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Public Humanities Network Meeting

Community, Communications and the Humanities During the Pandemic

Monday, May 11, 2020
1:00pm - 3:00pm Eastern Daylight Time (-4:00 UTC) Sponsored by: OU Arts & and Humanities Forum - University of Oklahoma, Institute for the Humanities - University of Michigan

The theme of the virtual meeting of the Public Humanities Network will be "Community, Communications and the Humanities During the Pandemic." The organizers ask that participated be prepared to share their experiences of the public humanities during the pandemic so that others may learn as a network from any insights.

The virtual network meeting will begin with a panel conversation (1-2 p.m. EST) and continue with contributions from registered participants (2-3 p.m. EST).

Directors Meeting

Wednesday, May 13, 2020
12:00pm - 1:30pm Eastern Daylight Time (-4:00 UTC)

  • In the current global climate, humanities center and institute (HCI) directors and staff must not only have adapt to new teaching and event formats, but also grapple with elevated levels of precarity and insecurity. Humanities centers and institutes have long been leaders in creating community, supporting collaboration, and promoting engagement, activities that sustain the intellectual and emotional lives of their campus, community, and global partners. With this in mind, the Directors Meeting of the 2020 CHCI Annual Meeting, to be held via Zoom (register here), will bring together new and returning HCI directors for an open discussion about navigating the months and year ahead. Led by Teresa Mangum and Simon Goldhill, this meeting will explore:
    • Clarifying mission and activities in the face of uncertainty
    • Advocating for humanities-focused budget support
    • Sustaining existing (and engaging new) on- and off-campus partners and staff
    • Supporting undergraduate and graduate students from a distance
    • Promoting global humanities research without international travel

Health and Medical Humanities Network Virtual Meeting

Tuesday, May 19, 2020
12:00pm - 2:00pm Eastern Daylight Time (-4:00 UTC)

  • Sponsored by: Institute for the Study of Religion and Culture – University of Arizona; OU Arts & Humanities Forum - University of Oklahoma

  • We are particularly interested in hearing brief remarks (3-5 minutes) from members about initiatives that your institutions are developing in response to the Covid-19 crisis. More than ever, this is a time when the medical and health humanities can provide a historical perspective, a critical eye, and an attention to feeling. We are motivated to think about how the humanities might shed light on the problems of modernity, precarity, and virality that the pandemic has exposed. Other thoughts to consider might be how medical and health humanities can inform medical practice and education in this urgent moment and how new ideas about virtual community and collective health might affect policy and practice in an age of social distancing. Following the meeting, we will feature the initiatives of Network members as a Focus Project on our website.

Academic Freedom, Artistic Freedom, and Free Speech on Campus

Jonathan Friedman and Julie Trebault, PEN America
Thursday, May 21, 2020
12:00pm - 1:30pm Eastern Daylight Time (-4:00 UTC)

  • Tensions around expression have been the source of much controversy on campuses in recent years, arising in response to faculty opinions and student protests, comments on social media, art exhibits, and even theatrical productions. This conversation with and for humanities centers and institute directors and staff will offer an opportunity to reflect on these topics and to learn about the work of PEN America, a nearly 100-year old literary and human rights organization. PEN has emerged as a leading voice on campus free speech issues in the U.S., advising university leaders and developing principled and practical guidance for a range of scenarios and stakeholders. Through its international advocacy, meanwhile, PEN tracks and responds to threats to both artistic and academic freedom. A key focus of this session will be how PEN's mission and philosophy--working to celebrate literary and artistic excellence, defend free expression, advance diversity, equity, and inclusion, and dispel hatred--can be upheld and applied on campuses and in classrooms.

Recording of the session:

Associate Directors and Administrators Network Meeting

Advocacy and Humanities Administration During a Pandemic

Tuesday, May 26, 2020
12:00pm Eastern Daylight Time (-4:00 UTC)

  • Sponsored by: Center for the Humanities and the Arts - University of Colorado Boulder

  • We originally planned to hold a workshop to explore forms of advocacy in relation to the work of Humanities Centers/Institutes or in relation to our roles as humanities administrators, particularly in connection to the 2020 conference theme of “Borders, Mobilities, and Displacements.” So much has changed in the past several months, but the need for advocacy remains. Through a series of break-out discussions, this meeting will offer network members a chance to share and reflect on how our centers have responded to the pandemic programmatically and institutionally, how we have responded personally, and what challenges and possibilities we see on the horizon.

Collaboration through Regional and Thematic Consortia

Thursday, May 28, 2020
12:00 pm Eastern Daylight Time (-4:00 UTC)

Sponsored by: Society for the Humanities – Cornell University

  • Promoting collaboration between member organizations is one of the core missions of CHCI. We have seen our member networks—such as the Health and Medical Humanities and Environmental Humanities Networks—emerge as self-sustaining and others, such as the Liberal Arts and Small Colleges Network, coordinate annual meetings to share best practices. The goal of this session is to provide member organizations with an opportunity to meet one another, learn about building and sustaining multi-institutional projects, and explore ways to collaborate with neighboring institutions (inside and outside CHCI). Led by Paul Fleming and Vivian May, this sessions will consider:

    • Sharing resources especially in a time of diminishing budgets
    • Creating a platform for virtual events (from lectures to alt-career workshops) available to multiple humanities centers
    • Building an intellectual neighborhood, both physical and virtual
    • Collaboration with and without travel
    • Ideas for multi-center events that best serve faculty needs

Sustaining New Humanities Centers and Institutes

Thursday, June 4, 2020
12:00pm - 2:00pm Eastern Daylight Time (-4:00 UTC)

  • Meeting Agenda

  • In a recent interview with CHCI, Jie-Hyun Lim (Director of the Critical Global Studies Institute at Sogang University in Seoul, Korea) reflected that COVID-19 is forcing HCI leaders to learn "how to slow down without losing the vitality." This balancing act is especially important for the new centers and institutes that have emerged around the world. The aim of this session is to bring together directors at new HCIs (founded within the past decade) to discuss the challenges and opportunities of making plans for an uncertain year ahead. We envision this meeting being the start of a new CHCI network and the beginning of an on-going conversation between new HCIs. This meeting is open to all CHCI members, and we hope it is an opportunity to create a moment of affinity and exchange.

Arts and Humanities Collaborations

Tuesday, June 9, 2020
12:00pm - 1:30pm Eastern Daylight Time (-4:00 UTC)

  • In the video below, Ranjana Khanna, Director of the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute, is joined by both humanists and artists to discuss the importance and the implication of the arts & the humanities being positioned alongside each other within academia:

  • Many institutes exist under the rubric of “Arts and Humanities,” which in turn sometimes reflects the larger administrative organization of the institutions. The relationship between the Arts and the Humanities varies greatly among institutions of higher education, however, as does the nature of faculty lines, funding, and the links to the public on the one hand, and other units within our colleges or universities on the other. This session will address the ways in which centers and institutes are collaborating with the arts within and outside of their institutions.

  • In the session we will hear from institute directors who have worked closely with the Arts (Ranji Khanna, Tim Murray, Premesh Lalu), artists who sometimes work within the context of universities (Isaac Julien), faculty members who have developed arts projects from within the Humanities Institute context (Esther Gabara), and humanists who work within the museum context (Elizabeth Giorgis).