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Public HumanitiesLooking Back and Looking Ahead
Calling all public humanists
past, present, and future!
Are you a student looking to apply your skills asa humanities major into a careerlike
programming, outreach, and education;community cultural work; historic preservation;
arts and nonprofit administration; museumeducation, interpretation and curatorial work; or
cultural planningand seeking moreinformation about the public humanities?
Are you a professor or local professional trying
to kick-start humanities courses, programs orprogramming at your college or organization?
Have you experience in the public humanities
and want to join in t he conversation?
All are invited to join Steven Lubar, professor ofAmerican Studies and History at Brown
University, former curator at t he SmithsonianMuseum, and until this past June, director of the
John Nicholas Brown Center for Public
Humanities and Cultural Heritage, as hediscusses his decade-long tenure at the helm ofBrownspublic humanities program.
I learned a l ittle about how teachers teach and students
learn, how universities work, and don't, why I like doingprojects, and just how confusing the job market is.
-Lubar, 2014
Sponsored by
Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, UMass Amherst Public History Program
and the Five Colleges, Inc./Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Bridging Init iative in
the Public and Applied Humanities
Lecture Open to the Public
When: Monday, October 27, 2014
5:30pm
Where: Gamble Auditorium/ Mount
Holyoke College Art Museum
Please join us!
A presentation by ProfessorSteven Lubar
he flyer for the talk. The audience was students and faculty at UMass-Amherst and surrounding schoolsterested in attending or setting up a program.
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ve just stopped being director of the Brown public humanities program, which gives me a bit of distance.ather than worry about day to day administration, I can step back and think about it. Where did that ten ye
o? What would I do if I were starting from scratch today? Thats the looking back and looking ahead for thlk.
he audience for this talk is, Im told, three groups - students interested in public humanities, faculty thinkinbout teaching public humanities, local institutions. I hope theyll be something here for all of you.
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f
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ur changing logos. Of interest for more than just the history of graphic design First one about a beautifuuilding. Blue one tried to put it in background, but still informed the design. The next one hid it: our gate, a
EH H. Last one: pure abstraction: were about overlap. (Its also very similar to the UNESCO cultural divego.)
f course, I may be the only one who sees these meanings
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Mission Statement, 2004
The John Nicholas Brown Center atBrown University is dedicated to
advancing scholarship and educationin American civilization bymanaging, preserving, and providingaccess to the Nightingale-BrownHouse and the Brown familyarchives. The Center serves topromote scholarly and educationalactivities at Brown University andamong people and institutions withinand beyond the region.
When I started: Wonderful house, open as a historic house museum, and a narrow mission: about house arown family. A fellowship program mostly for New England history. (Build in highlighting)
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Mission Statement, 2005
The John Nicholas Brown Center isBrown Universitys center for thepublic humanities. It supportsstudents and faculty who connect thepublic to history, art, and culture,and sponsors programs that considerthe ways in which the humanitiesenrich everyday life.
The John Nicholas Brown Center
is Brown Universitys center for
the public humanities.
We support students and faculty
that connect the public tohistory, art, and culture, and
sponsor programs that consider
the ways in which the
humanities enrich everyday life.
JNBC rograms
M.A. in Public Humanities
Beginning in Fall 2005, Brown's
Department of American Civilization will
offer a new Masters program in the Public
Humanities. This two-year program,
centered at the JNBC, will draw on the
resources of Brown and local museumsand community organizations to train
students for careers in museums, historic
preservation, community cultural
organizations, and other organizations that
connect the public with history, art, ideas
and culture.
Think ta nk for public humanities
The JNBC will become a think tank for the
public humanities. Through conferences,
seminars, and publications, we hope to
address issues of history and memory,
history and its publics, and the changing
nature of the public sphere.
Continuing education programsfor public humanities professionals
The JNBC sponsors summer, semester,
and shorter programs. Summer 2005
programs are Whats it worth and Why?
