ALICE KAPLAN INSTITUTE FOR THE HUMANITIES

Public Humanities Symposium

2026 Public Humanities Symposium

May 29, 2026 (Friday)
10:00 am - 5:00 pm 
All events are free and open to the public—drop in any time!

RSVP* here: https://centerforcivicengagement.wufoo.com/forms/p1ml4yj81horovo/

*While RSVPS are useful for catering purposes, we encourage, but do not require, advance registration.

Join the Kaplan Institute for the Humanities, the Public Humanities Practicum, and the Center for Civic Engagement for a day of celebration, discussion, and dreaming about the activity and state of the public humanities at Northwestern. Come to meet others interested in the public humanities, to think big thoughts about the place of public humanities in graduate education, and to absorb the variety of public humanities initiatives and projects on campus. 

Location note: Kaplan Seminar Room is Kresge Hall #2351

Symposium events — join us for all or part of the day!

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

10:30am - 11:30am (Kaplan Seminar Room) — Opening Panel, Field Notes from the Public Humanities

• Jayme Collins (Public Humanities Teaching Fellow, Kaplan Humanities Institute)
• Josh Honn (Humanities & Prison Education Librarian, Northwestern Libraries)
• Malia Haines-Stewart (Co-founder of Inga Bookshop and Associate Film Programmer, The Block Museum)
• Jojo Galvan Mora (Black Metropolis Graduate Assistant, Shorefront Legacy Center; PhD Candidate in History)
• Helen Cho (Visiting Assistant Professor, Asian American Studies)

11:30am - 12:00pm (Kaplan Seminar Room) — Coffee + Breakout Sessions   

• Ruth Martin Curry (Program Administrator, Center for Civic Engagement)
• Smith "S." Yarberry, Public Humanities Graduate Assistant, Kaplan Humanities Institute
• Tom Burke, Associate Director, Kaplan Humanities Institute

12:00pm - 1:30pm (Kaplan Seminar Room) — Lunch + Keynote Panel, Institutionalizing the Public Humanities

• Laura Brueck (Professor of South Asian and Comparative Literature and Director, Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities)
• Elizabeth Son (Associate Professor of Theatre, School of Communication and Director, Public Humanities Cluster)
• Ivy Wilson (Associate Professor of English and Director, Black Arts Consortium)
• Wendy Wall (Avalon Professor of the Humanities and English and Associate Dean of Academic Initiatives and Graduate Studies, Weinberg College)

1:30pm - 1:45pm — Break

1:45pm - 2:45pm — Realizing the Public Humanities (Embodied Experiences)
Public Humanities offer academics and artists a critical approach to bringing research into community spaces, but how does one take an idea and actually make it happen? In this session, Realizing the Public Humanities, participants have four unique options to choose from, ranging from a campus walk exploring Northwestern’s feminist legacies to experiencing research in public-facing formats, such as podcasting and documentary film. We invite you into this hour to learn from staff, students, and faculty that have worked to take their projects from concept to reality.

• Feminist Campus Walk (Outdoors) with Sarah Brown (Director, Northwestern University Women's Center)
• Moroccan Roll: documentary film about skateboarding in Morocco — Work-in-progress screening and artist talk (Trienens Forum/Kresge 1-515) with Youssef Boucetta (PhD student in Comparative Literary Studies, Department of French, and Francophone Studies). 
• Archival Ecologies audio documentary/podcast (Crowe 1-132) with Jayme Collins (Public Humanities Teaching Fellow, Kaplan Humanities Institute)
• Between Our Gaze: An Attention Workshop, An Invitation to Listen (Kaplan Institute Courtyard) - Ali Murat Gali (PhD student in Performance Studies and Public Humanities Practicum Fellow)

2:45pm - 3:00pm (Kaplan Seminar Room) — Break

3:00pm - 4:00pm (Kaplan Seminar Room) — Public Humanities Project Showcase

• Maggie Allan (English), “Chicago Utopias - Zion, Illinois: A Prohibitive Utopia”
• Calvin Bell (Philosophy), “Black Chicago Countercultures: Cultivating a Digital Archive of Black Communal Aesthetic Praxis”
• Ruth Curry (Center for Civic Engagement), Jojo Galvan Mora (History), Kate Masur (History), and Laurice Bell (Shorefront Legacy Center), “Mapping Black Evanston”
• Ozivell Ecford (Learning Sciences), “To Be or Not to Be: A Study on Shakespeare, Incarcerated Youth, and Future Orientation”  
• Oana Katz (Spanish and Portuguese), “Heritage Unbound: A Digital Archive for Reimagining Spain’s Heritage/Patrimonio sin límites: Un archivo digital para reimaginar el patrimonio de España”
• Mila Kaut (History), “Memory Work as Care Work: Chronicling Care Oral History Project”
• Michaela Marchi (Center for Native American and Indigenous Research), “Embodied Memory: Art, Ritual, and Intergenerational Healing”
• Daisy Matias (Performance Studies), “To Dream is To Know”
• Marsae Mitchell (Performance Studies), “Performing Preservation”
• Summer Pappachen (Political Science), “Democracy of the Oppressed: Stories from Delhi and Chicago”
• Nalani Saito (Sociology), “Letters to the Continent”
• Alaia Snell (English), “Lime at the Environment, Culture, and Society Cluster”
• Yejia Sun (Performance Studies), “天地通用市场 Tiandi Universal Market”
• Bita Takrimi (Slavic Languages and Literatures), “Poetry Across Borders: Translating Memory and Emotion Between Persian and Russian”
• Emilia Tamayo (Screen Cultures), “Abolitionist Publics: Community Screenings of Just Like Us”
• Jake Waits (Art History), “In and Out of Circulation: Conceptual Art and its Publics” 
  

4:00pm - 5:30pm (Kaplan Seminar Room, plus expanded classroom) — Reception + Public Humanities Award

The 2026 Kaplan Institute Public Humanities Award will be presented to Salome Chasnoff, a Chicago-based filmmaker, installation artist, educator, and curator who's been practicing for over 35 years. She is an organizer of the PO Box Collective and teaches as a Senior Lecturer at SAIC.

Meet the 2025-2026 Public Humanities Practicum Fellows!

The 2025-2026 fellows and their projects are here:

https://humanities.northwestern.edu/graduate/ph-grad-practicum/ph-fellows/