Public humanities

Public humanities is the work of engaging diverse publics in reflecting on heritage, traditions, and history, and the relevance of the humanities to the current conditions of civic and cultural life. Public humanities is often practiced within federal, state, nonprofit and community-based cultural organizations that engage people in conversations, facilitate and present lectures, exhibitions, performances and other programs for the general public on topics such as history, philosophy, popular culture and the arts.

Workers within the public humanities endeavor to create physical and virtual spaces where the public can engage in conversation, learning and reflection about issues and ideas. Public humanities projects include exhibitions and programming related to historic preservation, oral history, archives, material culture, public art, cultural heritage, and cultural policy. The National Endowment for the Humanities notes that public humanities projects it has supported in the past include "interpretation at historic sites, television and radio productions, museum exhibitions, podcasts, short videos, digital games, websites, mobile apps, and other digital media."[1] Many practitioners of public humanities are invested in ensuring the accessibility and relevance of the humanities to the general public or community groups.

The American Council of Learned Societies' National Task Force on Scholarship and the Public Humanities suggests that the nature of public humanities work is to teach the public the findings of academic scholarship: it sees "scholarship and the public humanities not as two distinct spheres but as parts of a single process, the process of taking private insight, testing it, and turning it into public knowledge."[2] Others suggest a more balanced understanding of the ways in which history, heritage and culture are shared between the academy and the public, drawing on the notion of shared historical authority.

Subfields of the public humanities include public history, public sociology, public folklore, public anthropology, public philosophy, historic preservation, museum studies, museum education, cultural heritage management, community archaeology, public art, and public science.

Matthew Wickman's Research

Matthew Wickman, who is an English Professor and founder of The BYU humanities center. In Wickman's research, he constructed a survey to identify the future role of "public humanities" at institutions. Wickman had planned to identify on what"public Humanities" truly means. He also tried to address the methods that would account as public humanities. The survey was sent to humanities centre and institute's around the entire world. Thr Survey had brought a wide range of answers, as some people replied with mentioning " that organizing a public festival qualifies as public humanities"[3]From the research, it's clear that there is ongoing contradictory on the methods of "public humanities". Whether publication on venues are considered a method as well. "Seventy-five per cent of respondents report that engaging members of the community has either a moderate or major impact on their institution"[4]. At the end of the research, Wickman addresses how the concept of "public humanities" is portrayed differently.‘‘What are the public humanities?’’ – we might pose a rather different one: ‘‘Where are they?’’ Are they found in old-fashioned outreach, or in newer models of engagement? In research or teaching? Within universities or alongside them?"[5]. Wickman believed using data to formulate an answer to his question was very effective, hoping to help scholars in humanities to get the public relevance they want.

Programs in Public Humanities

Several universities have established programs in the public humanities (or have otherwise expressed commitments to public humanities via the creation of centers, degrees, or certificate programs with investments in various forms of "public" work), including:

gollark: Human color processing isn't measuring something like "what amounts of reddish/greenish/blueish light is falling on this set of cones", it's trying to work out "what object is this and what are the lighting conditions".
gollark: Besides that, you don't perceive colors that way.
gollark: The problem is that what hex code you get out of a picture depends entirely on stuff like lighting and probably camera calibration.
gollark: Same thing.
gollark: Technically, hex codes aren't really right either.

References
  1. "Division of Public Programs". National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). Retrieved 2018-11-19.
  2. Quay, James; Veninga, James (October 5–7, 1989). Making Connections: The Humanities, Culture and Community. National Task Force on Scholarship and the Public Humanities. Racine, Wisconsin: American Council of Learned Societies. Retrieved 25 Jan 2016. We think it more useful and more accurate to consider scholarship and the public humanities not as two distinct spheres but as parts of a single process, the process of taking private insight, testing it, and turning it into public knowledge.
  3. (Wickman,10).
  4. (Wickman,9)
  5. (Wickman,10).
  6. "Graduate Program | Public Humanities | Brown University". www.brown.edu. Retrieved 2020-06-06.
  7. "Public Humanities Collaborative | College of Arts and Letters | Michigan State University". web.archive.org. 2007-06-12. Retrieved 2020-06-06.
  8. "Portland State Portland Center for Public Humanities | Welcome". www.pdx.edu. Retrieved 2020-06-06.
  9. "Rackham Program in Public Scholarship". Rackham Graduate School: University of Michigan. Retrieved 2020-06-06.
  10. https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/faculty/arts-and-humanities/interdisciplinary/ma/public-humanities/
  11. "Public Humanities at Western - Western University". www.uwo.ca. Retrieved 2020-06-06.
  12. "Graduate Exchange | UW-Madison Center for the Humanities". humanities.wisc.edu. Retrieved 2020-06-06.
  13. "Certificate in Public Scholarship | Simpson Center for the Humanities". simpsoncenter.org. Retrieved 2020-06-06.
  14. "Home Page". Master's Program in the Engaged & Public Humanities. Retrieved 2020-06-06.
  15. "Announcing the NEW minor in Public Humanities - American Studies - UMBC". amst.umbc.edu. Retrieved 2020-06-06.


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