From the MLA, 5 (More) Ways to Enrich the Public Humanities

From the MLA, 5 (More) Ways to Enrich the Public Humanities

Note: This post is part two in a series dedicated to summarizing key points from Profession’s special issue on the public humanities. In 2014, the annual MLA Convention convened in Chicago, Illinois, taking vulnerability as its theme. The Presidential Forum specifically addressed the public humanities. It considered humanities departments’ vulnerability as they are increasingly subject to funding cuts and political attacks; at the same time, it thought about how the humanities are increasingly viable and needed in these times of ours.  Here, we sum up some of the important takeaways collected in this issue. (Read Part One.)

[1] When people talk about the public humanities, they often miss a key group of humanities practitioners who are more vulnerable than most: high school teachers.

James Chandler draws attention to the funding cuts that have eroded humanities training for high school teachers in the past few years, and he applauds the many organizations and humanities institutions that have stepped in to help provide opportunities for them. At the same time, he laments that

“when we take in the larger picture, however, it is hard not to conclude that [these initiatives] have been inadequate. In my experience, high school teachers have a pressing need for this kind of professional development and, if you reach them soon enough, a large appetite for it. If you fail to reach them in time, they run a greater risk of burning out – I saw such burnout firsthand as a teacher of an inner-city school at Boston forty years ago, and I have often seen it secondhand in the years since.”

High school teachers are among the first people to bring the humanities to students. For the many in this country who choose not to or are unable to pursue a college education, high school classes may be the only chance they have to interact with humanities disciplines. When we fail to consider the needs of secondary educators, when we fail them, we fail ourselves.

[2] A major source of tension is the need to maintain quality humanities research while also bringing that research to a broader public.

Chandler argues that

“Although the distinction between scholarship and public discourse may thus be less distinct in the humanities than in the natural sciences, it would be a grave mistake to imagine that legitimate claims to scholarly authority could be maintained if that distinction were dissolved altogether. The question of public humanities raises the equally pressing question of what constitutes humanities research in our moment.”

This problem isn’t just one of bringing humanities research to the public. It’s also about the changing state of research. In our increasingly digital world, humanities research doesn’t always look like the academic monographs of the past. Figuring out how to approach new research and dissemination styles fairly is itself a challenge. What’s more, research that originates in practice or that comes from outside the university, as more and more Ph.D.s take jobs and freelance work elsewhere, also has much to contribute. Programs that “do” humanities work with non-academic audiences are learning about the humanities’ impact on life at all stages – we need ways to share that knowledge.

[3] Academics need to know their public  audience . . . but there’s some debate over what constitutes “public” in the first place.

As Chandler acknowledges, “when we talk to the public, of course, we need to do it well, to get the pitch and stakes right.”  

But Laura Wexler is concerned with what constitutes “public work” – is digital work automatically public work? She asks, “If the public sphere is the digital sphere, but the digital sphere is not owned or controlled by the public, what makes it a public sphere?” Wexler is worried about how scholarship and research can serve a vulnerable public. And to do that, she argues, we need to think about that public: “What shape does the public take? Is the public a sphere? A commons? A multitude? A neighborhood? A nation? The globe?”

William Hogarth, Scholars at a Lecture, National Portrait Gallery [Public Domain] via Wikimedia Commons

William Hogarth, Scholars at a Lecture, National Portrait Gallery [Public Domain] via Wikimedia Commons

[4] The public is neither unreachable nor uninterested in the humanities – but the humanities needs better marketing and, sometimes, better lighting.

Matti Bunzl reflects on his role as artistic director for the Chicago Humanities Festival – noting that “humanists are just no good at explaining why their work matters.” This isn’t the humanists’ fault, he points out: “Other creative types have managers, agents and publicists for that task, to say nothing of film studios, theaters, galleries and museums – infrastructures, in other words, that allow the creators to focus on what they do best.”

He goes on: at the Chicago Humanities Festival,

“We write tantalizing copy for our events, place our ads in all the local media and hustle for coverage in those same media. We make sure that our featured talent appears in the best light possible. We think about stage sets and backdrops and fuss endlessly with our sound systems. Even more important, we spend a huge amount of time thinking about the best way to showcase a speaker.”

The result? Audiences who listen, care and want more.

[5] Finally, the public humanities, really, is all about and fostering dialogue and conversation between people.

Every essay touches on this point. When Matti Bunzl emphasizes the need for marketing, he is really just talking about how to engage the public. When Jean Howard describes her “post theater discussions,” she is saying that public humanities is “about finding ways to engage with art by engaging with one another in public conversation.” When Wexler questions what constitutes the public sphere, she’s in part questioning whom to address, and how. But Farah Jasmine Griffin puts it best when she states that

“public humanities, when done right, is always about a back-and-forth, a give-and-take, an openness and willingness to be vulnerable about the work you put in the world.”

Academics don’t have to be perfect–and they would be hard put to be, given that the “public,” whatever it is, is surely multifaceted, surely composed of innumerable groups and arrangements with different needs and interests. But they do need to be willing to listen.

We’ve found this in our own Books@Work seminars, which are structured as conversations, not lectures. Participants are interested in and compelled by academic research, but they, too, have much to offer, insights to be gleaned. The books they read are jumping points for critical thinking and dialogue. And for professors, the chance to teach without specific textual outcomes opens the door for incredible interpersonal engagement. Everyone listens, everyone learns.

Thinking carefully about public humanities work, as this special issue does, is necessary to conscientiously promoting it from within the academy. But as many of its contributors emphasize, there is a very clear next step – conversation with and beyond the academy.

And we are here to talk.

Further Reading:

The Public Humanities can Thrive: 5 Ideas from the MLA

Opening Windows through Others’ Stories

Hard Conversations

Image: William Turner, Oxford from the River with Christ Church in the Foreground, c. 1820, Yale Center for British Art [Public Domain] via Wikimedia Commons


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Cecily Erin Hill

Cecily Erin Hill

Cecily Hill is the Project Director, NEH for All at the National Humanities Alliance and former member of the Books@Work team.