Humanities for the Public Good: An Integrative, Collaborative, Practice-Based Humanities PhD is a new program focused on creating cross-disciplinary opportunities for humanities graduate students interested in diverse careers.

On Networking, Collaboration, and Empathy a conversation with the AHA's career diversity expert Dylan Ruediger

Dylan Ruediger, Coordinator of Career Diversity for Historians and Institutional Research, AHA Ashley Cheyemi McNeil, Humanities for the Public Good Postdoctoral Fellow

In the first cold months of 2020, Humanities for the Public Good will host two events that focus on networking and career diversity: our “ Working Relationships ” workshop on February 13th and “ Historically Speaking ,” an alumni event featuring History PhDs on February 24th. To help set the scene for these upcoming programming events, Mellon postdoctoral fellow Ashley Cheyemi McNeil interviewed Dylan Ruediger, coordinator of career diversity and institutional research at the American Historical Association. The following is the transcript of Ashley and Dylan’s conversation: Okay, so can you give us a rundown of your work? To a person who has never explored Career Contacts or is familiar with the AHA, can you explain what you do there?  The Career Contacts program is part of the AHA’s Career Diversity for Historians initiative, which is oriented towards helping history departments offer a broader and deeper range of professionalization opportunities to their graduate students and to helping students prepare themselves for a range of career paths, whether that be inside or beyond the professoriate. Much of our work involves interfacing with faculty in history departments to help them think about their curriculum, their co-curricular offerings, and the experience that their students have while they’re in graduate school. Career Contacts intersects with that broader work. One of the things that we’ve observed from our many conversations with graduate students and faculty is that graduate students sometimes need help... READ MORE

Dates to note: Dec. 18: HPG summer internship information session (4-5PM, Obermann Center) 1/31, 12-1) Dec. 20: Library of Congress Junior Fellows summer internship program Jan. 1: Folger Institute Research Fellowships deadline Jan. 3: New-York Historical Society Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Predoctoral Awards in Women’s History deadline Jan. 10: CLIR Postdoctoral Fellowship deadline Jan. 13: "The Postdoc Academy: Succeeding as a Postdoc" free five-week online course through EdX Jan. 15: Mary Isabel Sibley Fellowship in Greek/French Studies deadline Jan. 15: Mellon-CES Dissertation Completion Fellowship in European Studies deadline Jan 15: American Antiquarian Society short term visiting academic research fellowships deadline Jan. 24: DePaul University External Faculty Fellowships: Visiting Humanities Fellows deadline Jan. 30: Andrew W. Mellon Sawyer Seminar: Publishing Workshop Jan. 31: HPG summer internship information session (12-1PM, Obermann Center) Feb. 11: HPG Graduate Research Assistant (50% appointment for the academic year) deadline

HPG SUMMER 2020 INTERNSHIPS

Applications are open! Working with partners outside the academy is one of the best ways for graduate students to expand the kinds of careers and workplaces they are considering. For the second year, in collaboration with the Graduate College, the Andrew W. Mellon-funded Humanities for the Public Good initiative is offering paid internships with nearby organizations: Public Space One National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library African Museum of Iowa Iowa Valley Resource & Conservation Development Hancher Auditorium University of Iowa Labor Center   In addition to working on specific projects within an organization for 30 hours a week during June and July, participating students will meet as a cohort to reflect on the applicability of their scholarly work to various workplaces and to discuss the kinds of knowledge required to translate the methods and questions of the humanities into a range of workplaces.    Attend one of the following informational sessions: December 18, 4-5:00 pm OR Friday, January 31, 12-1:00 pm (Hosted at the Obermann Center, 111 Church Street)

INFORMATION/APPLICATION:  CLICK HERE

Networking Resources

Join us for a free workshop on "working relationships" and effective networking on Thursday, February 13. Register here. Space is limited.

Research and Mentorship: A Closer Look Data gathered from the November 2019 newsletter polls and corresponding Twitter polls.

— SURVEY —

Do you actively used LinkedIn (accessing the website once a month or more often)? Yes Select No Select

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Curious about how to maximize your LinkedIn productivity, or totally unclear on where to start? Save the date for a mid-day workshop on Thursday, March 12 with HPG and the Graduate College! Be on the lookout for a registration link in our next newsletter.

QUICK READS  Have an extra 3 minutes? Read this.  Have an extra 13 minutes? Read this.

Intern Spotlight: Marie Culpepper ( French & Italian ) In Summer 2019, Marie Culpepper joined two other graduate students (Paul Schmitt and Kathleen Shaughnessy) for eight-week internships at Iowa Valley RC&D , as part of an opportunity to explore how their academic training might translate into a variety of professions and workplaces. Here, she shares some of her discoveries as she journeyed across the Iowa Valley region to learn about rolle bolle. In reading the introduction to  Generous Thinking  by Kathleen Fitzpatrick, I was struck by the moment where she differentiates between the notion of community as evoking a “dangerous, mythical notion of organic unity” instead of a “form of solidarity, of coalition-building.” I agree with Fitzpatrick that the romanticized, fanciful understanding of community as something easy, spontaneous, and naturally occurring is destructive. The fact is, solidarity requires hard work, individual sacrifice, and compromise, and it takes a lot of humility to “acknowledge our interdependence,” as Peter Block puts it. The other difficult thing to navigate is ensuring that community is inclusive, and that its creation doesn’t result in an “us” versus “them” mentality, something that I think requires constant monitoring and revision. In the interactions I’ve had with community members over the course of the past week, I’ve been struck with how distanced this work feels from the world of the academy. Explaining who I am and why I’m doing what I’m doing involves several steps. Most people don’t know what the Iowa Valley RC&D is, or the scenic bypass, and I know from hearing people try to explain who I am that they don’t necessarily retain what I tell them about it. (I don’t blame them, either—I do try to give the simplest, shortest explanation of what the Iowa Valley RC&D is, but it’s still wordy, and even Jessica has told me she struggles to give people a one-sentence answer.) Most of the time I don’t even get around to explaining that I’m actually coming from the University of Iowa, because it just adds to the confusion. I’ve gotten varied (but generally positive) reactions when I have brought it up, though; some of the people I’ve spoken to even went there, or sent their children there. Despite this, I haven’t encountered any “rampant anti-intellectualism.” Actually, most of the people I’ve spoken to have a profound interest in... READ MORE

Rolle Bolle: A Personal Account On July 3, 2019, Marie interviewed 92-year-old Dick Claeys, the oldest active rolle bolle player in Iowa and something of a local legend. In the interview, he speaks about his 90 years of experience playing the game that his father brought over with him when he emigrated from Belgium in 1911. READ THE INTERVIEW

Noted this month:

Job Beyond the Academy Apple is hiring a K-12 Education Development Executive, who will be responsible for leading strategic learning engagements with K-12 school customers. Seen as an education thought leadership role by education customers, a deep understanding of Apple in education and strong knowledge of the education industry is required. See more here. Humanities Center The Public Scholars Program through the UC Davis Humanities Institute is a Mellon-funded program that supports community-engaged scholarship and provides experience for graduate students interested in diverse careers. The program pairs students and faculty mentors, who then develop community-based research projects and implement them with community partners. See more here. Funding Opportunity The New England Regional Fellowship Consortium (a collaboration of 30 major cultural agencies) will offer at least two dozen awards for 2020-21. Each grant will provide a stipend of $5,000 for a minimum of eight weeks of research at at least three participating institutions.  See more here.

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