A Humanities Year in Review: 2023-2024

For 25 years, the Center for the Humanities at UW-Madison has been a nexus for interdisciplinary programs and events within and across the humanities and social sciences.

As we look back on the year and celebrate a quarter century of championing the humanities, we want to thank you—the students, faculty, staff, and community members who made this all possible. Read on for a few highlights and stories from the past year.

Lost Children Archive in Wisconsin

In April 2024, we welcomed high school students and teachers from 20 schools across Wisconsin to the UW-Madison campus for the annual Great World Texts in Wisconsin student conference. This year's program focused on Valeria Luiselli’s novel Lost Children Archive, a fiercely imaginative follow-up to the American Book Award-winning Tell Me How It Ends. 

In an engaging evening conversation at Madison Central Public Library with Paola S. Hernández (Mellon-Morgridge Professor of the Humanities at UW-Madison), Luiselli spoke to more than 150 members of the Madison community, presented in partnership with Wisconsin Book Festival. Luiselli read from her work in progress titled Sometimes and Across that “was particularly difficult to write;" discussed her role in the Future Library project; and took questions from the audience about her writing and translation processes. You can watch a recording of the conversation from Wisconsin Book Festival (available until May 15, 2024).

During the day, Great World Texts high school students shared a wide range of projects created in response to Lost Children Archive and had the chance to meet author Valeria Luiselli, who delivered the keynote address, hosted a lunch for essay-contest winners, and joined the student poster sessions. We share a few project highlights below; for more, please check out this slideshow and our digital student conference program. 

Diego Alegria Corona, PhD candidate in English and a 2023-2024 Public Humanities Fellow, volunteered at the student conference and shares his experience: 

Little did I know that the students’ responses were not only creative, but also critical: from visual exegesis in oil paintings to co-authored novellas that imagine alternative endings, among other genres, media, and formats. Participants eloquently expressed the reasons behind their creative responses and dove into the very complexities of what literature is or can be.

Photos via svheartphotography.  

Madison West High School

Saffron Zahorik-Schultz and Hadley Russell

Sounds of a Weekend in Madison

Digital Soundscape

Saffron Zahorik-Schultz and Hadley Russell explored the power of audio storytelling by documenting local “melodies” from State Street to the Henry Vilas Zoo. “Similar to the sounds captured by the narrator and her husband in Lost Children Archive, we strove to accurately capture sounds both concrete and obscure, like 'Documentarians.'" Listen to the soundscape here.

Bay Port High School

Maleah Kohn

Lost Identities in Valeria Luiselli's Lost Children Archive

Original Artwork

In her original artwork, Maleah Kohn from Bay Port High School created a portrait of author Valeria Luiselli with fingerprints. In the words of Kohn: “These fingerprints serve as a means of identification and represent the ways in which the stories of individuals come together to form a collective experience.”

Save the Date: Tuesday, April 15, 2025

During the 2024-2025 Great World Texts in Wisconsin program, high school teachers and students throughout the state will read and engage with Cho Nam-Joo’s novel Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982, which follows one woman’s psychic deterioration in the face of rampant misogyny. In addition to the student conference, Cho will deliver a public Humanities Without Boundaries talk Tuesday evening at the Madison Central Public Library, presented in partnership with Wisconsin Book Festival and the Center for East Asian Studies. Please stay tuned for details.

Interested Wisconsin high schools can access our application to next year's Great World Texts program.

Public Humanities Fellows

Each year, we invite applications for the Public Humanities Graduate Fellowship, designed to provide advanced graduate students in the humanities with experience outside of academia. By placing fellows in community partner organizations around Madison, the program facilitates the reciprocal sharing of resources and expertise and highlights the significance of the humanities both on and off campus.

