Past Events

2024-2025 Events

KEYNOTE

2025 Public Humanities Symposium

Nicole Fleetwood - Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration

Thursday, April 17, 2025
5:30-7:00 pm
Harris Hall #108
Free! Public welcome!

Reception to follow (7-8 pm) in Kresge Hall Atrium (2nd floor), where we will award the 2025 Public Humanities Award to artist and activist Dorothy Burge.

Nicole Fleetwood (James Weldon Johnson Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication, NYU) will be in conversation with Marquis Bey (Professor of Black Studies, Northwestern). This public lecture by Professor Fleetwood is the keynote of the Kaplan Humanities Institute's two-day Public Humanities Symposium. Fleetwood is the author of Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration (2020) and the curator of a MoMA PS1 exhibition of the same name. Both Fleetwood’s book and exhibition were named as a best book and a best show of the year, respectively, by the New York Times, The National Book Foundation, Smithsonian, and The New Yorker. Fleetwood is a recipient of a 2021 MacArthur Fellowship grant and many other awards and accolades besides. 

Nicole R. Fleetwood is the inaugural James Weldon Johnson Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication in the Steinhardt School at New York University. A MacArthur Fellow, she is a writer, curator, and art critic whose interests are contemporary Black diasporic art and visual culture, photography studies, art and public practice, performance studies, gender and feminist studies, Black cultural history, creative nonfiction, prison abolition and carceral studies, and poverty studies. She is the author Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration (Harvard University Press, 2020), winner of the National Book Critics Award in Criticism, the John Hope Franklin Publication Prize of the American Studies Association, the Susanne M. Glasscock Humanities Book Prize for Interdisciplinary Scholarship, and both the Charles Rufus Morey Book Award in art history and the Frank Jewett Mather Award in art criticism. She is also the curator of the traveling exhibition, Marking Time: Art in the Era of Mass Incarceration, which debuted at MoMA PS1 (September 17, 2020-April 5, 2021). The exhibition was listed as “one of the most important art moments in 2020” by The New York Times and among the best shows of the year by The New Yorker and Hyperallergic. Photo of Nicole Fleetwood by Naima Green.

Marquis Bey is Professor of Black Studies and Gender & Sexuality Studies, with appointments in English and Critical Theory, at Northwestern. Their writing and teaching concern black feminist theory, trans and nonbinary studies, critical theory, and abolition. They are the author of Black Trans Feminism and Cistem Failure: Essays on Blackness and Cisgender, both published in 2022, and are currently at work on a book entitled A Nonbinary Life.

2025 Public Humanities Symposium

Thursday and Friday, April 17-18, 2025
Various locations, Evanston campus

See the full schedule at https://humanities.northwestern.edu/graduate/ph-grad-practicum/events/pub-hum-symposium.html

Join the Kaplan Humanities Institute on Thursday, April 17 and Friday, April 18 for our annual two-day celebration of publicly engaged humanities work. All events are free and open to the public—drop in any time!

Community Connections: Strategies for Publicly Engaged Pedagogy

Friday, February 28, 2025
2:00-3:30 pm
Harris Hall, Room 108
Free, public event. Food provided.

Community engaged teaching offers powerful opportunities for mutually beneficial collaboration between university students and community organizations. Yet creating an enriching learning environment that meets the needs of everyone involved is a complex task that requires navigating institutional constraints, centering human relationships, and embracing risk. This event brings together experienced facilitators of community engaged teaching—Helen Cho (Asian American Studies), Liz McCabe (Chicago Field Studies), and Ashley Cheyemi McNeil (Full Spectrum Features)—to share their expertise and to speak from their own experience designing a course together. New and experienced instructors alike are invited to join us in community as we explore the ins and outs of this process, from building a sustainable partnership to managing a complex classroom environment.

Panelists

Dr. Helen Cho is a visiting assistant professor in the Asian American Studies Program. Her commitment to community engaged approaches to co-creating knowledge inform her research, pedagogy, and advocacy work. Currently, she is collaborating with grassroots political campaigns to understand how narratives of difference shape the way folks navigate ascribed and avowed racial and ethnic identities in electoral politics and partnering with a local fair housing organization to bring a diverse set of tenant voices together into a conversation that informs housing policy. She has designed and co-taught several community engaged courses on making community media.

Dr. Liz McCabe directs Chicago Field Studies, the internship program in Weinberg College at Northwestern, where she has developed and taught experiential learning courses for over fifteen years. Her teaching includes courses on Chicago-based civic and community engagement, representations of work, and labor history and theory, as well as the immersive Engage Chicago summer program, which places undergraduates in nonprofit community-engaged internships in Chicago while they live and learn together. She has been involved with various arts and education nonprofits and holds a PhD in English from Northwestern.

