Praxis programming for humanist futures

The humanities crisis has begun to look less like a premise for professional debate and more like an existential threat to the humanist university—to its job markets and institutional support, and also to its mission and methods.

In response, colleges and universities across the country and in the international research community are making substantial new institutional investments in graduate cross-training, public scholarship, and the public humanities.

What is less certain is the return on those investments—particularly for the humanities. Many of the institutional investments being made generate more academic work product but little concrete progress bridging the gap between academic and public spheres for either academic ideas or recent humanities Ph.D.s.

My programming and institutional consulting are informed by the methods and values of humanist inquiry. They emerge from my disciplinary expertise, postdoctoral public humanities research, background as an editor of scholarly books for general audiences, and fundamental commitments to the values and methods of humanist knowledge production. They also orient to the practical, focusing on providing the understanding, skills, and support scholars need to work meaningfully beyond the campus gate.

graduate alt- and non-ac career support

In light of the effect of the humanities hiring contraction on graduate placement and recruitment, most doctoral institutions now agree on the necessity of preparing graduate humanists for careers beyond the tenure track. The existing program development addressing this need, however, frequently fails to serve students’ concrete needs—and frequently specifically fails to reach students in the humanities. Praxis programs speak the language of the academic humanities, value the work humanist scholarship produces, and helps graduate students develop the materials, skills, and confidence they need to navigate career planning successfully in the contemporary market.

public writing programming

Research universities increasingly agree that public writing and other public-facing humanist work is essential to the future of the humanities. Problematically, though, there are few institutional responses to this turn towards the public that offer academic humanists the skills they need to translate scholarship into accessible, readable prose—or to help them understand and connect to the institutions through which non-academic discourse run. Praxis offers programming to fill that gap.

Institutional solutions

As a consultant, I offer institutions opportunities to connect the humanist research of their faculties and graduate students with public discourses and non-academic practitioners in their fields of expertise—and to do so in ways that both benefit the institution and prioritize its mission and core values. Drawing on extensive research in national trends around public scholarship, the public humanities, and graduate training in higher education, my consulting work helps institutions meet this trend—and the sense of institutional mission on which it is based—by maximizing their existing assets and identifying opportunities for high-impact intervention.