Events
Upcoming Events
To apply for the 2019 Graduate Certificate in the Engaged and Public Humanities, please visit this website.
All are welcome to join us for the keynote address with Leonard Cassuto, happening on Wed., June 5 at 9:30 a.m. in McShain Large, McCarthy Hall, Georgetown University.
Past Events
PhDs in the world: a crash course in careers beyond the academy | Friday, April 5, 2019
Becoming a Radical Public Intellectual | Wednesday, April 3, 2019
McCarthy Hall, Southwest Quad, Georgetown University, Washington D.C. 20007
Karsonya Wise Whitehead, a professor at Loyola University Maryland, award-winning author, three-time New York Emmy-nominated documentary filmmaker, OpEd columnist, and host of the daily drive time talk radio show “Today With Dr. Kaye,” discusses how the humanities must intersect with real-world issues to counteract irrelevancy; how we can leverage our humanities education for change; and, how we can all learn to communicate better across social, economic, racial, and gender lines. Her most recent book is RaceBrave (2016).
Discussion on Diverse Careers | Friday, January 25, 2019
Philosophy Dept. Conference Room, Georgetown University
Panelists: Rob Yates, Candidate for Ph.D. at CUNY; Daniel Fisher, Project Director at National Humanities Alliance; Kathryn Temple, J.D., Ph.D., PI for Connected Academics, Professor at Department of English, Georgetown University
Moderator: Lauren Frey, M.A. in English Candidate
PhD Career Day at Georgetown | Friday, November 30, 2018
Leavey Center, Georgetown University
Led by John Paulas, PhD, President of PhD Matters, Ltd
Sponsored by Connected Academics, Kathryn Temple, Principal Investigator
Schedule
Coffee and breakfast (9 am—10am)
Seminar: Humanities PhDs Working in the World (10 am—12 pm)
This lively interactive seminar introduces graduate students to ways of thinking about their future lives and careers as humanities professionals. The seminar offers examples of the wide variety of careers that humanities Ph.D.s pursue along with practical advice, exercises, and encouragement. Come and ask questions about writing resumes, using online job search resources, and translating your skills for public-facing employment.
Lunch (12pm—1pm)
DC Humanities PhD Lives and Livelihoods (1pm—4pm)
This event brings DC-area humanities Ph.D.s working in a variety of careers in the private, public, and non-profit sectors to connect with graduate students in a fast-paced “speed dating” format. Please join us in this opportunity to speak with knowledgeable professionals who have made the transition from academia to public-facing positions. Confirmed professionals include:
- Evan Rhodes, Ph.D., English, University of Virginia, Manager, Deloitte
- Joe Leonard, Jr., Ph.D., American History, Howard University, Chief of Staff to the Senior Advisor for Mayor Muriel Bowser of Washington, DC
- Patricia A. Soler, Ph.D., Spanish, Georgetown, IT Specialist at U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
- James N. Class, Ph.D., Georgetown, Russian and European Intellectual History, DC Policy Engagement Lead, Gilead Sciences (Biotech)
- Maggie Gram, Ph.D., English, Harvard University, UX Designer, Mohr Design
- Raashi Rastogi, Ph.D., Renaissance Literature, Northwestern University, Alexandria Health Department, Communications Lead
Registration is open to 40 graduate students on a first-come, first served basis.
Connected Academics is a national-scale project led by the Modern Language Association and funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, aimed at preparing doctoral students of language and literature to be influential in a diversity of academic and non-academic careers.
Institute for Connected Academics Task Forces | September 12-14th, 2018
Career Expo for Humanities Scholars | June 23, 2018 | 2:00 – 4:00 PM
Graduate Certificate in the Engaged & Public Humanities | June 21-23
Connected Academics Coffee Hour | May 2 | 2:00 – 3:00 pm
Cases for Culture: A lecture with Doris Sommer | March 27, 2018
The Public Humanities and Beyond: A Forum with Paul Yachnin and Scott Krawczyk | March 16, 2018
Beyond Academia: Georgetown’s Inaugural Career Fair for Humanities Scholars | MAY 24, 2017
Sara Guyer: The Humanities of Tomorrow | May 6, 2016
Sara Guyer talked about her work at the Center for the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is Professor of English, Comparative Literature, and Jewish Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she has directed the Center for the Humanities since 2008. At the Center, she has concentrated on imagining a humanities that draws upon the rigors of critical theory, while encouraging both established and emerging scholars to help shape public life. She is committed to research and thinking that reaches across institutional lines both within and beyond the university – and includes the sciences, arts, and professions. She will be the next president of the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes (CHCI). Prof. Guyer is a scholar of poetry and rhetoric, with a particular interest in romanticism and its legacies. She is the author of Romanticism after Auschwitz (Stanford, 2007) and Reading with John Clare: Biopoetics, Sovereignty, Romanticism (Fordham, 2015). In addition to courses on Romantic and Holocaust literatures, Sara teaches Public Humanities: Theories, Cases, Methods.
