus-wide Art Remediating Campus Histories (ARCH) Project, addressing exclusionary histories on campus. Durrett's monument features braided brick pathways in the Cloisters courtyard with 250 engraved pavers in a square knot formation honoring the historically unrecognized Black staff members of the college.
In “Analysing Trends in the Digitization of Cultural Heritage: The Impact of Digital and Public Humanities on Museum Studies and Art Historical Matters,” published in the latest issue of Magazén (July, 2025), author Diego Mantoan explores how digital and public humanities are transforming museum studies and art history. The author argues that by digitizing collections and creating databases, museums can not only preserve their heritage but also make it more accessible to a wider audience. This can lead to new forms of engagement, including “accidental consumption” of art as it appears in unexpected places like non-art related Wikipedia articles.
“Performance Pedagogy: Theatrical Judgment and Global Citizenship” by Kevin Curran is a case study published this year in Public Humanities that explores the intersection of theatrical concepts and the idea of global citizenship. Curran discusses how engaging with performance—specifically, plays from 16th and 17th Century England—can help students develop a more nuanced understanding of different cultures and better navigate the complex global issues of today.
The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has announced $34.79 million in grants for 97 humanities projects nationwide. A special $10 million award, the largest in NEH history, will go to the University of Virginia to expedite the completion of Founding Era papers for the U.S. 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in 2026. The grants will also fund a diverse range of projects, including a digital edition of Frederick Douglass's writings, preservation efforts for the 9/11 Memorial & Museum, and a new exhibition on the American Revolution at the Museum of the City of New York. The NEH is also supporting archaeological research, professional development for educators. Learn more details here, including the full list of grants and categories awarded.
September Spotlight: Q&A with Dr. Jacqueline Barrios
Jacqueline Barrios is Assistant Professor of Public & Applied Humanities at the University of Arizona where she studies the global nineteenth-century, literature, and the city, which she extends in publicly-engaged projects within the field of urban humanities. She is author of Dear Charles Dickens, Love, South LA (University of Iowa Press, forthcoming), co-leads the Urban Humanities Network, and directs creative place-keeping initiatives in the Borderlands. This month, we are excited to highlight her perspectives as a public humanities practitioner via a brief Q&A.
How did you become interested and involved in the Public Humanities?
My personal background as an immigrant, and a longtime career as a public school teacher in a college-access program for first-gen students in South LA, showed me that knowledge production is deeply communal. As theorists Stefano Harney and Fred Moten put it, “study is what you do with other people.” Early on, my literary education was always entangled with the world of vibrant student activism, and I always found this “alternative curriculum” —producing cultural nights or volunteering at urban bilingual education programs — as formative. I knew that the toolkit of literary criticism, for example, or urban research, was always drawing from, and returning to, communities that I brought with me, especially in spaces of academia where they were absent or tokenized. I elaborated this into a practice that I call emplaced reading, the subject of my upcoming book, Dear Charles Dickens, Love, South LA (forthcoming, University of Iowa) where I show how to transform novels into strategies for urban placekeeping—that is, the shaping of space where collective senses of belonging and power are produced, expressed, and sustained. The book documents my journey inventing LitLabs, a hub for using visual performing arts and site-specific research media (production, exhibition, festival) to center the history and daily life of South LA teens using creative engagements with the 19c long-form novel.
What are some of the challenges involved in your work as a Public Humanities practitioner?
As I’ve proposed in other places, “public humanities” is a placeholder for creating porosities in education and research. A challenge, and I think also the opportunity, as a public humanist, is how to embrace, even invent “non-traditional” pathways for that work to proceed. Negotiating and navigating procedures and processes, connecting with different audiences and seeking mentors, taking risks and continually translating what we are interested in, are all a part of being in, and making, the public(s), in which our work can, and should, circulate. In my own training, I was fortunate to find institutions and programs where I could test out methods and create the “proofs-of-concept” of what might not have been readily legible. For example, I formed a partnership with Dickens Project, that connected my South LA work on the novel to one of the largest academic consortia for Victorian studies in the world, itself an exemplar of literary public humanities. And of course, especially instrumental was UCLA’s Urban Humanities Initiative (UHI), a program that brought together graduate students of humanities, planning and architecture in engaged transdisciplinary research on cities.
What future directions do you envision for your work as (a) Public Humanist practitioner(s)?