Dr. Ashley Cheyemi McNeil is the Director of Education and Research at Full Spectrum Features, where she develops cinematic Open Educational Resources and designs community-driven collaboration, development strategy, and fundraising initiatives. With expertise in managing complex, public-facing programs, Dr. McNeil leads from the belief that stories of being and belonging shape individuals and communities, driving her work to uplift marginalized voices through innovative and culturally impactful projects.

Moderator

Trish Bredar is the Public Humanities Postdoctoral Fellow in the Kaplan Humanities Institute. As Director of the Institute's Public Humanities Graduate Practicum, she helps doctoral students design and carry out projects that engage with communities beyond the academy. As a teacher of nineteenth-century literature, Dr. Bredar frequently uses experiential learning opportunities to enliven connections between past and present, most notably while teaching study-abroad courses in London. She is also committed to expanding access to higher education, and has worked with prison education programs in Indiana and Illinois, and serves on the advisory board for The Clemente Course in the Humanities.

The Ethics of Community-Engaged Humanities Work

Fri., November 8, 2024
12:00 - 1:30 pm CT
Via Zoom

Join us for a discussion of the big questions and practical considerations involved in conducting ethical community-engaged scholarship in the humanities!

Scholarly work that engages with communities beyond the academy raises ethical questions on both a theoretical and practical level. How can scholars in the humanities and humanistic social sciences foster meaningful, mutually beneficial community partnerships? How can we as collaborators evaluate and address ethical considerations at the level of project design, execution, and outcomes? How can we best manage competing institutional expectations and timelines? This free, virtual panel brings together three experienced public humanities practitioners to share their perspectives on the challenges and rewards of community-engaged scholarship. This discussion is open to the public and will be useful to anyone who is interested in humanistic work that extends beyond the walls of the academy.

Panelists

Asad Ali Jafri is a cultural producer, community organizer, and interdisciplinary artist. Using a grassroots approach and global perspective, Jafri connects artists and communities across imagined boundaries to create meaningful engagements and experiences. He is a co-founder of SpaceShift Collective, a collaborative of artists experimenting with the ways in which we work, live, and create. Jafri is also the Director of Strategy and Innovation at Words Beats & Life—a Washington D.C. based Hip Hop organization.

Aymar Jèan “AJ” Christian is the Margaret Walker Alexander Professor of Communication Studies at Northwestern. His research focuses on the political economy of legacy and new media, cultural studies, and community-based research. He regularly engages industry and community as part of his work, including by serving as executive producer of films and series such as Jules Rosskam’s Desire Lines, Sarah Oberholtzer’s We Call Each Other, and The Cookout with producer Makiah Green and director Sam Bailey. Dr. Christian is also a co-founder of OTV | Open Television, a platform for intersectional television.

Rebekah Coffman is a historian, preservationist, and curator currently serving as curator of religion and community history at the Chicago History Museum where she leads the Chicago Sacred initiative. For CHM, she is co-curator of exhibitions Back Home: Polish Chicago  (May 2023-June 2024) and Aquí en Chicago (forthcoming October 2025). Her interdisciplinary work is at the intersection of religious identity and the built environment and explores how to best safeguard tangible and intangible heritages in material and visual culture through place-based, community-centered approaches.

Moderator

Kelly Wisecup is the Arthur E. Andersen Teaching and Research Professor in the Department of English at Northwestern. She is also an affiliate of the Center for Native American and Indigenous Research. Her public humanities scholarship includes collaborations with scholars and tribal nations on a digital humanities project involving the Literary Voyager or Muzzeniegun (a 19th-century literary magazine edited and created by Ojiwbe poet Jane Johnston Schoolcraft and her family); and collaborations around archives, digital humanities, and rivers with the American Indian Center of Chicago and a Humanities Without Walls multi-institution research group.

2023-2024 Events

2024 Public Humanities Symposium 2024

Friday, May 10, 2024
9:30 am - 6:00 pm CT

with Opening Reception and Exhibit
Thursday, May 9, 2024
4:30 - 6:00 pm

This all-day symposium seeks to engage members of the Northwestern community and the broader public in discussions around public and community-based scholarship. This free public event will feature a keynote talk, roundtable discussions with this year’s Kaplan Public Humanities Graduate Fellows, and a presentation of this year’s Kaplan Institute Public Humanities Award. All events are free and open to the public—drop in any time. Click here to learn more about this year’s Practicum Fellows. 

CONVENERS

Claudia Kinahan (Theatre and Drama)
Bridgette Hulse (Anthropology)
Trish Bredar (Kaplan Humanities Institute)
Thomas Burke (Kaplan Humanities Institute)

OPENING RECEPTION AND EXHIBIT

Thursday, May 9, 2024
4:30 - 6:00 pm CT
Kaplan Artist Studio (Kresge Hall #2315)
Northwestern Evanston Campus

Join us for an opening reception and interactive exhibit to kick off this year’s Public Humanities Symposium! Guests can explore samples from podcasts, websites, videos, and hands-on learning experiences, all created by Northwestern graduate students who are this year’s Kaplan Public Humanities Fellows. Refreshments will be served. Drop in any time between 4:30 and 6:00 pm!

