The Futures of Public Humanities at TCU

Written by Jason Smith, Public Humanities Lab Graduate Assistant

Collage of Graduate Student Presenters at the 2023 Futures of Graduate Studies Symposium

The Futures of Graduate Studies Symposium: Public Humanities, The Job Market, and Moving from Theory to Practice recently fostered community by bringing faculty, students, and community members into collaboration. The symposium focused on ideas to help put humanities to work in the public sphere and how to create environments that support and encourage scholars to work in public humanities.

The two-day symposium started with a poster session at The Amon Carter Museum of American Art featuring research by Texas Christian University students and faculty on January 19th. Each presenter showcased to the community their ideas on how their research could be expanded beyond the walls of academia and into the community. The presenters proposed projects ranging from an edited collection that includes publishing high school authors to connecting Othello and the Buffalo Soldiers to the modern Compton Cowboys through shared lived experiences.

Rather than present one at a time, each presenter had a small space where community members could peruse the fifteen posterboards and ask questions about each project. The environment of the presentation space was designed to foster conversation between presenters and the community while encouraging engagement and collaboration throughout the event.

With a small break, poster presenters and community members alike moved to a theater for a presentation from the keynote speaker, Dr. Michelle May-Curry, project director of Humanities for All and lecturer at Georgetown University. Dr. May-Curry led attendees in a conversation on what public humanities should look like.

Her talk focused on ideas in public humanities like informing contemporary debates, amplifying community voices and histories, helping individuals and communities navigate difficult experiences, preserving culture in times of crisis and change, expanding educational access, and applying spatial justice as an approach in scholarship.

Beyond public humanities, her talk also focused on training the next generation of scholars in the public humanities by reimagining funding, majors/minors, certificates, and internships. From there, Dr. May-Curry put theory to practice by including the audience in a collaborative workshop.

Using a Google document as a shared writing space, attendees created groups of four to six people and worked through concepts using the lens of “Blue Sky Thinking.” The goal was to envision how, if money, institutional policies, or time were not a factor, how attendees could create tools, resources, and pedagogies that would support the public humanities.

With the pie in the sky ideas now written down for everyone to see, Dr. May-Curry then challenged each group to think about what steps could be taken to begin implementing the ideas just created through collaboration or to think through how projects could be scaled down to a manageable version that could be supported through current policies, institutional funds, and grants.

The end of Dr. May-Curry’s presentation put students, faculty, administrators, and community members into conversation with one another on how they could all work toward a more public humanities-centered future.

The following afternoon, the community was invited to TCU’s Kelly Center to continue the conversation with Dr. Katina Rogers, author of Putting the Humanities PhD to Work: Thriving in and beyond the Classroom and founder of Inkcap Consulting.

Dr. Rogers’ presentation focused on labor within the public humanities. Due to the academic nature of the public humanities, she asked attendees to think about their intentions when they first attended graduate school. She asked if their goals still resonated with them; if they did not, she asked attendees to identify their current priorities.

Dr. Rogers’ goal in these questions was to help attendees identify how structural change, not individual change, may be necessary to ensure public humanity scholars can maintain their initial goals as their career develops. She identified how current systems inhibit or stymie those whose goals may not align with the existing structural demands of academia.

After opening the floor to create a dialogue with attendees, Dr. Rogers moved on to talk about how survival is insufficient and that scholars should identify what they need to thrive in their work. As she talked about what success means for each person and the dangerous allure of academic prestige, the conversation shifted toward finding joy in working in the public humanities. She urged attendees to guard their time, find their community, celebrate smallness, and embrace fractal thinking.

The talk vacillated between a presentation and a conversation between Dr. Rogers and the attendees. After the talk was officially over, students, faculty, and community members trickled out of the room, continuing the conversation Dr. Rogers had been previously mediating.  

If Dr. May-Curry’s presentation was on how to grow the public humanities, Dr. Rogers’ talk was on ethically sustaining the public humanities in and out of academia.

For more information on the presenters for The Futures of Graduate Studies Symposium: Public Humanities, The Job Market, and Moving from Theory to Practice event, the Program Book is available online.

For information on the classroom-based efforts to train individuals in public humanities, the National Humanities Alliance has shared its report on Approaches to Training in the Public Humanities.

Created in partnership with The Public Humanities Lab, The Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Public Scholarship in Action, Texas Christian University’s Center for Public Education and Community Engagement, The TCU English Department, AddRan College, and The Office of Graduate Studies, we would like to thank all attendees and presenters for creating this collaborative event.

We would also like to extend a special thanks to The Amon Carter Museum of American Art for their partnership and collaboration throughout the event.