Overview

The HumanitiesX Collaborative supports substantive collaboration between faculty, community partners, and students that is focused on bringing humanities methods to bear on today's most pressing social challenges.  

Fellows in the Collaborative learn as a cohort and work on small teams to design new HumanitiesX (HX) courses, all of which blend humanities inquiry with project-based learning, engaging students in and with Chicago communities around one of three key themes: Immigration and Migration, The Environment: Crisis and Action, or Democracy and Rights. 

A new fellowship application cycle opens each fall, with fellowship awards announced in December. The Collaborative's joint activities, described in detail below, happen between January–June, and each team teaches their new HumanitiesX course the following autumn quarter. The fellowship concludes with a reflection workshop early in December. 

Fellowship Teams and Types of Fellows 

HumanitiesX applications are submitted by teams, which may be comprised of either one faculty member and a community partner (for HX courses to be taught by a single instructor) or two faculty members and a community partner (for HX courses to be team-taught). All teams are matched with a HumanitiesX Student Fellow, who helps to plan and manage the project-based work in the course. 

Please see the information below about eligibility and the fellowship award for each fellow type. 

Faculty Fellows

Eligibility
Full-time faculty in DePaul’s College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences (LAS) and related disciplines are eligible to apply to be a Faculty Fellow. Term faculty in LAS and term and tenure-line faculty from units outside LAS may only apply to team teach and must apply with a tenure-line co-applicant from LAS. 

Please note the requirements for solo vs. team-teaching applicants:

• Solo applicants must hold a tenure-line appointment within LAS
• Team-teaching applicants must have at least one tenure-line faculty member from LAS. Team-teaching applicants will typically be from different academic units. 

We welcome team-teaching applicants whose appointments are outside LAS, but require that these faculty use humanities methods in their teaching and research. These methods include storytelling, historical inquiry, archival research or archive-building, cross-cultural listening and conversation, culturally grounded inquiry, etc. If you are unsure if your work aligns with these methods, please contact  the HumanitiesX faculty director, Dr. Lisa Dush, before applying. 

Award
Faculty Fellows receive two course releases*—one to be taken in spring quarter, the second in the autumn quarter when the HX course is taught—and $1750 for participation in several activities outside of the academic terms.  

Community Fellows

Eligibility
Official representatives of nonprofit organizations are eligible to apply to be a Community Fellow. Applicants must be able and willing to commit to the activities described below.  Community Fellows also agree to manage any on-site or community-based aspects of the proposed HX course project. Note that while we ask for one primary Community Fellow to participate, some organizations opt to engage several of their team members in HX activities. 

Award
Community Fellows’ organizations receive a $10,000 pass-through grant. 

Student Fellows

Eligibility
DePaul undergraduate and graduate students who are pursuing a major, minor, or degree program in the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences are eligible to apply. Applicants must be enrolled students during the autumn quarter when the HX course is taught. 

Award
Student Fellows receive an hourly wage and work approximately 10 hours per week. See the Student Fellow page for more information on the role and application process.

All HumanitiesX courses focus on one of three key themes: Immigration and Migration, The Environment: Crisis and Action, or Democracy and Rights. An important goal of HumanitiesX is to demonstrate the importance of using humanities methods to understand and respond to these pressing social challenges.

HX courses are offered through faculty members' home departments and cross-listed with LSP 301: HumanitiesX: Topics in the Experiential Humanities. As courses that fulfill DePaul's Experiential Learning requirement, all proposed courses should align with the LSP 301 course description and welcome students of all majors and levels.

For more details about the fellowship experience and guidance on what makes for a strong course, we recommend that all interested applicants do the following: 

Fellowship awards support each team's participation in the Collaborative's joint learning activities, planning time for teams to design and then teach a new HX course, and reflective time shortly after the course is taught, to extend and share the team's work with audiences both within and outside of DePaul.  

The timeline for the 2026 fellowship cohort is outlined below. Note that unless otherwise indicated, meetings and workshops are in-person. All dates/times are finalized once fellows are onboarded and share their schedules.

To Apply

Each team (faculty members(s) and community partner) must submit a completed HumanitiesX Fellowship Application Form with the supplemental materials noted below to the HumanitiesX Coordinator, Amanda Lautermilch, by the deadline(s) on the top of this page.  

Note: Teams with two faculty should designate one faculty member to submit on behalf of the team.