PUBLIC HUMANITIES SYMPOSIUM

Friday, May 10, 2024
9:30 am - 6:00 pm CT
Kaplan Seminar Room (Kresge Hall #2350)
Northwestern Evanston Campus

Conveners:

Claudia Kinahan (Interdisciplinary PhD in Theatre and Drama)
Bridgette Hulse (Department of Anthropology)
Trish Bredar (Kaplan Humanities Institute)
Thomas Burke (Kaplan Humanities Institute)

This all-day event seeks to engage members of the Northwestern and wider community in conversation around public scholarship. This year’s symposium will feature: 

• Opening Remarks from Dr. Adrian Randolph, Dean of Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences
• Roundtable Panels with Kaplan Public Humanities Fellows, Northwestern graduate students who have publicly-engaged projects across a variety of forms, including podcasts, social media accounts, reading groups, performances, recipe books, and more. Learn more about their projects here.
• Keynote Lunch with Lauren M. Pacheco, Co-Creative Director of Chicago Humanities, in conversation with Kaplan Institute Director Jessica Winegar
• Public Humanities Award Ceremony and Reception recognizing Dr. Ashley Cheyemi McNeil, Director of Education and Research at Full Spectrum Features, with remarks from Jason Matsumoto and Dr. Helen Cho
  

Full Symposium Schedule

Thursday, May 9

Opening Reception and Exhibit, 4:30 - 6:00 pm
Kaplan Artist Studio (Kresge Hall 2315)

An interactive showcase of public humanities projects. Food and drinks will be served.

Friday, May 10

All Friday events will take place in the Kaplan Seminar Room (Kresge Hall 2350)

Breakfast, 9:30-10:00 am

Welcome, 10:00-10:30 am

Opening Remarks
Dr. Adrian Randolph, Dean, Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences

Introduction
Dr. Trish Bredar, Director of the Public Humanities Practicum

Roundtable 1, 10:30-11:45 am
Dialogue, Identity, Connection

Moderator: Thomas Burke, Associate Director, Kaplan Humanities Institute 

Presenters:

• Bipin Sebastian (Rhetoric and Public Culture), “Majorities and Minorities”
• Jennifer Ligaya Senecal (Performance Studies), “Life in Blasia: A Podcast”
• Kylie Walters (Screen Cultures), “Psychoanalysis and the Climate Crisis”
• Victoria Pham (History), “Mapping Connections: A Vietnamese American Webinar Series”

Keynote Lunch, 12:00-1:30 pm
Creative Futures: New Directions for the Public Humanities

Lunch will be served. Click HERE to learn more and to RSVP.

Lauren M. Pacheco, Co-Creative Director, Chicago Humanities, in conversation with Dr. Jessica Winegar, Director, Kaplan Humanities Institute.

Roundtable 2, 1:45-3:00 pm
Place, Objects, Performance

Moderator: Claudia Kinahan, Co-Convener, Kaplan Public Humanities Graduate Practicum

Presenters:

• Peri Green (Learning Sciences), “Community Crawls TikTok Series”
• Devika Ranjan (Performance Studies), “THIS IS NOT A MEMORIAL: a performance, an act of community care”
• Craig Stevens (Anthropology), “AfriSem: 3D Humanities Speaker and Workshop Series”
• Sreddy Yen (English), “Race from Africa: Four Literary Commentaries”

Roundtable 3, 3:15-4:30 pm
Food, Culture, History

Moderator: Bridgette Hulse, Public Humanities Intern, Kaplan Humanities Institute

Presenters:

• Jen Comerford (English), “The Experiential History Project”
• Lauren Cole (History), “Gender and Medieval Studies: A YouTube Series”
• Archita Arun and Clara Lee (Performance Studies), “Craving Together: A Digital Archive of What We Eat”

Public Humanities Award Ceremony and Reception, 4:30-6:00 pm

Food and drinks will be served.

Honoring Kaplan Public Humanities Award recipient Dr. Ashley Cheyemi McNeil with remarks from Jason Matsumoto, Co-Executive Director and Co-Founder of Full Spectrum Features, and Dr. Helen Cho, Visiting Assistant Professor in Northwestern's Asian American Studies Program.

MEET OUR PUBLIC HUMANITIES FELLOWS 2023-2024

To read full descriptions of the fellows’ projects, please click here.

Archita Arun and Clara Lee, “Craving Together: A Digital Archive of What We Eat”

Archita Arun (she/her) is an interdisciplinary researcher, writer, and singer from India. She studies the embodiment of desire, pleasure, and refusal by South Asian femme and queer artists in the diaspora across music, performance art, and visual culture. Her areas of research include sound studies, minoritarian performance theory, and psychoanalysis.