My future involves contributing to, and building infrastructures, at the global, and local levels, that can enliven and disseminate this work. I co-founded the global Urban Humanities Network (UHN), co-leading its inaugural event, the (Un)Conference in Tucson in 2023, a gathering for the next generation of urban humanities scholars and practitioners. We are fast approaching (Un)Conference 2, hosted in collaboration with The Engaged City at Washington University in St. Louis - on October 16-18. The (Un)Conference convenes communities where I can develop my current interest in locales of contemporary and 19th century Asian diasporic life, theorizing “convergences” between the urban humanities and Global Asia studies, which I elaborate with others in a recent article with Verge: Studies in Global Asias. All of this is expressed locally, with pilot events this month connecting the Center for Black Digital Research/ #DigBlk and their #Harper200 initiative with art collectives like the Chinese Chorizo Project and the Blue Lotus Art Collective. Most recently, I lead creative place-keeping courses and initiatives centered around the historic El Pueblo Neighborhood Center and Tucson’s Southside, complementing efforts by stakeholders, especially the Sunnyside Foundation for reinvestment at the site and beyond. All of this is showcased in www.ss22.st, the project’s digital platform. A signature upcoming event for us is the exhibition El Pueblo 50: Celebrating the Living the Heart of the Southside, coming soon on November 8.
Funding and Employment Opportunities
The Department of Public & Applied Humanities at The University of Arizona is seeking an experienced and dynamic Community Engagement Coordinator and Lecturer. This position will work in partnership with Department faculty, staff, and students to continue the cultivation and enhancement of a welcoming and collaborate environment for our students, alumni, and corporate and community partners. The successful candidate will be highly collaborative and collegial and have strong community engagement and relationship management skills. This full-time, non-tenure eligible position entails a 50% service and 50% teaching workload assignment to include teaching two General Education courses each semester. Prospective applicants who meet the minimum qualifications and believe they have a transferable skill set that would uniquely contribute to the Department’s work and impact are encouraged to apply. Application reviews begin on December 15, 2025.
Green-Wood, a historic living cemetery in Brooklyn, NY, is seeking a visionary and strategic leader to become the Shelby White & Leon Levy Director of Public History. This two-year grant-funded position is a unique opportunity to shape the narrative of one of New York City’s most historic landmarks. The Director will be responsible for bringing the layered histories of Green-Wood's 478 acres into meaningful public dialogue. The ideal candidate will have a strong passion for public history and a talent for combining scholarship, community engagement, and cultural preservation. The Director will work closely with the new Shelby White & Leon Levy Archivist to preserve, interpret, and share Green-Wood’s collections, with a special focus on elevating underrepresented voices. To apply, please email your resume and cover letter to hiring@green-wood.com. The position is open until filled.
The Wolf Humanities Center at University of Pennsylvania is awarding five (5) one-year Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowships to scholars in the humanities who are no more than five years out of their doctorate program. The 12-month appointment (July 1, 2026—June 30, 2027) carries a minimum stipend of $67,000, a $3000 research fund, and discounted single-coverage health insurance. Preference will be given to candidates not yet in tenure track positions whose proposals are interdisciplinary and would particularly benefit from and contribute to the intellectual environment at the University of Pennsylvania. For the 2026–2027 academic year, the topic will be Practice. Apply by November 2, 2025.
The Society for the Humanities at Cornell University is offering three (3) two-year Mellon postdoctoral fellowships in the humanities, starting in August 2026. Each fellowship provides a stipend of $64,000 per year. Fellows will have limited teaching duties and time for research, though participation in the Society's weekly seminars and events is expected. This year's fellowships are available in the fields of History of Art and Visual Studies (application due October 1, 2025) , Literatures in English (application due November 14, 2025), and Science & Technology Studies (application due January 15, 2026).
The Margaret Walker Center at Jackson State University, MS, is looking for a Visiting Scholar to join their team. The Visiting Scholar will focus on research in the digital humanities and African American and civil rights history. Duties include teaching one course per semester in Jackson State's Department of History, conducting research, and organizing two digital humanities convenings for the community. This is an excellent opportunity to contribute to the important work of the Margaret Walker Center and the COFO Center.
The Samek Art Museum at Bucknell University, PA, is looking for a full-time Public Programs & Outreach Manager to join their team. The Public Programs & Outreach Manager will be responsible for developing and implementing all of the museum’s educational and outreach activities. This includes planning and producing a wide range of public programs; managing the museum's marketing efforts; and fostering strong relationships with both campus faculty and local schoolteachers.
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.