This is the first in a new series of blog posts by participants in Mellon Public Humanities Mini-Courses. By Amanda Greene, PhD Candidate, English Language and Literature I decided to go to grad school because I wanted a research career. When I began my program, I assumed that this was necessarily synonymous with the elusive…
Category: Student Voices
A Defining Humanities Experience
By Rachel Cawkwell, PhD Student in English Language and Literature Humanties. It was one of the several misspellings of the word humanities that I made while transcribing four hours of audio from focus groups I conducted this summer. Each new sentence seemed to result in a…creative…new version of the word. But this one gave me pause.…
The Next Generation of the Humanities, or A Good Problem to Have
By Malcolm Tariq, PhD Candidate, Department of English Language and Literature On my first day at the National Endowment for the Humanities, I met the Director of Human Resources. When the director learned in which division I’d be working he responded, “Oh, he’s going have fun.” The staff member agreed: “Yeah, he’s going to have fun.”…
Storytelling and Community-Building through Mellon Public Humanities Fellowships
By Christina LaRose, PhD Candidate, English & Women’s Studies I discovered the power of storytelling in the early 1990s when Princeton historian Dr. Alixa Naff interviewed my Syrian great-grandmother, Najla Simon, for her book, Becoming American: The Early Arab Immigrant Experience (Southern Illinois University Press, 1993). I became intrigued by Najla’s oral history, which Dr. Naff…
A Historian’s Experience in Software Development
By Ana M. Silva, PhD Candidate, Department of History Can a History PhD provide the skills for a career in software development? Two months ago, when I started working at the MATRIX Center for Digital Humanities and Social Sciences at Michigan State University, I didn’t have a clear answer to that question. I had no…
“More Than You Think You Are”
By Emily Macgillivray, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of American Culture In 2002 pop-rock band Matchbox 20 released their third studio album, More Than You Think You Are. At the time, I was an angst-y, insecure, awkward, teenager. Fourteen years have passed, but grad school and particularly talks about the job market and “life after the dissertation” can…
Diving into Philanthropy at the Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation
By Jennifer Alzate González, PhD Candidate, English Language and Literature Nonprofit grantmaking, impact assessment, the philanthropy sector — before my 8-week fellowship at the Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation, I had only the haziest idea what these terms meant. And I often joked, to appreciative laughter, that my dissertation had nothing to do with these concepts. …
Is Public Scholarship About Telling Stuff To More People?
By Cassius Adair, PhD Candidate, Department of English I love to talk at people, which is one of the reasons I speak on more panels than maybe I should. Last month I ran– literally jogged across the Diag like a tardy freshman– from academic job market training in Angell Hall to a public scholarship panel…
Putting the Humanities into Practice
By Shana Melnysyn, PhD Candidate, Anthropology and History When I first considered applying for a Mellon Public Humanities Fellowship, I wasn’t very familiar with what the Michigan Humanities Council did, nor was I aware that every state in the U.S.A. has its own humanities council. But as soon as I started investigating their support for…
How I Spent my Summer Vacation: A Historian’s Report
By Jacqueline D. Antonovich, PhD Candidate, Department of History I’ll be honest with you. One of the best perks of being a historian are the summers. While grad student historians toil away the school year teaching, reading, writing, and attending lectures, we have the unbelievably cool perk of traveling all over the world during summer…