Announcing Another Great NEH Summer Institute Opportunity

The following is posted on behalf of NEH and CUNY:

The American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning at the City University of New York Graduate Center will host a two-week NEH Summer Institute for college and university faculty in July 2020 on the Visual Culture of the American Civil War and Its Aftermath. Applications to participate will be accepted via mail, e-mail, and our online application system until March 1, 2020.

The Institute will focus on the era’s array of visual media–including the fine arts, ephemera, and photography–to examine how information and opinion about the war were recorded and disseminated, and the ways visual media expressed and shaped Americans’ understanding on both sides of the conflict. Guided by a team of three faculty that represents the range of work in the field, Institute participants will hear daily lectures and presentations by noted historians, art historians, and archivists; and take part in hands-on sessions in significant museums and archival collections. These Institute activities will introduce participants to the rich body of scholarship that addresses or incorporates Civil War era visual culture, encourage them to explore avenues for further research in the field, and assist them in developing their own research and/or teaching projects. Reading assignments preceding and during the Institute will prepare participants for full engagement in the Institute¹s discussions and activities. And time will be provided to prepare individual projects, undertake research at local archives, and meet with the three principal institute faculty members as well as guest speakers.

The institute will meet from July 6 to July 17, 2020 at the CUNY Graduate Center (34th Street and Fifth Avenue) and other archival and museum sites around the city, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New-York Historical Society, and New York Public Library. Faculty and visiting speakers include: Jermaine Archer, Amanda Bellows, Louise Bernard, Michele Bogart, Joshua Brown, Sarah Burns, Gregory Downs, Matthew Fox-Amato, Amanda Frisken, Lauren Hewes, Dominique Jean-Louis, Barbara Krauthamer, Turkiya Lowe, Maurie McInnis, Megan Kate Nelson, Susan Schulten, Scott Manning Stevens, and Dell Upton.

While scholars and teachers specializing in U.S. history, American Studies, and art history will find the Institute especially attractive, we encourage applicants from any field who are interested in the Civil War era and its visual culture, regardless of your disciplinary interests. Independent scholars, scholars engaged in museum work or full-time graduate studies are also urged to apply. You need not have extensive prior knowledge of the Civil War or visual culture or have previously incorporated their study in any of your courses or research. However, your application essay should identify concrete ways in which two weeks of concentration on the topics will enhance your teaching and/or research. In addition, please describe a research or teaching project you will develop during the institute. The ideal institute participant will bring to the group a fresh understanding of the relevance of the topic to their teaching and research.

Full details and application information are available on the ASHP/CML Institute website at http://ashp.cuny.edu/nehinstitute/. For further information, please contact Institute Director Donna Thompson Ray at dthompson@gc.cuny.edu or 212-817-1963.

Completed applications must be submitted via our online application system or e-mail or postal mail no later than March 1, 2020 (postal mail must be postmarked by March 1).

Congrats to San Diego Community College District on Mellon Grant

The San Diego Community College District (SDCCD) and UC San Diego (UCSD) have been awarded a total of $2.7M in grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation! The innovative program creates a pathway for students to major in the humanities and then transfer from SDCCD to UCSD to further their education. Read the full article from Newswire here. Congratulations to all of our friends and colleagues at SDCCD!

CCHA Deans’ Committee: “Innovative Practices in the Humanities” MCCIH

Innovative Practices in the Humanities

In the first of an ongoing series highlighting innovative practices in the humanities, the CCHA Deans’ Committee would like to highlight the work of Monroe Community College (MCC) in Rochester, NY.
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CCHA Awarded Teagle Planning Grant for High School Outreach

We are pleased to announce that CCHA has been awarded funding to begin planning a project aimed at outreach to high school students. The project, “What Does It Mean to be Human Today?”, will see a series of two-week seminars held at five colleges across the country. The five colleges are the Community College of Baltimore County in Baltimore, Maryland; Monroe Community College in Rochester, New York; Collin Community College in McKinney, Texas; San Diego Mesa College in San Diego, California; and Schoolcraft College in Livonia, Michigan.

The Teagle grant funds the planning of the seminars, which will take place in October of 2019. More information on the seminars will be posted as we have it. For now, we would like to congratulate those involved in the planning process and the five schools that will be participating in the project.