Clara Lee (they/she) is a researcher, writer, and cultural worker from Singapore. Traversing affect theory, media studies, performance studies, and queer of colour critique, in their work they pursue what moving/being moved is and does, and under which techno-aesthetic conditions does movement express itself as a particular mode of feeling.

Lauren Cole, “Gender and Medieval Studies: A YouTube Series”

Lauren Cole is a third year PhD student in the Department of History, researching how a 12th century nun created a network of medical knowledge. She is also a public historian on the platform TikTok, where she posts videos about medieval history to over 90,000 followers. 

Jennifer Comerford, “The Experiential History Project”

Jen Comerford is a PhD candidate in English. Her dissertation explores how hands and touch structure female experience and knowledge-making practices in the long eighteenth century. Her work has been supported by the Newberry Library and the Jane Austen Society of North America.

Peri Ella Green, “Community Crawls TikTok Series”

Peri Ella Green is a second-year doctoral student in the Learning Sciences program at the School of Education and Social Policy. Hailing from Decatur, Georgia, she now collaborates with high school students in Chicago's South Side to explore and document how young people utilize their time outside of school. Her research examines how individuals navigate both physical spaces (like local neighborhoods) and digital environments (such as online social networks) to engage in informal learning throughout their lives. After completing her degree, she plans to return to Decatur to develop sustainable, lifelong learning opportunities in underserved local neighborhoods and to create a digital tool that supports informal learning across online spaces.

Jennifer Ligaya, “Life in Blasia: A Podcast”

Jennifer Ligaya is an AfroPinay sound and performance composer and artist scholar born and raised in Chicago with an interdisciplinary background in visual art, vocal performance, dance, and theater. Mother to a Scorpio son, and PhD candidate of Performance Studies, her original work includes solo and collaborative performance compositions and sound installations. Her creative work highlights critical conversations around identity, liberation, ancestral indigenous knowledge systems, and moments of communal healing, through the weaving of traditional and contemporary sound, performance, and personal ancestral folk arts practices. Ligaya’s research interests sit at the intersections of performance, sound, and dance studies, alongside Cultural Studies and Womanist Theory. Website:  www.jenniferligaya.com

Victoria Pham, “Mapping Connections: A Vietnamese American Webinar Series”

Victoria Pham is a doctoral student in History and a Mellon Cluster Fellow in Comparative Race and Diaspora. Her interests include memory studies of the Vietnam War, Asian American history, refugee migration, settler colonialism, and queer theory.

Devika Ranjan, “THIS IS NOT A MEMORIAL: a performance, an act of community care”

Devika Ranjan (she/her) is a writer, ethnographer, theater-maker, and educator who tells stories about migration and technology. She creates communities of care through devised immersive performance and has facilitated workshops with migrants worldwide. As a Marshall Scholar, Devika holds degrees from Cambridge, RCSSD, and Georgetown. Devika is currently studying “data doubles” at Northwestern.

Bipin Sebastian, “Minorities and Majorities”

Bipin Sebastian is a PhD candidate with the program of Rhetoric and Public Culture. He studies minoritarian responses to ethno-religious majoritarianism, with a focus on the so-called democracies of South Asia. 

Craig Stevens, “AfriSem: 3D Humanities Speaker and Workshop Series”

Craig Stevens is a futurist archeologist and curator. His work seeks to express anthropological and archaeological data through creative processes and immersive products. His archaeological research investigates the placemaking strategies of nineteenth-century Black American and Caribbean Back-to-Africa settlers and their descendants in Liberia. Through the use of 3D digitization and innovative curatorial strategies, Craig seeks to expose broad and diverse audiences to African and African Diasporic material culture. He recently developed and curated the Augmented Curiosities exhibition for the Herskovits Library of African Studies, which leverages Augmented and Virtual Reality technologies to provide opportunities for intimate engagement with African object collections. Craig is completing his doctoral research in the Anthropology Department.

Kylie Walters, “Psychoanalysis and the Climate Crisis”

Kylie Walters is a PhD candidate in Screen Cultures studying the visual culture of oil corporations from the postwar era through the 1973-1974 oil crisis. Her broader interests include architecture, Marxist cultural theory, and psychoanalysis.

Yuan-Chih (Sreddy) Yen: “Race from Africa: Four Literary Commentaries”

Yuan-Chih (Sreddy) Yen is a PhD candidate in English whose research considers the re-enchantment of humanism in contemporary African literature. They received their MA from the University of the Witwatersrand, and post about the books they’re reading on Instagram at @sreddyen.

Digital Dialogues: Bringing the Public Humanities Online
Friday, February 23, 2024
12:00-1:00pm CT on Zoom

How can scholars best engage with audiences across platforms?
How might scholars think about reframing their expertise and their work for digital formats?
How should we measure the impact and value of this scholarship?

Panelists 

Pablo J. Boczkowski examines relationships between material culture and cultural material from a comparative perspective. His most recent book, co-authored with Mora Matassi, is To Know is To Compare: Studying Social Media Across Nations, Media and Platforms (MIT Press, 2023). He’s currently working on a book manuscript tentatively entitled Digital Freud: The Refiguration of Inequality, Sociality and Personhood in Clinical Practice.

