Bowling Green, Kentucky is home to nearly 5,000 Bosnian-Americans, many of whom came fleeing war and ethnic cleansing in the 1990s. In late September 2017, the Bosnian-American community of Bowling Green came together to open “A Culture Carried: Bosnians in Bowling Green” at Western Kentucky University’s Kentucky Museum. The exhibition, which was recently extended through May 11, 2019, represents a product of the university and community’s ongoing collaboration to document and present Bosnian-American culture.

When we launched Humanities for All in July, it included a sortable database of over 1,400 publicly engaged humanities projects. For the first time, humanities practitioners, administrators, and advocates had access to a large-scale nationwide cross-section of work in the field. For example, a philosophy graduate student could find a whole corpus of philosophy projects or dig in more specifically and search for projects in their discipline that are based at a community college and address immigration. Building this database has offered a unique perspective on the field, from which a number of patterns have emerged concerning the methods, impacts, and communication of the publicly engaged humanities.

This summer, NHA launched Humanities for All, a new website documenting the past 10 years of publicly engaged humanities research, teaching, and programming in universities and colleges across the U.S. The website presents a cross-section of the field, including over 1,400 projects that are searchable, sortable, and illustrated with 51 in-depth profiles that represent the range of the field. When viewed together, the scope and impact of this work become clear: publicly engaged humanities initiatives are building and strengthening communities; creating innovative and practical learning experiences for students and people of all ages and backgrounds; and broadening our understanding of ourselves, our nation, and our world.