ACLS Names Inaugural Community College Faculty Fellows

The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) is pleased to announce the 2019 Mellon/ACLS Community College Faculty Fellows. This is the first year of this program, which supports research projects from humanities and social science faculty who teach at two-year colleges. The program is made possible by a generous grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

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SPECIAL REPORT: From AAA&S: Humanities in the Community College

SPECIAL REPORT

Dear CCHA Members:

The American Academy of Arts and Sciences has just released its “Humanities Education in Community Colleges Pilot Study” and the results are very encouraging as we compare the relationships between humanities education, numbers of students, and two-year colleges. Here are some major highlights and talking points:

About 2.8 million students took a humanities course for credit at a community college in the fall of 2015 (the year for which data were collected). They accounted for approximately 40 percent of all community college students taking courses for credit that term.
Over 1.7 million students took at least one course in English, and approximately 700,000 students took a history course. About 300,000 enrolled in courses in languages other than English. More than 255,000 community college students took a philosophy course. Additionally, between 400,000 and 450,000 students took a course in another humanities discipline or a survey course in the humanities.
About 70,000 faculty members taught at least one college-level humanities course for credit at community colleges, accounting for approximately 20 percent of all community college faculty.
The student-faculty ratio in the humanities is “substantially higher” than the ratio for community colleges generally. The student-faculty ratio for courses in the humanities was 40 to one, compared to 20 to one for all community college courses. Philosophy has the highest student-faculty ratio among the humanities disciplines examined, with about 50 students for each faculty member. The lowest ratio among the humanities disciplines, at 26 students per faculty member, was in foreign languages.
High school students in dual enrollment programs made up about 10 percent of humanities students at community colleges.
The study found regional differences in humanities course taking. About 35 percent of community college students are in the South, but they make up only 24 percent of those taking foreign languages. But they make up 45 percent of community college students studying history. Community college students in the West are less likely to be studying the humanities than are other community college students, but they are more likely to be studying languages other than English.

We like to think that everyone in CCHA is an ambassador for the humanities. I hope you will take the time to study the information in the report and make every effort to reach out to your administrators and local media to help create a clearer picture of the humanities in community colleges.

Thanks,

Andrew Rusnak

CCHA Executive Director

*A copy of this report is available for download HERE.

Opportunity: Mellon/ACLS Public Fellows Competition for Recent PhDs

The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) has announced a truly wonderful opportunity for any recent PhDs. Their Mellon/ACLS Public Fellows Competition, which includes a large stipend and health insurance, is an opportunity that should definitely not be missed. More information can be found at the link HERE. Please be sure to take note of the coming Deadline: March 13th.

2019 Humanities Advocacy Day with the National Humanities Alliance

It is that time of year again, and, unfortunately, funding for the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the humanities as a whole is never guaranteed. To that end, members of CCHA are invited to meet in Washington, DC, to take part in the Annual meeting of the National Humanities Alliance (NHA) on Monday, March 11th, followed by trips to Capitol Hill to advocate for the humanities on Tuesday, March 12th. More information can be found at the link to the NHA announcement HERE. If you cannot make it in person, we will b e sending out information on how you you can advocate digitally. Please do join us in advocating for this important cause and to help protect the humanities.

CCHA Joins MLA in Planning for $1M Mellon Grant for CC Faculty

This past summer, Executive Director Rusnak and Deputy Executive Director Campbell were invited to join a group faculty from four-year institutions and “access-oriented institutions” (identified by the Modern Language Association as “community colleges and other colleges that prioritize access over selectivity in admissions”) to design a grant-funded program that will offer doctoral students and instructors who work at access-oriented institutions the opportunity to participate in regional week-long seminars focused on Reading-Writing Pedagogy. It is a pleasure to announce that Mellon has funded this program, and further information is now available through the MLA’s news site. Additionally, we would like to congratulate our colleagues at the planning retreat and thank Paula Krebs, Executive Director of the MLA, for her excellent leadership on this endeavor.

CFP: Culturally Responsive Teaching Conference (Deadline: 1/31)

The 5th Annual Culturally Responsive Teaching and Learning Conference has extended their deadline for proposals to January 31, 2019. This is an excellent conference and an excellent opportunity, so please do consider getting involved! The conference will be held in Linthicum Heights (just outside of Baltimore, MD) this year on March 21st and 22nd. Further information can also be found at www.CRT-CC.org. Please also see the CFP flier in addition to the conference flier below.

Continue reading CFP: Culturally Responsive Teaching Conference (Deadline: 1/31) →