Humanities for All Winter Webinar Series
Through our Humanities for All initiative, the National Humanities Alliance documents public humanities projects across higher ed institutions and supports faculty and administrators in carrying out these projects. We are pleased to announce a virtual event series designed to support the higher ed community in launching, scaling up, and documenting the impact of public humanities in higher ed.
Panelists from a range of institutions will share how they built successful programs, distill lessons learned along the way, and answer questions from the audience. Each event is an opportunity to connect with a community of colleagues committed to public engagement through the humanities.
This series is part of NHA’s Humanities for All initiative, which is generously funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Recordings will be available on this page after each event.
Event 1 - Starting Points: Higher Ed Perspectives on how to Begin a Publicly Engaged Humanities Practice
Thursday, December 9 from 1-2pm EST. Please click here to view the recording.
Across college and university campuses, humanities scholars are responding to an increasing call (from students, administrators, faculty, local community members, and scholarly societies) to employ the tools of their discipline to engage with public audiences outside of the academy. But how does one get started? What skill sets need to be learned? And how does one navigate a complex network of funding and support structures that vary widely based on institution type, discipline, and region?
This moderated conversation will call upon humanities scholars based in higher ed to share examples of how they began a publicly engaged humanities practice. The conversation will be facilitated by Michelle May-Curry, project director of the Humanities for All initiative, and will include:
- Jason Ruiz, associate professor of American studies at the University of Notre Dame, 2019-2020 Whiting Fellow, and project director for “Latinx Murals of Pilsen: A Digital Toolkit for Scholarship, Teaching, and Discovery”
- Araceli Hernández-Laroche, associate professor of modern languages and director of the South Carolina Centro Latino at the University of South Carolina, Upstate
- Hana Maruyama, assistant professor of history, University of Connecticut and co-creator/producer of Campu, a podcast created in partnership with the Japanese American oral history organization Densho
Event 2 - Supporting Humanities Faculty in Creating Engaged Courses
Thursday, January 13th from 1-2pm EST. Please click here to view the recording.
Calls for publicly engaged humanities courses that center community partnership and project-based learning are increasing across college and university campuses. Undergraduate and graduate students are seeking training that puts the critical thinking and storytelling methodologies of the humanities toward public facing works. Faculty, too, are keen to answer the call for increased public engagement in the classroom and in many cases are leading the charge. Nonetheless, to develop these courses, faculty generally need time, funding, and the ability to develop mutually beneficial community partnerships.
This moderated conversation will showcase successful examples of supporting faculty in the creation of engaged humanities courses. Speakers will share their collective expertise in building infrastructure to support faculty, including the successful models they have developed and challenges they have encountered. The conversation will be facilitated by Michelle May-Curry, project director of the Humanities for All initiative, and will include:
- Jessica Berman, director of the Dresher Center for the Humanities and professor of English at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County
- Dean Allbritton, director of the Center for Arts and Humanities and associate professor of Spanish at Colby College
- Joe Ciadella, senior program lead for public scholarship and director of the Engaged Pedagogy Initiative at the University of Michigan
Event 3 - Scaling Up: Growing Public Humanities Projects Beyond Higher Ed
Thursday, January 27 from 1-2pm EST. Please click here to view the recording.
As public humanists expand their long-standing, higher ed based public humanities projects and increase their capacity to work beyond the university, they are learning how to better engage communities nationally and internationally. What tools, support structures, and methods of engagement are needed to scale up a public humanities project? What new challenges, skill sets, and opportunities does this growth produce?
This moderated conversation will showcase successful examples of how higher ed faculty have expanded their publicly engaged projects into nationally visible initiatives, non-profits, and revenue-generating programs. The conversation will be facilitated by Michelle May-Curry, project director of the Humanities for All initiative, and will include:
- Lisa New, director of the Center for Public Humanities and professor of English at Arizona State University, and project director of Poetry in America
- Dave Tell, professor of communication studies and co-director of the Institute for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Kansas, and project director of the Emmett Till Memory Project
- Benjamin Saulsberry, public engagement and museum education director at Emmett Till Interpretive Center
- Julie Weise, associate professor of history at the University of Oregon, and project director of the Nuestro South Podcast
- Erik Valera, chief operating officer, El Centro Hispano, Inc.
- Leslie Cornfeld, Founder and CEO of the National Education Equity Lab
Event 4 - Measuring Impact: The Role of Assessment in the Publicly Engaged Humanities
Wednesday, February 16 from 2–3pm EST. Please click here to view the recording.
As public humanities projects grow in both number and size at higher ed institutions, the question of assessment has become increasingly important. There are many outstanding questions: How do you assess the impact of a public humanities project? What methods are feasible for project directors? Across higher ed, public humanists are asking these questions and looking to build their capacity to assess and share the impact of their work to attract additional support and funding.
This moderated conversation will discuss public humanities assessment from a variety of perspectives. Speakers will share their collective experiences and expertise in conducting assessment of public humanities projects, reading grant proposals and awarding grants, and leveraging data to advocate for those projects, programs, and initiatives. Discussion topics may include the challenges of assessment, how funders view assessment in grant applications, and what kinds of data campus leaders find compelling. This session will be moderated by Younger Oliver, research associate for the Humanities for All initiative, and will include:
- Lily Wilson, coordinator of the Wayne State Humanities Clinic at Wayne State University
- Gigi Naglak, director of programs at the New Jersey Council for the Humanities
- Mark Wilson, director of the Caroline Marshall Draughon Center for the Arts & Humanities at Auburn University