Please join us to recognize and hear from the 2023-2024 fellows:

Diego Alegria (PhD candidate, English)

Community Access and Development Fellow with WORT 89.9 Community Radio

"As a writer and scholar, my work at WORT 89.9 FM has allowed me to practice cultural journalism, and to cultivate a public-facing style. This can be illustrated by a bilingual feature story I produced on how the Mexican and the Chilean communities in Madison celebrate their independence days during the National Hispanic Heritage Month. In this feature, I addressed the legacies of the independence days through my ongoing research on Spanish-American literature and culture during the long nineteenth century, particularly the discourses we have inherited around national and regional identities." 

Benny Witkovsky (PhD candidate, Sociology)

Community Engagement and Curriculum Development Fellow with the United We Stand Project at the Wisconsin Humanities Council

"The Public Humanities Fellowship has been one of the capstones of my time in graduate school. Working with Wisconsin Humanities, I spearheaded the creation of a high school curriculum on hate crimes in Wisconsin as part of the White House’s United We Stand initative. This project allowed me to dive into overlooked chapters of Wisconsin history, connect with community leaders and experts across the state, and hone my skills in curriculum development. We have already piloted our curriculum in three Wisconsin high schools (including the one I graduated from more than a decade ago!) and look forward to bringing it to more schools in the fall."

Sadie Dempsey (PhD candidate, Sociology)

Civic Engagement and Community Partnerships Fellow with the League of Women Voters of Dane County

"Working as a Public Humanities Fellow with the League of Women Voters of Dane County is a highlight of my graduate school experience. The fellowship, geared towards making democracy more accessible to all Wisconsinites, put my values and skills as a community-engaged scholar to the test. In the past nine months, I facilitated an inter-generational collaboration to increase civic engagement among high schoolers and created a workshop for recent immigrants to make their voices heard in local government even without voting rights. This experience reaffirmed my deepest values and motivations for pursuing graduate study in the first place—a desire to use every tool at my fingertips to build a more just world."

We're thrilled to announce the 2024-2025 fellows, made possible by generous funding from the UW-Madison Graduate School:

Carlos Davalos Barbabosa

Spanish Language Programming Fellow, WORT 89.9 FM Community Radio

Barbabosa, a journalist from Mexico City, is currently a PhD candidate at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Barbabosa’s research is a vehicle for understanding the media relationship between Mexico and the U.S.; he investigates how this relationship shapes policy and Chilango identity configuration processes, with a specific interest in Mexican FM radio influence during the 1990s. 

Jennifer Jones

Energy Access Research and Community Engagement Fellow, RENEW Wisconsin

Jones, a Dine (Navajo) PhD student at the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, is working at the intersection of clean energy technologies, climate and energy justice, and tribal-federal responsibility and policy. Her research is focused on the potential of tribal-owned utility development to provide clean, affordable, and reliable electricity for tribal communities. 

Jacquie Kociubuk

Public History and Engagement Fellow, Madison Public Library Foundation

Kociubuk, a PhD candidate in the Information School, focuses on understanding the role of the public library and other informal learning environments as a community space and meaningful place for children and their families. She has been involved in Project VOICE, an IMLS grant which explored how public library outreach can better support families from underserved communities through a social justice lens, as well as Read Baby Read, an infant and toddler focused literacy initiative funded by the William Penn Foundation. 

Events to Inspire Audiences

We hosted or co-sponsored more than 40 events and workshops during the 2023-2024 academic year to engage our campus, community, and beyond. As always, our events are free and open to all.

Highlights included: 

• Tsitsi Jaji (Duke University) delivered the annual Tejumola Olaniyan Memorial Lecture and shared a song she composed in Teju’s honor.
• We had “sold-out” Friday Lunch conversations with UW-Madison faculty members Allison Powers Useche (History and Chican@ & Latin@ Studies), Kristina Huang (English), Kirk B. Sides (English), and Simon Balto (History).
• At our Focus on the Humanities conversations, we showcased the work of UW-Madison faculty members Ramzi Fawaz (English) and Francine Hirsch (History).
• We collaborated with the UW-Madison Department of Communication Arts on a visit from Pete Souza, former White House photographer; we also collaborated with the Havens Wright Center for Social Justice on a Humanities Without Boundaries event with Davarian Baldwin (Trinity College).
• We hosted several Public Works seminars, including a popular workshop with DesignLab about building personal websites for academics and early career professionals.
• Nicole Fleetwood (NYU) delivered the annual Nellie Y. McKay Lecture in the Humanities (read more in this article from The Badger Herald).