Raven Schwam-Curtis is a full-time content creator, keynote speaker, and recent Northwestern University graduate. Her research explores intersectional histories with a focus on Black and Jewish relationality. Bringing the expertise of academia to life in digital spaces allows Raven to serve the communities she loves and cherishes. Her work has been featured in Glamour magazine, The Washington Post, USA Today, and Buzzfeed. As Gen Z increasingly turns to digital methods of learning educators need to adapt, and as a member of Gen Z themselves, Raven is up for the challenge!

Neil Verma is an assistant professor in Radio/TV/Film. Verma is author of Theater of the Mind: Imagination, Aesthetics, and American Radio Drama (Chicago, 2012), co-editor of Anatomy of Sound: Norman Corwin and Media Authorship (California, 2016), and co-editor of Indian Sound Cultures, Indian Sound Citizenship (Michigan, 2020). His awards include a Best First Book Award from the Society for Cinema and Media Studies and the Andor Kraszna-Krausz Best Moving Image Book Award. His new book, Narrative Podcasting in the Age of Obsession, is forthcoming in June from the University of Michigan Press. 

Moderator

Helen Cho is a visiting assistant professor in Northwestern’s Asian American Studies Program. Her research and teaching examine the role of mass media in producing and disseminating narratives of sociopolitical difference, and how narratives of difference shape the way people navigate their ascribed and avowed racial and ethnic identities in U.S. and international contexts. Cho’s commitment to community engaged scholarship and pedagogy has led her to design and teach experiential learning courses that bring community-based organizations and students together to co-create knowledge, moving students from theory to practice.

The Ethics of Community-Engaged Humanities Work

Thurs., November 30, 2023
12:00 - 1:00 pm CST

Scholarly work that engages with communities beyond the academy raises ethical questions on both a theoretical and practical level. How can scholars in the humanities and humanistic social sciences foster meaningful, mutually beneficial community partnerships? How can we as collaborators evaluate and address ethical considerations at the level of project design, execution, and outcomes? How can collaborators best manage competing institutional expectations and timelines? This free, virtual panel brings together three experienced practitioners to share their perspectives on the challenges and rewards of community-engaged humanities scholarship. This discussion is open to the public and will be useful to anyone who is interested in humanistic work that extends beyond the walls of the academy.

Panelists

Dr. Ruth Curry is a staff member at Northwestern's Center for Civic Engagement, where she supports graduate students and faculty in their community-engaged teaching, learning, and research. She studied philosophy and literature at the University of Chicago and Northwestern University, where she received her PhD in Comparative Literary Studies. At Northwestern, she has taught and supported a number of undergraduate and graduate courses connecting humanistic study and civic engagement for Chicago Field Studies, Philosophy, and Asian American Studies.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon is Executive Director of Illinois Humanities. She received her BA and MA in history from the University of Chicago and PhD in Education from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Before joining Illinois Humanities in 2019, she served as Vice President of Education and Experience at the Chicago Architecture Center and as a senior researcher at the Great Cities Institute at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is the founding executive director of Project Exploration, a nonprofit dedicated to changing the face of science for youth and girls of color, which was recognized locally and nationally, including with a Presidential Award for Excellence. She has been named a Notable Leader in DEI by Crain's Chicago Business, a National After School Champion by the After School Alliance, Chicagoan of the Year by Chicago Magazine, and a Leadership Fellow with the Chicago Community Trust. Her current research and writing focus on the ways in which participatory humanities experiences bridge civic identities and catalyze social change. Lyon is the author of the graphic novels No Small Plans, and Washington By and By, and served as coeditor for A Simple Justice: The Challenge of Small Schools. @LyonGabrielle 

Dr. Mérida M. Rúa is a faculty member in the Latina and Latino Studies Program at Northwestern. Her research and teaching focus on urban studies and aging, with an emphasis on communities of color in US cities. She is the author of A Grounded Identidad: Making New Lives in Chicago’s Puerto Rican Neighborhoods and co-editor of Critical Dialogues in Latinx Studies: A Reader and a special issue of the journal Latino Studies on “The Art of Latina and Latino Elderhood.” Her current book project, Migrations to Elderhood, examines the everyday lives of Puerto Rican old-timers and offers insight into how they make meaning of their experiences and socio-spatial environments as they age into later life.

Moderator

Dr. Trish Bredar is the Postdoctoral Fellow in Public Humanities at Northwestern’s Kaplan Institute for the Humanities. She holds a PhD in English, with a graduate minor in Gender Studies, from the University of Notre Dame. She teaches and researches in the field of nineteenth-century British literature, with a particular interest in the socio-political dynamics of physical mobility. At Northwestern, she co-convenes the Kaplan Institute’s Public Humanities Graduate Practicum, which supports PhD students pursuing publicly engaged humanities projects. 

 2022-2023 Events

Public Humanities Graduate Research Symposium 2023

May 12, 2023 (Fri.)
9:30 am - 6:00 pm CST
Northwestern Evanston Campus

FREE! Public welcome. No RSVP needed (except for the lunch keynote); drop in any time!

This all-day event will showcase the interdisciplinary projects of the Kaplan Public Humanities Graduate Research Workshop participants and feature a keynote on the future of the Humanities PhD with Teresa Mangum (Obermann Center for Advanced Studies). Northwestern Associate Dean and Professor Miriam Petty will provide opening remarks, and the Workshop will also present a public humanities award to Dino Robinson (Northwestern University Press and Shorefront Legacy Center).

We invite the broader Northwestern community to a multifaceted conversation about the public humanities at the university and beyond!

Click HERE to read more about each workshop participant's project.

Location Key

• Kaplan Seminar Room is Kresge #2351
• Trienens Forum is Kresge #1515

Schedule

9:30 - 10:00 am  •  Breakfast (Kaplan Seminar Room)

10:00 - 10:15 am  •  Opening remarks: Miriam J. Petty  (Trienens Forum):
Associate Dean for Academic Programs, The Graduate School; Associate Professor, Department of Radio/Television/Film; Faculty Affiliate: African American Studies, Performance Studies, Gender & Sexuality Studies; Charles McCormick Deering Chair in Teaching Excellence

10:15 - 11:15 am  •  Panel #1 (Trienens Forum)
Digital Stories: Reckoning with the Past, Imagining the Future
Moderator: Wan Heo

• Prince Grace, “Space/Race: Exhibiting the Present Futures of Difference”
• Olabanke Oyinkansola Goriola, “Telling Our Dance Stories and Reclaiming our Voice: The Chicago Black Dance Legacy Project”
• Rebekah Bryer, “Attempting ‘Remembrance and Reckonings’”

11:25 am - 12:25 pm  •  Panel #2 (Trienens Forum)
Taking It Slow: Cultivating Patience, Resilience, and Community
Moderator: Bridgette Hulse

• Bailey Flynn, “‘Slow Work’ Experiments: Producing Community Climate Resilience”
• Emily Masincup, “Screening Mexican Horror: Lessons in Flexibility”
• Cinnamon Williams, "Violence and Vulnerability: Creating Survivor-Led Knowledges About Domestic Abuse"

12:30 - 1:00 pm  •  Lunch (Kaplan Seminar Room)

1:00 - 2:00 pm  •  KEYNOTE (Kaplan Seminar Room; details below)
The PhD of the Future: Humanities Scholarship Beyond Boundaries
Teresa Mangum (Obermann Center for Advanced Studies, University of Iowa) in conversation with Kelly Wisecup (Kaplan Humanities Institute, Northwestern)

2:15 - 3:00 pm  •  Panel #3 (Trienens Forum)
Humanities in Translation: Language and Literature Beyond the University
Moderator: Tom Burke

• Ishan Mehandru and Soumya Rachel Shailendra, “Translators’ Adda: Translating Caste and Sex from South Asia”
• Olivia Lingyi Xu, “Instrumentalizing English Literature in a High School English Classroom in China”

3:10 - 4:10 pm  •  Panel #4 (Trienens Forum)
Life in Bloom: Visual Storytelling for Public Audiences
Moderator: Trish Bredar

• Kyle Craig, “Comics of the Palestinian Intifada: Lessons in Collaborative Ethno/Graphic Storytelling”
• Stephanie Jones, “We Tell These Stories to Survive: A Zine Adaptation”
• Em Kamm, “Seed Stories: Planting the Past in The Present”

4:15 - 6:00 pm  •  Public Humanities Award Ceremony and Reception (Kaplan Seminar Room)

Dino Robinson will receive a Kaplan Humanities Institute Public Humanities Award in recognition of his substantial contributions to the humanities at Northwestern and the Shorefront Legacy Center, and for his modeling of thoughtful, careful, community-engaged research.

KEYNOTE

The PhD of the Future: Humanities Scholarship Beyond Boundaries

Dr. Teresa Mangum in conversation with Dr. Kelly Wisecup

May 12, 2023 (Fri.)
1:00 - 2:00 pm CST
Kresge #2351 (Kaplan Institute)

Lunch will be served at 12:30pm!

As juggling multiple crises increasingly feels like the new normal in many humanities fields, how are graduate students, faculty, and partners beyond the academy transforming what it means to be a successful scholar? What might the future of humanities scholarship look like, and at what point in the transition are we now? Teresa Mangum (University of Iowa) will join Kelly Wisecup (Northwestern) in conversation about new directions in graduate education, career paths, and publicly-engaged scholarship. This event is free and open to the public—we welcome graduate students, faculty, administrators, and anyone with an interest in the future of humanities scholarship to join us.

