Jen Dentel (HX23-24 Community Fellow) takes a picture of a cake made by an HX student for their final event
Susana Martínez (HX23-24 Faculty Fellow) discusses archival materials with a student
Team Democracy in America (HX23-24) collaborates on course plans
HX23-24 Community Fellows Jhonathan Gomez (CRLN) and Aimée Laberge (Alliance Française) at a planning meeting
Heather Montes Ireland (HX23-24 Faculty Fellow) speaks at public event
About
HumanitiesX (HX), an initiative funded by the Mellon Foundation, offers year-long team fellowships to support the collaborative development of interdisciplinary, community-engaged, project-based courses in the humanities.
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.
Call for the 2025 Cohort
Launched in 2021, HumanitiesX is this year entering a new phase, with several key changes to our fellowship model:
- HumanitiesX courses are now offered in the autumn quarter (formerly spring).
- HumanitiesX courses may now be either co-taught or taught by a single instructor. Each year, we now offer two co-teaching team fellowships and three single-instructor team fellowships.
- HumanitiesX welcomes applicants to propose courses focused on any of our three themes.
- Faculty from both within and outside the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences may now apply, so long as the engage humanities methods in their teaching and research. Team-teaching applicants will typically be from different academic units.
Partner organizations typically bring expertise on the selected theme and/or in public engagement methods. Each team that joins the cohort is also matched in spring with a Student Fellow, who helps to plan and manage the project-based work in the course. HX teams collaborate over the course of the winter and spring quarters (January through June) to develop the new course, which is taught in the fall quarter of 2025.
HX courses must take an interdisciplinary approach to the annual theme and feature a public humanities project designed with and for the benefit of the community partner's organization and constituents; the courses must also foreground humanities modes of inquiry and humanities methods, as described below.
Approaches to the Themes
Teams are expected to apply with a core idea for their course and collaboration, rather than a fully formed syllabus and course project idea. We invite teams to approach their chosen theme from their unique disciplinary and organizational perspectives.
Guiding Questions
Questions that might organize an HX course around the HumanitiesX themes—Immigration and Migration, The Environment: Crisis and Action, or Democracy and Rights—might include:
- What can we learn from Chicago organizations and citizens that have pioneered public engagement and action related to your chosen theme?
- What do specific historical or literary texts teach us about how to understand your chosen theme? How can we share these texts to inspire contemporary audiences?
- How can we design community conversations that enable people to talk across their differences and productively address critical social justice issues?
- How can we create and share narratives about complex social issues in ways that both maintain complexity and inspire action?
- How can we document past and current injustices to prevent future injustices?
- What conversations about your chosen theme can we start by engaging the public with the arts or literature?
- How do specific religious and philosophical traditions help us to define and guide individual or collective action in response to pressing social issues?
Interested teams should reach out to the HX faculty director, Dr. Lisa Dush, well in advance of applying, as successful proposals for participation in the fellowship typically emerge through conversations with the HX team about the proposed idea.
How are HumanitiesX Fellows Supported?
HumanitiesX fellows receive the following incentives to support their participation:
- 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’ organizations receive a $10,000 pass-through grant. Note that while we ask for one primary Community Fellow to participate, some organizations opt to engage several of their team members in the activities.
- Each HX team also has the assistance of one Student Fellow (matched with the team in spring quarter).
These incentives are offered to give the fellows time and space to collaborate over the full year and to innovate in ways that are not ordinarily possible.
What Are Humanities Methods of Inquiry and Public Humanities Projects?
As members of DePaul's Experiential Humanities Collaborative, teams are asked to draw on humanities methods in both their exploration of the theme and their project-based work.
Humanities methods of inquiry include, but are not limited to, archival or oral history research; studying historical or literary texts; engaging in cross-cultural or cross-generational conversations; applying historical, ethical, critical, or culturally grounded theory; or exploring the theme with artistic or creative practices.
Past HumanitiesX courses in our Immigration and Migration cohort, our cohort on The Environment: Crisis and Action, and those in our cohort on Democracy and Rights, have directed students' efforts to a range of public humanities project deliverables created with and for their nonprofit partners, including public exhibitions, public discussion events, film showings, oral history collections, public art-making events, videos, and webtexts.
How Do We Learn More and Apply?
You can learn more about the HumanitiesX model on our website, especially by:
- Reviewing the course showcases written by past HumanitiesX teams
- Watching our explainer video (note that the video describes the first phase of HumanitiesX, when all HumanitiesX courses were team-taught) .
Please visit our Fellowship Application page for details about the application process and a downloadable application packet. Complete applications, including required emails of support, must be submitted to the HumanitiesX coordinator, Amanda Lautermilch, by December 5, 2024 at 11:59 pm.