Description:

Online event — free!

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Scholarly work that engages with communities beyond the academy raises ethical questions on both a theoretical and practical level. How can scholars in the humanities and humanistic social sciences foster meaningful, mutually beneficial community partnerships? How can we as collaborators evaluate and address ethical considerations at the level of project design, execution, and outcomes? How can collaborators best manage competing institutional expectations and timelines? This free, virtual panel brings together three experienced practitioners to share their perspectives on the challenges and rewards of community-engaged humanities scholarship. This discussion is open to the public and will be useful to anyone who is interested in humanistic work that extends beyond the walls of the academy.

Panelists

Dr. Ruth Curry is a staff member at Northwestern's Center for Civic Engagement, where she supports graduate students and faculty in their community-engaged teaching, learning, and research. She studied philosophy and literature at the University of Chicago and Northwestern University, where she received her PhD in Comparative Literary Studies. At Northwestern, she has taught and supported a number of undergraduate and graduate courses connecting humanistic study and civic engagement for Chicago Field Studies, Philosophy, and Asian American Studies.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon is Executive Director of Illinois Humanities. She received her BA and MA in history from the University of Chicago and PhD in Education from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Before joining Illinois Humanities in 2019, she served as Vice President of Education and Experience at the Chicago Architecture Center and as a senior researcher at the Great Cities Institute at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is the founding executive director of Project Exploration, a nonprofit dedicated to changing the face of science for youth and girls of color, which was recognized locally and nationally, including with a Presidential Award for Excellence. She has been named a Notable Leader in DEI by Crain's Chicago Business, a National After School Champion by the After School Alliance, Chicagoan of the Year by Chicago Magazine, and a Leadership Fellow with the Chicago Community Trust. Her current research and writing focus on the ways in which participatory humanities experiences bridge civic identities and catalyze social change. Lyon is the author of the graphic novels No Small Plans, and Washington By and By, and served as coeditor for A Simple Justice: The Challenge of Small Schools. @LyonGabrielle 

Dr. Mérida M. Rúa is a faculty member in the Latina and Latino Studies Program at Northwestern. Her research and teaching focus on urban studies and aging, with an emphasis on communities of color in US cities. She is the author of A Grounded Identidad: Making New Lives in Chicago’s Puerto Rican Neighborhoods and co-editor of Critical Dialogues in Latinx Studies: A Reader and a special issue of the journal Latino Studies on “The Art of Latina and Latino Elderhood.” Her current book project, Migrations to Elderhood, examines the everyday lives of Puerto Rican old-timers and offers insight into how they make meaning of their experiences and socio-spatial environments as they age into later life.

Moderator

Dr. Trish Bredar is the Postdoctoral Fellow in Public Humanities at Northwestern’s Kaplan Institute for the Humanities. She holds a PhD in English, with a graduate minor in Gender Studies, from the University of Notre Dame. She teaches and researches in the field of nineteenth-century British literature, with a particular interest in the socio-political dynamics of physical mobility. At Northwestern, she co-convenes the Kaplan Institute’s Public Humanities Graduate Practicum, which supports PhD students pursuing publicly engaged humanities projects. 

Presented by the Public Humanities Graduate Practicum of the Kaplan Humanities Institute.