Public Humanities: History, Theory, Practice

Catalog description

This course introduces students to the idea of the public humanities, both as a field of scholarly inquiry as well as a set of interrelated professional practices of knowledge production and dissemination around arts, cultural, museum, library, and university institutions. The course focuses on the histories of this field. It considers the field’s intellectual underpinnings in conceiving of diverse “publics” and models for inclusivity; sources of authority and strategies for cultivating it; and methods of connecting, building, and engaging communities. Foundational work in understanding communities, power, and knowledge production draws on work from ethnic studies/labor history.