Jenny Slate Invited Us to Engage with the Weird and the Wonderful

In October 2023, nearly 1,000 people registered to attend our Humanities Without Boundaries conversation with actor, author, and comedian Jenny Slate, moderated by Ramzi Fawaz, Romnes Professor of English at UW-Madison. Interim Director Cindy I-Fen Cheng writes: “Jenny Slate is a singular individual. She fed our soul, inspired our minds, made us laugh, and brought joy and excitement to our campus.” We also held a film screening of Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, starring Slate.

Slate spoke about her approach to writing and her experiences in film and television. She also shared insights about everything from pursuing a career in the humanities to the concept of love. “Love is the fragile but godly light I’m trying to keep on me all the time. It’s the thing that most people can’t live without. It is my main food. It feels like magic to me. Love is a renewable resource that never ends. We live in shadow when it’s not there,” Slate said. 

Given the sheer breadth and depth of Slate’s work, there were uncountable ways through which people of all ages and from different backgrounds came to know, admire, and be affected by Slate’s artistry. We received great feedback from you, including this quote from one attendee: "Wow is all I can say after leaving the Jenny Slate event ... Her authenticity and openness are what we need more of in the world."

Spotlight: Humanities NOW 

Held each semester, Humanities NOW panels are convened to offer thoughtful perspectives on breaking issues of our times. Our discussions offer a rare opportunity for the community to sift and winnow together, in the time-honored tradition of the University of Wisconsin, offering deeper insights and perspectives not found in general media coverage of disturbing, urgent events. 

In April 2024, we convened five expert panelists to lead a dynamic conversation titled Humanities NOW: Public Universities, Legislatures, and Academic Freedom about the external pressures facing public institutions such as UW-Madison. Students, faculty, and staff from across our campus joined community members, elected officials, and local media to discuss the recent deal that was struck between State legislators and UW System leadership, DEI, academic freedom, the resignation of leaders at other academic institutions, and what we stand to lose—or gain—in all of this. Learn more in this podcast and article from The Daily Cardinal.

Photo by Nick Duda.

Suggest a Speaker

As we chart our upcoming and future events seasons, who would you like to hear from? The suggestions we receive from you will help our Steering Committee, composed of faculty and community partners, create a slate of exciting and diverse speakers.

Public Humanities Exchange

The Center affirms our commitment to public humanities partnerships as essential projects of hope that reflect the necessity of the humanities and the Wisconsin Idea. The Public Humanities Exchange (HEX) enables students to create projects that serve and bolster the work of community organizations, nonprofits, cultural institutions, and public agencies.

Here's more from recent HEX Scholars:

HEX-U Scholar: Kayla Holman

The Coon Creek Watershed PL566 Dams: Collecting a Community Perspective 

“Working with the Coon Creek Community, Sydney Weidell, and Dr. Caroline Gottschalk Druschke over the past semester has been an incredible learning experience. The community is unbelievably proud of their recovery from the 2018 floods and dam breaching and elated to share their experiences and to continue growing as a community. From this experience I learned the value of incorporating community and local knowledge into academic works of science and journalism.” 

HEX Scholar: Areyana Proctor

Listener Space Scholar with the Black Like Me Podcast

“Working with Black Like Me has helped me continue to refine my potential research interests, which is exploring Blackness and media representation/media usage. I have also developed meaningful skills in working with a team on a longer-term project and feel much more comfortable now in doing digital communications work. In moving to Madison, I knew that I wanted to find ways of being more involved in the community around me, and working with the Black Like Me podcast has been the perfect opportunity to begin that journey.” 