Scott Krawczyk: Articulating the Value of the Humanities to the Larger World | March 18, 2016
Scott Krawczyk presented his paper “Articulating the value of the humanities to the larger world” and talked to us about new directions for doctoral curricula in the humanities. He is the Director of the Office of Federal/State Partnership at the National Endowment for the Humanities. He was a senior faculty member at the United States Military Academy at West Point for eleven years, the last three as chair of its Department of English and Philosophy. His research focuses on eighteenth-century and Romantic British literature with a particular emphasis on the collaborative networks that emerged among religious Dissenters.
Scholarly Communication Symposium | April 7, 2016
Inspired by the Provost’s recent blog posts (The Great Recession and the Humanities and A Home for Humanities’ Scholarship, the Scholarly Communication Committee’s Spring Symposium examined how humanities research is communicated to both scholars and the public. Traditionally, the primary avenue of communication is peer-reviewed publication, either publishing a scholarly monograph or contributing an article to a journal. With monograph sales declining and university presses becoming increasingly cautious about publishing them, the burden falls to academic journals, and the results of humanities research and scholarship become less widely available. To improve the impact of humanities scholarship, the symposium will explore how scholarship might be more broadly disseminated, thus allowing humanists to reach key audiences.
Speakers included Robert Groves (Provost of Georgetown University), Robert Newman (Director of the National Humanities Center), and Jane Aikin (Director of the Division of Research Programs at the NEH).
Sidonie Smith: Manifesto for the Humanities | November 30, 2015
Sidonie Smith spoke about her new book Manifesto for the Humanities: Transforming Doctoral Education in “Good Enough” Times. In it, Smith advocates for a 21st century doctoral education responsive to the changing ecology of humanistic scholarship and teaching. She elaborates a more expansive conceptualization of coursework and dissertation, a more robust, engaged public humanities, and a more diverse, collaborative, and networked sociality.
Smith is the Mary Fair Croushore Professor of the Humanities and the Director of the Institute for the Humanities at the University of Michigan. She was the 2010 president of the Modern Language Association. Her research has explored issues in human rights and personal narrative, autobiography studies, feminist theory, and postcolonial literatures. Her most recent book Manifesto for the Humanities (Michigan, 2015) is freely available to read online.
Maggie Debelius: “So what are you going to do with that?” | October 30, 2015
Maggie Debelius, co-author of So What Are You Going to Do with That? Finding Careers Outside Academia (University of Chicago, 2014) spoke about the newly revised edition of her guide to postacademic career options for M.A.s, Ph.D.s, and graduate students. Debelius and her co-author Susan Basalla interviewed hundreds of graduate alumni across disciplines to find out how they have found satisfying careers outside of academia.
Debelius is a Teaching Professor in the Department of English at Georgetown and the Director of Faculty Initiatives at Georgetown’s Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship (CNDLS). She holds an M.A. in English from Georgetown and a Ph.D. in English from Princeton.
Reinvent the Humanities PhD Retreat | Oct 23-24, 2015
We held a two-day event: first, a public forum at Georgetown University addressing innovations in humanities doctoral education Friday, October 23 at 4 p.m. followed by discussion and a reception. Speakers included Jane McAuliff (Director of National and International Outreach at the Library of Congress), Peter Brooks (Andrew W. Mellong Foundation Scholar at Princeton University), Juli Meloni (Senior Manager of Software Engineering at Hobsons), and Katja Zelljadt (Director of the NEH Office of Challenge Grants). This framed our day-long series of interactive working group discussions on Saturday, October 24 from 9 to 5 p.m. where we explored ways to better prepare humanities Ph.D. students for opportunities both within and outside of the academy.
Teaching, Learning, and Innovation Summer Institute | May 18-21, 2015
Georgetown’s Connected Academics team engaged in a design lab focused on rethinking the Ph.D., including issues of curriculum structure, funding, and integration with the broader workforce. Below, Associate Professor and Chair of English at Georgetown, Ricardo Ortiz, talks about his experience with the PODS (Productive Open Design Spaces) lab: