The Whiting Public Engagement Fellowship celebrates and supports faculty in the humanities who embrace public engagement as part of the scholarly vocation. Each Fellow receives $50,000 to pursue a public-facing project.

The Whiting Public Engagement Program is a distinctive national grant founded to champion this vital role of humanities professors in the world. Today we are proud to award seven $50,000 Fellowships and five $10,000 Seed Grants, empowering a dozen early-career scholars and their collaborators to amplify unheard stories, infuse complexity into public discourse, and circulate essential insights gleaned from immersion in the humanities.
 
These 2019-20 grantees represent a vibrant cross-section of the important work being done today by humanists to contribute to communities across the country. They teach in disciplines including history, English, philosophy, African-American studies, anthropology, American studies, art history, classics, and comparative literature. They hail from all parts of the US; half are at public, half at private universities. Most exciting, they employ a wide range of means to engage publics, from podcasts to community oral history projects to K-12 curricula to digital humanities. 
 

Congratulations to this year’s ASA member recipients:

  • Alice Dunbar-Nelson in Wilmington, a year-long festival of public programs restoring the legacy of an astonishing Black woman of letters who adopted the city as her home, including adult reading groups, K-12 curriculum workshops, and the creation of a website and public art.  Project Director: David J. Kim, University of Delaware.
  • Latinx Murals of Pilsen, a set of walking tours and digital tools exploring the changing neighborhood at the heart of Chicago’s Latinx community through its vibrant historic murals, making information about them available for the first time, in collaboration with the National Museum of Mexican Art. Project Director: Jason Ruiz, University of Notre Dame.
  • Gay Rodeo Oral History Project, developing a collection of oral histories in partnership with the International Gay Rodeo Association (IGRA) to design an online exhibit, with the primary goal of making the association’s history available and accessible to its own members. As the project grows, Scofield and IGRA hope that more and more gay rodeoers will be moved to share their stories, contributing to a larger understanding of the rich history of gay rodeo and the evolving future of queer rural spaces. Project Director: Rebecca Schofield, University of Idaho.

Full descriptions of the new Fellows and Seed Grantees and their projects are included in the attached press release. For more information about the program and past winners, visit the Whiting website.

Posted for ASA Office in Member News
Post date: April 16, 2019

Community announcements and events are services that are offered by the ASA to support the organizing efforts of critical constituency groups. They do not reflect the decisions or actions of the association’s governance bodies, the National Council or Executive Committee. Questions should be directed to the committee, caucus, or chapter that has authored and posted this notice.