Description:

Join us for a discussion of the big questions and practical considerations involved in conducting ethical community-engaged scholarship in the humanities!

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 we best manage competing institutional expectations and timelines? This free, virtual panel brings together three experienced public humanities practitioners to share their perspectives on the challenges and rewards of community-engaged 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

Asad Ali Jafri is a cultural producer, community organizer, and interdisciplinary artist. Using a grassroots approach and global perspective, Jafri connects artists and communities across imagined boundaries to create meaningful engagements and experiences. He is a co-founder of SpaceShift Collective, a collaborative of artists experimenting with the ways in which we work, live, and create.

Amar Jèan “AJ” Christian is the Margaret Walker Alexander Professor of Communication Studies at Northwestern. His research focuses on the political economy of legacy and new media, cultural studies, and community-based research. He regularly engages industry and community as part of his work, including by serving as executive producer of films and series such as Jules Rosskam’s Desire Lines, Sarah Oberholtzer’s We Call Each Other, and The Cookout with producer Makiah Green and director Sam Bailey. Dr. Christian is also a co-founder of OTV | Open Television, a platform for intersectional television.

Rebekah Coffman is a historian, preservationist, and curator currently serving as curator of religion and community history at the Chicago History Museum where she leads the Chicago Sacred initiative. For CHM, she is co-curator of exhibitions Back Home: Polish Chicago  (May 2023-June 2024) and Aquí en Chicago (forthcoming October 2025). Her interdisciplinary work is at the intersection of religious identity and the built environment and explores how to best safeguard tangible and intangible heritages in material and visual culture through place-based, community-centered approaches.

Moderator

Kelly Wisecup is the Arthur E. Andersen Teaching and Research Professor in the Department of English at Northwestern. She is also an affiliate of the Center for Native American and Indigenous Research. Her public humanities scholarship includes collaborations with scholars and tribal nations on a digital humanities project involving the Literary Voyager or Muzzeniegun (a 19th-century literary magazine edited and created by Ojiwbe poet Jane Johnston Schoolcraft and her family); and collaborations around archives, digital humanities, and rivers with the American Indian Center of Chicago and a Humanities Without Walls multi-institution research group.