The changing meanings of value in
Museums, and New Approaches to Race,
Class and Gender for Museum
Professionals.
Brown University PublicHumanities Grants
The JNBC supports public humanities
programs at Brown University. Small
grants are available for faculty/student
,
.
,
.
Text
rst step to to change it to public humanities - but here the thing to notice is the focus on students and faconnecting to public.
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Current Mission Statement
The John Nicholas Brown Center forPublic Humanities and CulturalHeritages innovative MA program,engaged research, and professionaldevelopment workshops helpstudents, practitioners andcommunities make the humanitiesmeaningful and accessible.
Weve been through a variety of mission statements - its a good class project to rewrite the Centers missiatement. Now - our programs are all about communities making the humanities meaningful - not about
niversity. This is key: weve gone from being about us to being about them. Not, well teach you, theommunity, about things that we academics know and you should know, but: well help you do the work thaseful to you.
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comparison of our first and current mission statement. Shorter, which is always better.
briefly describe our MA program, engaged research, and professional development workshops.
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ur major program has been the MA in public humanities. We were the first to give such a degree - a fewhers have come about in the last decade.
ome history: a replacement for the MA in museum studies. An American studies rethink of public history:ublic humanities is to American studies as public history is to history.
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PUBLIC HUMANITIESJOIN THEM!
THE
DEFINEOUR STUDENTS
WWW.BROWN.EDU/JNBC
poster from a few years ago. Students sometimes think that its hard to define the public humanities andats a problem, in looking for jobs. I say yes, its hard, and thats an opportunity! In this flyer, we address
rectly!
art about the program upside down flip it over:
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PUBLIC HUMANITIESJOIN THEM!
THE
DEFINEOUR STUDENTS
WWW.BROWN.EDU/JNBC
poster from a few years ago. Students sometimes think that its hard to define the public humanities andats a problem, in looking for jobs. I say yes, its hard, and thats an opportunity! In this flyer, we address
rectly!
art about the program upside down flip it over:
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e three ways students learn in the program - more detail later.
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equired: Intro and Method. Strongly recommended: nonprofit management.
ur basic program has stayed remarkably consistent. But its time to rethink it - a lot has changed around un years.
racticums: one in summer, one during second year. Projects can replace practicums.
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his is our official line, and its pretty much true. Challenge: how you balance practical skills and a broaderew - one necessary for immediate jobs, one for longer term.
ention use of professionals in the field as adjuncts, workshops, projects.
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troduction: Seminar: big questions addressed using theory and case studies. This years big questions: tublic, heritage, and memory. In past: community, culture, curation Readings: from Museums and the Pu
phere to A Golden Haze of Memory.
ethods: lecture/ seminar: often one or several large projects, usually exhibit projects.
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ome co-sponsored with RISD. Some taught by adjuncts, staff and postdocs.
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udents have taken courses in these departments , among others- this list gives a pretty good sense of oupics. Note: archaeology and cultural heritage; public policy, education and sociology overlap with nonpro
ban studies and heritage, cultural policy; music and ethnomusicology; performance studies and communork.
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ut we cant teach everything in courses, and so we offer workshops, and also pay for students to takeorkshops beyond Brown. In recent years, these have become more practical: job hunting, public speakin
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nd on-job training essential to the field. Last summers practicums. We have a complicated system ofgreements, writing assignments. Most of these work, but not all.
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ngaged Research or engaged scholarship is a buzzword that I wrestle withverlaps with service-learning, community based research, and public scholarship.
y focus is on reciprocal work with community and integration of teaching, research, and service.
also think that its about community groups, not just individuals in the community.
some ways, very much like the old notion of land-grant schools: research for community good. Thats noecessarily the same thing as social change or social justice or activism- will get to this later.
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Mashapaug Pond Project
nnie Valk, until this summer the Centers deputy director, was the master of this work. Her Fox Point histond Mashapaug Pond histories are based on new research both archives and from talking to people, shar
hat she learned with the community, and aimed at making the area better. Also worked with artists, andommunity groups.