2021-2022 events

Public Humanities Graduate Research Symposium

May 12, 2022 (Thurs.)
9:30am-5:00pm CST
Kresge Hall (various rooms)

FREE! Public welcome!

This all-day event will showcase the projects of the Kaplan Public Humanities Graduate Research Workshop participants. We invite the broader Northwestern community to a multifaceted conversation about the public humanities at the university and beyond.

Event conveners

Negar Razavi, ACLS Emerging Voices Fellow of the Kaplan Institute
Rebekah Bryer, doctoral candidate in the Interdisciplinary PhD in Theatre and Drama Program

Location Key

• Kaplan Seminar Room is Kresge #2350
• Trienens Forum is Kresge #1515

Schedule

Each presentation will be followed by Q&A/discussion. You can read about each presenter's projects here.

9:30 am – Breakfast (Kaplan Seminar Room)

9:45 am – Welcome, Jessica Winegar, Kaplan Institute Director, and Panel 1 (Trienens Forum)

• Holly Dayton Swenson
• Alexandrea Keith
• Alexandra De Leon
• Ruslana Lichtzier

11:10 am – Panel 2 (Trienens Forum)

• Arcade Willis
• Ariana Turner
• Anna Zalokostas
• Deisi Cuate
• Eduardo Bello and Heloisa Imada

12:30 pm – Lunch (Kaplan Seminar Room)

1:30 pm – Panel 3 (Trienens Forum)

• Golden Owens
• Chelsea Taylor
• Seyma Kabaoglu
• Gervais Marsh
• Sarah Lee

2:55pm – Panel 4 (Trienens Forum)

• Daniela Raillard Arias
  
• Marissa Croft
• Alexandra Gonzalez
• Emiliano Aguilar
• Caitlin Monroe and Rebecca Rwakabukoza

4:15pm – Reception (Kaplan Seminar Room)

The Pandemic Job Search: Launching a Career Outside the University

April 20, 2022 (Wed.)
5:00-6:30pm CST
Via Zoom
Free. Public Welcome!

Featuring panelists:
Rachel Grimm (Los Alamos National Lab), Emily Sekine (SAPIENS Magazine), and Angela Tate (Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture)

Moderated by Ruth Curry (Northwestern Center for Civic Engagement), this panel will offer practical advice for grad students about finding—and applying for—jobs in the public humanities. Each panelist found their position during the pandemic and will offer tips for current grad students about navigating the job market.

When What You Research Becomes Breaking News

Erin Thompson
Associate Professor of Art Crime
John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY

March 9, 2022 (Wed.)
5:00-6:30pm CST

Via Zoom
Free. Public Welcome!

As an expert in art crime, monuments, and repatriation, Erin Thompson will discuss how scholars working on topics that become the subject of public controversy can develop strategies to effectively weigh into these debates and weather the storm of public outrage. 

Thompson will be in conversation with Jessica Winegar (Director of the Kaplan Humanities Institute and Professor in Anthropology) and Rebekah Bryer, doctoral candidate in the Interdisciplinary PhD in Theatre and Drama Program.

Erin Thompson is Associate Professor of Art Crime at CUNY's John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Known as the "Art Crime Prof," Thompson studies the black market for looted antiquities, art forgery, museum theft, the ethics of digital reproductions of cultural heritage, art made by detainees at Guantánamo Bay, and a variety of other overlaps between art and crime.

Her book, Smashing Statues: The Rise and Fall of America’s Public Monuments (Norton, February 2022), traces the turbulent history and abundant ironies of our monuments. She has written and spoken about the science of public art, the history of protests, the legal barriers to removal of controversial art, and examples of innovative approaches to the problem in venues including Art in America, Hyperallergic, Smithsonian Magazine, bitch, and the New York Times.

Ethical Community Engagement Through the Lens of Environmental Justice

A conversation aimed at rethinking the university-community power dynamic with Dr. Antonio Reyes López

January 10, 2022 (Mon.)
12:00-1:30pm CST

Via Zoom
Free. Public Welcome!

Environmental Justice (EJ) communities experience a disproportionate burden of harmful contaminants and pollution, and are often most vulnerable to climate related disasters. In addition to leading grassroots campaigns to protect their communities, EJ organizations experience tremendous pressure to accommodate university-based researchers and student projects.

As a trained historian and the former Executive Director of the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization (LVEJO) in Chicago, Dr. Antonio López has worked to bridge university and grassroots communities so that university projects are in deep alignment with grassroots strategies and campaigns. In this session, Dr. López will share about his efforts to experiment with collaborative research designs so that participants understand common mistakes that limit community-based research approaches. Arguing that humanities and science professors should resist the extraction of knowledge from communities, and valuable time and resources from Environmental Justice organizations, Dr. López will facilitate a grounded conversation aimed at rethinking the university-community power dynamic. 

