With the help of the MLA Mellon-funded Connected Academics Grant, we seek to:
Expand the range of careers understood as the “natural” objective of the PhD in English literature
AND
Bring the humanities to the public sector by integrating humanistic approaches into many different arenas in addition to the research university and the academy.
Along the way, we plan to develop a prototype for a Georgetown Center for Public Humanities to be aligned with a new PhD program in the humanities with an interdisciplinary focus.
Some of the questions we’re asking:
- How do we articulate the value of the humanities to those outside the academy?
- How do we introduce humanities PhD faculty and PhD students to the wide range of opportunities outside the academy?
- How can we reinvent graduate education in the humanities to emphasize not so much outreach in the form of public humanities, but “inreach,” the act of directly influencing activity within non-academic organizations such as agencies, think tanks, educational associations and businesses?