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ashapug pond website
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Fox Point Photo History
ngaged research has different outputs than does regular academic research. This Flickr site, with more th0,000 photographs, and an accompanying oral history site, are engaged research. Community choices, o
ssistance.
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Fox Point Oral Histories
teresting to compare the pictures that the community adds to their website and the ones chosen by us foal history website. We have a different sense of what history is, a different set of categories.
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American DanceLegacy Initiative
DLI does research in dance as a way of understanding American history and then gives it back to a widenge of people - works with local high schools to teach dance and dance history
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ur students work in the community (and in the university) - the program pays them to work with localganizations. Some of the recent jobs listed here.
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Annie:
Community PartnershipCenter, Roger Williams
University Providence Public
Library
Little ComptonHistorical Society
Broad Street Synagogue RiverzEdge Arts Project Forbes House Museum Friends of Providence
Parks
Barrington PublicLibrary Living on the Edge
Project, RoyCarpenters Beach
Urban Pond Procession Rhodi Project, RIHS
Ron:
Little ComptonHistorical Society
Governor StephenHopkins HouseMuseum
Westport HistoricalSociety
Preserve Rhode Island Governor Henry Lippitt
House Museum
Tiverton Public Library Benefit Street Arsenal
New Bedford WhalingMuseum
useum staff also does work for local organizations - sometimes getting students involved.
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ublic Humanities Clinic - inspired by Natalie Jeremijenkos Environmental Health Clinic at NYU (http://ww.nyu.edu/projects/xdesign/clinic/)
ever took off - but still worth pursuing.
With that overview of the program, Id like to turn to another way of thinking about the public humanities. Thas what weve done. Next, what Ive learned.
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even rules for public humanists
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even rules for public humanists
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art not by looking at what you, your discipline, or the university needs and wants, but by what individualsommunities outside the university need and want. Its not, were from the university, and were here to he
ut, What are you doing already, and how can we participate? How can we be useful? Its not about tellineople facts. Its about a dialogue, a sharing of authority, knowledge, expertise.
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Vartan GregorianElementary School,Fox Point
ack to Fox Point and a class project there. We went into this with one idea about what was important, basn what seems important to historians. Talk to the kids at the elementary school, and you get a very differe
ense of what history seems important.
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the Vartan Gregorian Elementary School
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University HistoricHouse Museums Project
recent student project was to try to understand how university-owned historic house museums can be ushis was done as consulting work for the Liberty Hall Museum at Kean University in New Jersey. One of th
ings we learned was the importance of understanding all of the intersecting communities around historicouse museums.tp://www.brown.edu/academics/public-humanities/news/2014-07/university-affiliated-historic-house-useums
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Stanford University
pu
bl
ich
umanities
progra m
brown
univer
sity
A lecture series sponsored by the John Nicholas Brown
Center Public Humanities Program and the Joukowsky
Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World.
This series will explore the problems and practice of
cultural, or heritage, tourism, from many disciplinary
angles and in a cross-cultural context.
For more information, please contact the John Nicholas Brown
Center at 401 863-1177 or [email protected].
Monday, November 12, 2007 5:30 p.m.
Cultural? Heritage?Tourism?lecture series
one of this will come as a surprise to those of you who look at issues of cultural heritage. Thinking about our work is for is central to cultural heritage work, and to public humanities work.
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Cultural? Heritage?Tourism?lecture series
Imagine Providence website
se tools to let others be heard.
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StoryCorps, Providence
nother example of using tools to let others tell their story
oryCorps is the perfect example of the challenge of it not being about us. Oral historians had problems woryCorps; it cuts the experts out. The Public Humanities Center sponsored StoryCorps in Providence.
nd its a good transition to Rule #2: Youre not always the expert.
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hared authority is complicated. In exhibits, its often an invitation to the subject and to the visitor to provideir stories, and points of view, and to share in setting the rules. Its using oral history in historical projects
xhibits. Its web 2.0 methods of opening up online conversations. Having that conversation is not easy.nding the right balance is tricky. The humanist needs to be not only an expert, but also a facilitator, and aanslator. Seeking that balance is part of the work of every project.
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WELCOME TO THE JOHN NICHOLAS BROWN CENTER
Cocktails
andConversation
How to mix a cocktail party? All you
need to provide is a stage for the
extroverts, an excuse for the heavy
drinkers, girls for the boys - and let
the potato chips fall where they may.
Helen Markel, How to mix a cocktail
party, The NewYork Times, Nov. 2, 1958
The cocktail party revolutionized
entertaining in the 1950s. The hour of
the cocktail ritualized the transition
between the strict codes of the
workplace and the unabashed gaiety
of playtime throughout the twentieth
century. During the 1950s in particular,
cocktail consumption became the
popular means of expressing and
experiencing the new social construct
of the century, the pursuit of leisure.
For both men and women, hosting a
cocktail party was as much about social
organization and position as it was
about entertaining.
The Museum of Art at the Rhode Island School of Design
is planning the exhibition Cocktail Culturefor 2010. The
exhibition will explore the cultural and social significanceof cocktails in the twentieth century as manifested through
fashion and design. The language invented for and by the
cocktail culture of the twentieth century will be illustrated
by the glamour and sophistication of Christian Dior and
Chanel, the kitsch and whimsy of the Tiki lounge, examples of
furniture, barware, fashion, graphic arts, and even table linens
produced solely for the purpose of consuming cocktails.Christian Dior,CocktailDress,Fall/Winter1954.Gift of Ronald and Lillian Dick.Photography by Erik Gould,courtesy of Museum of Art,Rhode Island Schoolof Design
pu
blic
huma
nitiesp
rogram
brow
nuniv
ersity
Program withRISD Museum
ot only a fun project: but perhaps being a host at a cocktail party is a model for public humanities. Youre cilitator, you help others make connections. Not about you, but youre a catalyst to help interact better.
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Broad StreetSynagogue
student project to try to find new uses for this building. Complicated process: students were involved inaking connections between the new community who lives in the area and the former members of the
ynagogue, and the group that owns the building today.
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he work of public engagement comes not after the scholarship, but as part of the scholarship. I dont like mplications of applied or translational; those terms suggest we do our work, in our normal way, and tha
en converted into something for the public. Theres a model here in the transformation of public art. In the970s, public art was all too often an art project sprung on a community by a government agency. It came e artist, doing his own work, responding to his own community. Public art has moved to a model of
ommunity interaction. Its not just for the public; it comes from the public. What would humanities scholarok like if it too developed out of a conversation? What if a humanities department was a hub of a commuartists, educators, scholars and the public?
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Educating Change: Latina Activism andthe Struggle for Educational Equity
att Garcia project: based on his research, student research, community engagement. Undergraduates anA students involved. Worked with community to both tell their story and to give them tools to tell their own
ory.
tp://www.brown.edu/Research/Coachella/
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Chinese Food
Weve done a lot with food studies in the program. This was reflected in an exhibition, and two graduateudents in the program took work they had done talking with restaurant owners and published papers in
ating Asian America: A Food Studies Reader
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Mashapaugs Neighbors project
already mentioned Mashapaug Pond projects: oral history, cell phone tours, working with local schools,rban Pond Procession.
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UndergroundRhode Island
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Cape Verdean Fox Point was a vibrant, close-knit community
that was displaced by urban renewal, gentrification, and
the expansion of Brown University. But the community lives
on in former residents memories, and in the photographs,
archives, and artifacts so many residents saved. Their
memories and stories come alive in this exhibit.
May 11October 16, 2009
MondayFriday, 14 p.m.
John Nicholas Brown Center
357 Benefit Street, Providence, RI
www.brown.edu/jnbc
Remember the Old Times: Cape Verdean Community in Fox Point, 19201945
is a student-curated and executed exhibition that tells the story of the history and culture
of the Cape Verdean community that lived in the Fox Point neighborhood.
CAPEV
ERDEAN
COMMUNITY
IN
FOXPOINT
1920
1945
Remember the
Old Times FoxPoint exhibit
ready mentioned the Fox Point project - this was a class exhibition. One of the things the students learneas just how hard it is to define community. So many ways people define themselves, so many different
oups within communities: by gender, neighborhood, family
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he Fox Point exhibit welcomed many Fox Pointers
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Day of the Dead
ay of the Dead altar, a student exhibit at the Haffenreffer Museum, working with local teen groups
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Tejela: Weaving Stories,Weaving Lives
series of student exhibition projects on Guatemalan textiles. Worked with the Haffenreffer Museum ofnthropology, the New Bedford Whaling Museum, and a local co-op of Guatemalan weavers in New Bedfo
tp://www.whalingmuseum.org/explore/exhibitions/tejela-weaving-stories-weaving-lives-2013
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Tejela: Weaving Stories,Weaving Lives
Worked with local weavers, who demonstrated crafts.
his leads to my next rule: work with artists.
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alling something art rather than scholarship is a very freeing move. You have more flexibility. But workingtists to both perform and understand culture at the same time is best. You become part of the community
ulture, you support it, and you help a larger public appreciate it.
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student project that looked at our historic house in a new way: letting artists be inspired by its history
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Ben Katchors TheInsomniacs Mansion
ortunate to have faculty interested in art as a kind of scholarship. Paul Buhle brought us some amazingontacts with artists he had worked with.
s been an interesting way for faculty to expand their work. Not all of this is directly public humanities, but form of academic connection with a wider public.
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Worked with RISD student to design this one
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A SYMPOSIUM AND EXHIBITION
Jews and American
COMICS
Jews andAmericanComics
nother Paul Buhle project
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os Bros Hernandez exhibition - brought by Prof. Ralph Rodriguez
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Stih & Schnock
project by two German artists on memorials, with Prof. Beverly Havilland.
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Cora Marshall,EmancipatedMemories
student-curated exhibition of paintings based on runaway slave advertisements
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Cora Marshall
Fox Point ComicsArtist: Alec Thibodeau
rtist Alec Thibodeau working with the Fox Point oral history project, making oral history work available in aew way.
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The Lost Museum
nally, our most recent work, with artist Mark Dion. A re-collection of Browns lost Jenks Museum of Naturastory.
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he digital opens up new opportunities for outreach, of course. But it is important to go beyond the digital autreach to take advantage of digitals promise of a new kind of openness, a chance to share not just the
utput of a project, but every step along the way. And it opens up the opportunity for many voices, many wtelling a story.
ot the same as digital humanities - not so much digital as a tool for analysis, more as a tool for connectio
nd not something weve done as well as we should.
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Fox Point Photo History Project
ox Point Flickr, from some time ago, still seems the most interesting. How can we use free public tools toake public humanities projects?
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Working with the RI Council for the Humanities: student project (courses and jobs), many community partnased on Curatescape.
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nother Curatescape project
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Call of Lovecraftaugmented reality app
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oing public humanities takes specific practical skills, and universities should teach them. That meanshanging PhD programs, and providing new training for faculty. We shouldnt assume that working with
ommunities is a skill that comes along with a traditional humanities Ph.D. Practical, hands-on skills,verything from oral history to reading balance sheets, is essential to the work of the public humanities.
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Project Management
rom project management to research to exhibition design and implementation
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The Museum ofWestminster Street
to research skills:rom The Museum of Westminster Street - research every object on the street. (Credit to Lyra Monteiro f
is project)
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o teaching-to the public skills
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A.A.TO ZOUAVECOLLECTIONS AT BROWNF
ROM
An exhibit ion honoring
the tre asures of Brown
Universitys collections.
