Libraries and Archives – The Humanities PhD Project

Synthetic Thinking: An archivist’s journey from dinosaurs to Du Bois

By Matthew Woodbury Dr. Robert S. Cox is Head of Special Collections at the University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries. He received his PhD in History from the University of Michigan in 2002. Dr. Cox began his PhD to learn about the past. Initial training as a paleontologist, however, meant that the materials he consulted were millennia older than those he now manages for the University of Massachusetts Libraries. Shifting doctoral programs from studying fossils to reading and writing about American history required both learning new disciplinary approaches and refocusing on […]

Humanities, Communications, and Philanthropy: What I Learned Sharing the Barbour Scholars Story

By Elizabeth Harlow, Doctoral Candidate, English Language & Literature As the University of Michigan commemorated its bicentennial in 2017, one of its most storied programs also marked the major milestone of its 100th anniversary. I spent last summer learning and telling the history of the Barbour Scholarship as a Mellon Public Humanities Fellow on the Rackham Graduate School’s Development and Alumni Relations team. What is the Barbour Scholarship, you ask? One of the university’s oldest, most prestigious, and most uniquely impactful awards, the Barbour Scholarship has supported female students from […]

Mellon/ACLS Public Fellows Competition for Recent PhDs

This year’s Mellon/ACLS Public Fellows program will place up to 25 recent PhDs from the humanities and humanistic social sciences in two-year term staff positions at partnering organizations in government and the nonprofit sector. Now in its eighth year the program aims to expand the role of doctoral education in the United States by demonstrating that capacities developed in the advanced study of the humanities have wide application, both within and beyond the academy. APPLICATIONS DUE: MARCH 14 2018

Digitizing Digs: My Summer at the MATRIX Center for Digital Humanities & Social Sciences

By Allison Kemmerle, Doctoral Candidate in Greek & Roman History This past summer, I completed a Mellon Public Humanities Fellowship at the MATRIX Center for Digital Humanities & Social Sciences at Michigan State University. The MATRIX Center partners with community organizations like libraries and museums to digitize collections of cultural resources and make them accessible resources for education and outreach. When I applied for the fellowship at MATRIX, I was eager to learn about managing digital archives. As part of my training as an ancient historian working with the University of […]

Rackham Public Engagement Fellowships

Rackham Public Engagement Fellowships are paid opportunities for graduate students to intern at cultural, nonprofit, and educational organizations on campus, in Ann Arbor, and in nearby communities. Fellowships are part time (15 – 20 hours per week) for 8 to 15 weeks during the summer and include a stipend of $3,360 to $5,000 based on time commitment. APPLICATIONS DUE: FEBRUARY 26 2018

Filibustering History

Filibustering History is a collection of podcasts created by Southern New Hampshire University featuring interviews with historians pursuing a variety of careers. A series of 20-30 minute interviews with a range of professionals including an archivist, a preservation compliance officer, a military staff historian, a grade school teacher, and a consultant – among others – provides a perspective on careers outside of traditional academia. Interviewees also get to talk about their research interests and current projects.

Learning to Integrate: Exploring Environmental Humanities During My Mellon Fellowship

By Catherine Fairfield, Doctoral Student in English and Women’s Studies For the last eight weeks, I’ve been taking part in the Rackham Mellon fellowship entitled was “Connecting with Environmental Humanities”. This involved working with the University of Michigan Library to develop strategies for the library to support the community of environmental humanities at our institution. The primary goal was to lay the groundwork for making a space in which scholars from different corners of UM who share an investment in environmental humanities but might not necessarily connect themselves to that full network […]

Collecting Records, and Archival Experience Too: Mellon Fellowship at the Bentley Historical Library

By Matt Villeneuve, Doctoral Student in the Department of History The inestimable historian Barbara Tuchman once remarked that “To a historian, libraries are food, shelter, and even muse.” For those of us at the University of Michigan, we should add one more attribute to Tuchman’s list: laboratory. The historical library as laboratory – a place for experimentation, creativity, and discovery – succinctly captures what happens at the Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan every day. Founded in 1935, the Bentley is one of the oldest and most active archives […]