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Summer Opportunity for Graduate Students: The Rackham Public Humanities Institute

Posted Thursday, March 19th, 2009

August 17 - 21, 2009

The inaugural Public Humanities Institute will offer an interdisciplinary cohort of 20 graduate students an intensive weeklong exploration of the following questions:

  • Are you a public scholar? What does public scholarship look like in fields that focus on cultural inquiry?
  • How can the best traditions of cultural research and arts practice be used to generate collaborative partnerships linking academic and non-academic communities?
  • What forms of interdisciplinary knowledge do such partnerships create, and how are they evaluated?
  • How can we pursue public scholarship across the arc of the academic career, from graduate school on?

Addressed to students pursuing careers within higher education, the Public Humanities Institute cultivates skills and knowledge that enable publicly engaged scholarship and culture work. Public engagement, in this context, refers to work that is jointly created by people based in academic and non-academic institutions and organizations. Focusing on models of site- and project-based activities, Institute participants will work with faculty and community leaders to develop capacities for cross-disciplinary and cross-sectoral collaboration. The workshop format provides opportunities to engage directly, concretely, and formatively with different models of university-community collaboration in a variety of local contexts. Readings and discussions offer critical perspectives on the structural challenges and possibilities attending community-based research and teaching, as well as new maps and new language for navigating professional and institutional development in this field. The goal of the Institute is to hone students' capacity to imagine and enact collaborative culture work across multiple sites inside and outside the university, and to foster the capacity to represent their own aspirations and abilities as publicly-engaged scholars. The institute is based on a model launched through a series of Rackham-funded seminars and later adapted to a one-week format by the Simpson Center for the Humanities at the University of Washington.

Within the context of the Institute, "public humanities" refers to forms of publicly engaged inquiry that address culture and the arts critically and creatively, theoretically and pragmatically. Doctoral and master's students from any University of Michigan program are encouraged to apply.

Self-nominate by April 20th: application form plus resume, faculty letter of support (normally from primary academic advisor), and one-page statement discussing the public dimension or public potential of the student's academic work, relevant public/community experience, and the real or desired connection between the two. An interdisciplinary faculty committee will select participants. Forms available March 1. Notification by May 16th.

Details

When: August 17th - 21st, 2009
Where: East Seminar Room, 3rd Floor, Rackham Building, plus one day of site visits
Who: 20 U-M doctoral and master's students in their second year or beyond
Cost: Free
Faculty: Julie Ellison (Professor of American Culture, English, and Art and Design) plus visitors
Readings: Digital Course Pack
Follow-up: Workshops on project planning/management, teaching, and peer mentoring

Documents

Contact

Professor Julie Ellison (jeson@umich.edu)