From the coffee pot that
launched a thousand
Alcoholics Anonymous
meetings to a hand-knit
cap from a Civil War
Zouave regiment, see
what Brow ns libraries,
museums, and galleries
have to offer.
Curated by students
in American Civilizations
Methods in Public
Humanities course.
DECEMBER 11, 2 007 MAY 30, 2008
Monday Friday, 1 5 p.m.
ANN MAR Y B ROWN MEMORIA L
21 Brown Street, Providence, Rhode Island
FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC.For more information, please contact the John Nicholas Brown
Center at 401-863-1177 or [email protected].
Sponsored by the John Nicholas Brown Center Public Humanities
Program and the Brown University Library.
A.A. To Zouave exhibition
udent projects have been a key part of the program. Many exhibitions, but also programs and other evenontent, project management, and public work. Some are class projects, some not.
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A-Z Exhibit
o knowing how to hang banners on the side of buildings
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Pulp Uncovered
to organizing events
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Sexual Education in the 20th Century
BEYONDthe Birds and the Bees
Beyond the Birdsand the Bees
to talking about difficult topics
o there are seven rules based on what Ive learned. But like all good rules, they just open up new questio
he last part of this talk: Future: some big questions.
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g questions or [click] some of the things Im worrying about now, issues that I think the field needs toonsider.
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g questions or [click] some of the things Im worrying about now, issues that I think the field needs toonsider.
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he one my students are most interested in: is public humanities about social change? Three related issueocial change, politics, social entrepreneurship.
ocial change - almost every museum and nonprofit describes their work this way now. And certainly pubumanities can work for social change. Id argue that it doesnt necessarily have to do so. Sometimes itsnough to just describe. Indeed, describing, and letting others draw conclusions, seems to me a very publiumanities way to work.
n example I like: Temple Universitys Art Gallery Funeral for a Home
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he one my students are most interested in: is public humanities about social change? Three related issueocial change, politics, social entrepreneurship.
ocial change - almost every museum and nonprofit describes their work this way now. And certainly pubumanities can work for social change. Id argue that it doesnt necessarily have to do so. Sometimes itsnough to just describe. Indeed, describing, and letting others draw conclusions, seems to me a very publiumanities way to work.
n example I like: Temple Universitys Art Gallery Funeral for a Home
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uth Simmons, former president of Brown, spoke Friday at the opening of the new Center for the Study ofavery and Justice. The Providence paper reported she said it should not be a hub for activism - what sh
aid was more nuanced, about it being a place for research and debate - which to her is a kind of activismublic humanities is more than research and debate, but maybe less than activism.
ould we invent a radical public humanities? One might look at an old form of labor activism here - before artley, when unions did cultural activities, whether the Wobblies or the Old Left. Or today, at whats beingalled alt-labor - non-union workers groups. (My thanks to Kate Dietrich for her discussions on this topic.
ne might look at the way in which ethnic studies, in many universities, is tied to activism. Or at many kindocial practice art.
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ocial entrepreneurship is the buzzword of the modern university, and public humanities programs need togure out how to incorporate it. The basic idea of social entrepreneurship is doing things that were once do
y non-profits, for profit: socially useful businesses. I must admit it stumps me; we need more organizationxpertise, less entrepreneurial expertise. More precisely: we need people who can be entrepreneurial insidganizations, rather than being entrepreneurial by setting up new organizations.
est example of the for-profit public humanities - the original Folkways Records.
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ocial entrepreneurship is the buzzword of the modern university, and public humanities programs need togure out how to incorporate it. The basic idea of social entrepreneurship is doing things that were once do
y non-profits, for profit: socially useful businesses. I must admit it stumps me; we need more organizationxpertise, less entrepreneurial expertise. More precisely: we need people who can be entrepreneurial insidganizations, rather than being entrepreneurial by setting up new organizations.
est example of the for-profit public humanities - the original Folkways Records.
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gital humanities has many meanings.
n example of the high-tech social entrepreneurship: The Civic Media Lab at MIT - shown is one of their daurals -- Contratados - what my student Kate Dietrich calls Yelp for migrant workers.