HEX Scholar: Kate Westaby 

Building a Foundation for the Young Parent Collective (YPC)

“I believe engaging in public humanities means working with community members in collaborative inquiry, building skills, and co-mentorship opportunities. Importantly, humanities work centers the voices of community—in this case, young parents—particularly marginalized community members. It also creates collaborative partnerships between the university and community members. My HEX funding was integral to the high quality of work we received and will truly help us launch the YPC this summer.” 

Borghesi-Mellon Interdisciplinary Workshops

Each year, the Center provides an opportunity for working groups of students and faculty to come together outside of the classroom to investigate interdisciplinary topics. Support from the Mellon Foundation and UW-Madison alumni Nancy Borghesi (BA ’69, Economics) and David Borghesi (BBA '70, Accounting) allows these groups to produce research and teaching innovations as well as hold public talks and events.

2023-2024 workshops included Abolition and Refuge: Toward Community-Campus Conversations; Archives in the Americas; Hegel, Social Theory, and the Problem of Recognition; and Psychedelic Pasts, Presents, and Futures.

Featured Workshops

The Archives in the Americas workshop held a conversation at the Wisconsin Historical Society to discuss how institutional archives preserve lives. Around the globe, people have long struggled to shape archives, determining where they start and end, what testimonies or information will be stored, how institutions will preserve and curate materials, and how academia should engage with them.

In its second year, the Psychedelic Pasts, Presents, and Futures workshop continued to host activities bringing scientists, humanities and social sciences scholars, students, and members of the public together for conversations about psychedelics in society beyond clinical science and drug development. This included a discussion on the global histories of psychedelics and the second annual Plants for the Apocalypse, a self-guided walking tour through the DC Smith Greenhouse.

Stay tuned for more information on the 2024-2025 workshops and ways to get involved.

First Book Workshop

The Center’s First Book Workshop provides both scholarly and collegial support for junior faculty members revising their first academic book.

Recent awardee Professor Darshana Sreedhar Mini’s first book, Rated A: Soft-Porn Cinema and Mediations of Desire (University of California Press, 2024), was awarded The Edward Cameron Dimock, Jr. Prize in the Indian Humanities by the American Institute of Indian Studies. 

Awards and Notable Mentions

As we celebrate our 25th year serving our campus, community, and beyond, we’re also recognizing the contributions of some of the people behind the Center. 

• Cindy I-Fen Cheng (Robinson Edwards Professor of American History and Asian American Studies) served as the Interim Director of the Center for the Humanities for the spring 2023 and fall 2023 semesters. Cheng writes: "Serving as Interim Director has been an opportunity of a lifetime as I got to be a part of a team that is championing the humanities and how it advances the benefits of a democratic society. The Center staff are truly good people, and it was an honor to work with them and be in community with them."
• Russ Castronovo (Tom Paine Professor of English and Director of the Center) received a Hilldale Professorship, which recognizes faculty members who excel in scholarly activity, have records of outstanding research or creative work, and show promise of continued productivity. 
• Marrion Ladd (Administrator of the Center) received a 2023-2024 University Staff Excellence Award, which recognizes outstanding performance, service, and contributions by Letters & Science staff members. 
• Diego Alegría (PhD candidate in English and Public Humanities Fellow) was awarded the Lyman S.V. Judson and Ellen Mackechnie Judson Graduate Student Award in the Creative Arts.
• Sadie Dempsey (PhD candidate in Sociology and Public Humanities Fellow) received an Excellence in Engaged Scholarship Graduate Student Award from the Morgridge Center, which acknowledges a graduate student who aims to better connect campus and community through service-learning, engaged teaching, or leading and participating in community-based research while addressing community-identified issues.

Support the Center for the Humanities

Our mission is to champion the humanities as a means to spark civic engagement, build community, educate, inspire, and make long-lasting change. Your contribution supports innovative and publicly-engaged programming, preparing students for full participation in a democratic society.

We’ve also established the Friends of the UW-Madison Center for the Humanities that helps advise and support our programming and initiatives. Individuals with an interest in supporting the humanities at UW-Madison can reach out to info@humanities.wisc.edu to learn more.

Please stay tuned for our 2024-2025 public events calendar!