As part of our efforts to document the impact of public humanities initiatives across higher education, we partnered with the East Asia National Resource Center (EANRC) at The George Washington University (GW) to conduct a focus group with undergraduate students participating in its professional development program. Acting on its mandate as a Title VI Center to expand accessibility of East Asian Studies resources to wider audiences, the EANRC has partnered with Spelman College to offer the program to their students. Through the annual program, Spelman students participate in professional development and learning opportunities about East Asia in Washington, D.C. In a typical year, the program involves bringing Spelman undergraduate students and a faculty member to GW for onsite and offsite visits with East Asian studies experts, scholars, and policymakers. Last year, the program was held virtually and consisted of a series of online lectures, workshops, and events throughout fall 2020 and spring 2021.

Humanities for All project director Michelle May-Curry is working alongside Daniel Fisher-Livne, assistant professor at Hebrew Union College and research affiliate with the National Humanities Alliance, to find contributors for a new edited volume on theories and practices of the publicly engaged humanities. The volume will be published in 2023 by Routledge.

This week over at Humanities for All we reached an exciting milestone - our database of publicly engaged humanities projects now holds over 2,000 entries!

In the 18th century, the Royall House and Slave Quarters was home to the largest enslavers in Massachusetts and the enslaved Black women, men, and children, who made their lavish way of life possible. Today, the Royall House and Slave Quarters is a site of memory. The museum’s architecture, household items, archaeological artifacts, and public programs center the histories and lived experiences of enslaved people while bearing witness to intertwined stories of wealth, bondage, and contestations of freedom in Massachusetts.

In my last blog post, I shared some insights from conversations I had been having with directors and program coordinators at Title VI National Resource Centers (NRCs). I had been speaking to them as part of our broader effort to gather publicly engaged humanities projects for the Humanities for All database. In the post, I detailed four key themes that emerged across the projects I encountered:

Over the past several months, I have had conversations with directors and program coordinators at Title VI National Resource Centers (NRCs) to gather publicly engaged humanities projects to add to the Humanities for All database.

Last month during the Virtual National Humanities Conference, we had the opportunity to hear from Johnetta Cole, this year’s Capps Lecturer, in conversation with Smithsonian secretary Lonnie Bunch. Bunch noted how he is often asked whether he has a “political agenda.” The assumption behind this question, he suggested, was that as a historian and museum professional he might be partisan or biased due to his commitment to racial justice. He takes inspiration from Cole who throughout her long career in museums and higher education has fought for racial justice, when he answers swiftly “yes: to make the country better. What’s wrong with that?”

In April 2020, the Humanities for All team partnered with the Council of Independent Colleges (CIC) to conduct focus groups with students who had participated in publicly engaged projects funded by the CIC’s Humanities Research for the Public Good (HRPG) grants. We held five focus groups with 20 students from 15 institutions who generously shared their thoughts on what they learned and the skills they gained through publicly engaged humanities work. We present a summary of the focus group responses here, while individual posts written by four focus group participants are on the Humanities for All blog:

During National Arts and Humanities Month, Humanities for All has been exploring how higher ed-based humanists are using the tools of public humanities and partnership to promote social and racial justice. In recent decades, many American colleges and universities have begun uncovering their historic support and involvement with the institution of slavery (and the ongoing denial of these linkages) as a way of mending a broken sense of trust between students, colleges, and the surrounding community.