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gital humanities has many meanings.
n example of the high-tech social entrepreneurship: The Civic Media Lab at MIT - shown is one of their daurals -- Contratados - what my student Kate Dietrich calls Yelp for migrant workers.
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gital humanities has many meanings.
n example of the high-tech social entrepreneurship: The Civic Media Lab at MIT - shown is one of their daurals -- Contratados - what my student Kate Dietrich calls Yelp for migrant workers.
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next group of questions about public humanities at the university.
he humanities crisis is really a crisis of definition if you define the humanities as what humanitiesofessors and grad students do, or want to do, theres a crisis. If you define it as people performing their
ulture, and understanding their roots, and making community, and creating things based on tradition andnovation the humanities are going strong.
What that suggests to me is that the way to cure the humanities crisis is to broaden the definition of theumanities.
ut there is a crisis of the humanities - add one word to this title.
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jobs
^
ut there is a crisis in the humanities in the university. At the graduate level, most of that is connected to thck of good, tenure-track jobs for PhDs, and the universitys resistance for reasons having to do with
aching needs and the nature of disciplines for cutting the size and number of PhD programs.
hat brings me to ways to change the phd.
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he Ph.D. Is a vocational degree, designed to train professors at research universities. As its designed no
s not good training for almost anything else.
could be. I believe that the Ph.D. should change to include public humanities: practical skills, working witommunities, etc. I am taken with the idea of a professional humanities doctorate, along the lines of a J.D.n M.D. - a four year, research and practiced base course aimed not at teaching but at the real world. (Seeoposal by Johann Neem in October in Inside Higher Education.)
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see public humanities as a profession, and Im old fashioned in thinking that undergraduate studies shoulot be professional.
owever, I think that theres much useful in public humanities work as a piece of a humanities undergraduaegree: talking to a wider audience, getting out to the community
rowns American studies junior seminar is one approach: the public defined as each professor sees useome about the public, some working with the public.
ext: three worries, beyond the university.
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see public humanities as a profession, and Im old fashioned in thinking that undergraduate studies shoulot be professional.
owever, I think that theres much useful in public humanities work as a piece of a humanities undergraduaegree: talking to a wider audience, getting out to the community
rowns American studies junior seminar is one approach: the public defined as each professor sees useome about the public, some working with the public.
ext: three worries, beyond the university.
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dont see how we can train students to become public intellectuals. to compete with the likes of Te-Nehaoates in The Atlantic?
hink we can train students to write well, and blog well, and to be public with their work.
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dont see how we can train students to become public intellectuals. to compete with the likes of Te-Nehaoates in The Atlantic?
hink we can train students to write well, and blog well, and to be public with their work.
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his worries me more than the university job crisis I dont have an answer for it. Weve defined this work
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nd with this one - is a very important question. Yes, you want to be able to separate the visceral from thetellectual - but to keep that connection when you need it. It's a source of power, and engagement. You w
care deeply about your work - but also, when it's necessary, switch into professional engagement modeeople talk about code-switching - flipping between languages, cultures. Maybe there's something like thaublic humanities. You're in the business because you care deeply. But at the same time, you bring more tst caring; you bring a set of professional skills. How and when you use each, and combine them, is one oe challenges of the work.
he personal is what makes this work so appealing - the professional is necessary to do it well - the challeto find the right combination
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nd with this one - is a very important question. Yes, you want to be able to separate the visceral from thetellectual - but to keep that connection when you need it. It's a source of power, and engagement. You w
care deeply about your work - but also, when it's necessary, switch into professional engagement modeeople talk about code-switching - flipping between languages, cultures. Maybe there's something like thaublic humanities. You're in the business because you care deeply. But at the same time, you bring more tst caring; you bring a set of professional skills. How and when you use each, and combine them, is one oe challenges of the work.
he personal is what makes this work so appealing the professional is necessary to do it well the challe
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