Dr. Antonio Reyes López is currently the director of the Chicago Frontlines Funding Initiative, a grassroots-led funding strategy that supports five place-based EJ organizations in the city. Dr. López was born in Gary, Indiana, raised in Chicago, and was awarded a doctoral degree in Borderlands History from the University of Texas at El Paso.

Presented by Northwestern's Kaplan Institute for the Humanities and Center for Civic Engagement in partnership with One Book One Northwestern, this event is open to all scholars and students interested in developing ethical, sustainable community partnerships.

Critical Race Theory, Politics, and the Future of Critical Public Scholarship

November 9, 2021 (Tues.)
5:00-6:30pm CST

Via Zoom (pre-registration required)
https://northwestern.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_-Vg-6qnVQ0qJ08jR7KdmPg

Free; public welcome!

As many school districts across the U.S. move to ban the teaching of “Critical Race Theory” (CRT) in their schools, university-based scholars working on education, race, and racism are struggling to assert their expert voices in this now highly polemical public debate. This event brings two leading critical scholars in these fields to further contextualize the backlash against CRT in broader histories and structures of anti-black racism, while discussing what role critical scholars can/should play in engaging, empowering, and critiquing different publics on this issue. 

Panelists and moderator

kihana miraya ross (panelist) is an assistant professor of African American Studies at Northwestern. Her research examines how Black students live antiblackness in what she calls the afterlife of school segregation. 

David Stovall (panelist) is an associate professor of Educational Policy Studies and Black Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). His research focuses on critical race theory and the relationship between schooling and prisons. 

Shirin Vossoughi (moderator) is an associate professor of Learning Sciences at Northwestern, whose work focuses on how learning can contribute to projects of educational justice. 

2020-2021 EVENTS

Recruitment Perspectives for PhDs

May 21, 2021 

A Career exploration event for humanities and social sciences with Dr. Dana Bilsky Asher, Dr. Kimberly Singletary, and Dr. Greg Acs.

Career Workshops with Elysse Longiotti

April 23 and May 7, 2021

Creating Careers in Public Institutions

April 2, 2021
12:00 - 1:30 pm CST via Zoom

Free. Public Welcome!

A career diversity event with Matti Bunzl (Wien Museum), Livia Alexander (ArteEast), and Michelle Wilkinson (National Museum of African American History and Culture).

Please join us for a dynamic gathering of scholars to consider what it means to work publically. The Kaplan Humanities Institute will host a lively discussion and Q&A with Matti Bunzl, Livia Alexander, and Michelle Wilkinson—scholars who successfully pivoted from academia to forge rewarding careers in public institutions (and still maintain a "foot" in the academy). You’ll learn ways to think about linking your work and interests to thrive in jobs with potential to shape broader publics.

About the speakers

Matti Bunzl is Director of the Wien Museum, Vienna’s municipal museum. Before taking up this position, he was Professor of Anthropology and History at the University of Illinois and Artistic Director of the Chicago Humanities Festival.

Livia Alexander is a New York-based curator, writer, and Assistant Professor of Global Visual Cultures at Montclair State University and co-founder of ArteEast, a global platform for promoting the arts of the Middle East.

Michelle Joan Wilkinson is a curator at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC), where she works on projects related to contemporary black life.
More speaker details on the PlanitPurple event: https://planitpurple.northwestern.edu/event/573594

Community Collaboration and Public Engagement

February 26, 2021

With Patricia Nguyen, Elliot Heilman, Nadine Naber, and Dino Robinson.

Digital Storytelling Mini Workshop for Graduate Students

February 12, 2021
11:00 am - 12:00 pm CST via Zoom

Free. Public Welcome!

What are the various forms of digital storytelling that academics often turn to share their work? Podcasts sure, but what about visual essays, short films, interactive websites, or online photo exhibits? How can you get started and what do you need to know to share your work? Join C.A. Davis, digital storyteller and producer of the Weinberg Media and Design Studio, for this informal workshop to discuss basic principles of digital storytelling and resources for graduate students. You will be sent different examples of digital storytelling ahead of the workshop. Space is limited, so please register ahead of time!

Defining your Expertise for Public Engagement

January 29, 2021

With Elysse Longiotti (Northwestern Career Advancement) and Amy Güth (writer/screenwriter, broadcaster, and producer) about the ins and outs of social media presence and promotion.

Adapting Your Work to Respond to Public Need

November 13, 2020

Panel discussion with Cynthia Nazarian (French and Italian), Doug Kiel (History and Kaplan Institute), and Jessica Winegar (Anthropology and Kaplan Institute) on how scholars translate and adapt their academic work to different publics in moments of societal crisis or public need. Breakout sessions invited participants to discuss their own motivations and stakes in doing public humanities work, and how they would position their research and expertise.

Initial Meeting—Introductions and Overview

October 30, 2020

For our first workshop event, participants had an opportunity to introduce themselves and discuss their own interests in the public humanities. In addition, Ruth Curry, the Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Civic Engagement, helped participants contextualize and understand the place of public humanities within the university structure.