Mellon Public Humanities Labs 2025-2026

Public Humanities Labs (PHLs) are the Axinn Center for the Humanities’ most recent innovation to increase enrollments in the humanities through experiential and interventionist education. Established in 2021 and recognized in 2023 by the National Humanities Alliance as an exemplary model for building collegiate public humanities, Public Humanities Labs provide deep investigations into core humanities topics, such as justice, equity, and narrative storytelling, with familiar disciplinary frameworks like history, literature, and philosophy. Through funding from the Mellon Humanities for All Times grant, Middlebury College will provide thirty new Public Humanities Labs. Their innovative structure allows them to intentionally combine hands-on, practical and applied educational tools, involving extensive student research and skill-set building, with the public dissemination of the results, via such means as presentations, websites, and reports. By linking humanistic classroom-learning with a public-facing component, these PHLs will allow students to research and learn about migrant justice and make informed and meaningful interventions.

In the 2025-2026 Academic Year, the following faculty are teaching Mellon Public Humanities Labs: Catey Boyle (Postdoctoral Fellow at the Axinn Center for the Humanities), Natalie Epelsheimer (German), Benjamin Graves (English), Sue Halpern (Scholar in Residence at Middlebury College), Rachael Joo (American Studies), Roberto Lint Sagarena (American Studies), Fulya Pinar (Anthropology), Sarah Rogers (History of Art & Architectural Studies), and Olga Sanchez Saltveit (Theatre).

HIST0340: Midd East & African Migration

Migration and Difference at the Crossroads of the Middle East and African Continent
In this course we will explore histories of migration within, across, and beyond the African continent and Middle East. Engaging an array of primary and secondary sources, including maps, travelogues, and fiction, we will consider how narratives of migration –– voluntary and forced –– demonstrate the rich, entangled histories of the Middle East and African continent. Topics to be considered include Mediterranean-Indian Ocean merchant networks, pilgrimage journeys, and human trafficking between central Sudan and northern Africa. We will also ask how categories of social difference, particularly race and gender, have shaped people’s lived experiences of migration in the past and its resonances in the present. Scaffolded assignments will culminate in digital mapping and storytelling projects.

IGST0215: Holocaust Refugees in the Global South

Holocaust Refugees in the Global South
In this course we will undertake an interdisciplinary exploration of often underrepresented experiences of the forced migration ofHolocaust refugees to colonial locations during the Second World War. Our study of global refugee transit experiences in places like Shanghai, India, South Africa, Kenya, South America, Mauritius, and the Caribbean will reveal entanglements between occupied Europe and the colonial world that significantly shaped Holocaust refugee trajectories. This course employs interdisciplinary approaches, blending (diasporic) historiography with literary and postcolonial studies and delving into personal narratives. It seeks to uncover nuanced dimensions of the refugee experience, challenge Eurocentric perspectives and established victim/perpetrator binaries and examine complex forms of “implication.” Course materials are in English, but students with linguistic competency are encouraged to analyze documents in other languages. 

FYSE1514: Refugee Stories

Refugee Stories
“Stories are just things we fabricate,” says a character in Viet Nguyen’s The Refugees. “We search for them in a world besides our own, then leave them here to be found, garments shed by ghosts.” In this course students will find stories by and about a paradigmatic modern figure: the displaced refugee seeking asylum in unfamiliar lands. Highlighting literary and visual representations, we will also draw from history, sociology, anthropology, environmental studies, and feminist critique. Beginning with the Syrian refugee crisis, we will circle back to the Vietnam War and the lingering questions it poses to today’s social justice movement.

CRWR0365: The Migrant’s Journey

Documenting the Migrant Journey
In this course we will interrogate how migrants and immigration has been represented in the media, including the news, social media, books and film. As it will be part of the Mellon Migration program, we will invite Vermont-based stakeholders to class to talk about their experience, including Migrant Justice activists, local employers, immigration lawyers and others. This will provide the foundation necessary to conceive how we will portray the migrant experience in Vermont. Ultimately,students will produce their own multi-part audio documentary. To do this, they will learn interviewing skills, how to structure a narrative, write and edit a script, and use digital editing and sound design software.

AMST0343: Humanitarian Visas in Vermont

Humanitarian Visas in Vermont and Beyond
This public humanities lab course will engage the topic of humanitarian visas in Vermont and beyond the state. We will learn about the various forms of humanitarian visas as historically defined by the US government including visas for refugees, asylees, trafficked people, and those who qualify for temporary protected status. We will study the histories of refugee resettlement in Vermont and learn from organizations that advocate on behalf of migrants. 

AMST0213: Intro to Latina/o Studies

Introduction to Latina/o Studies
In this course we will undertake an interdisciplinary investigation of the unique experiences and conditions of U.S. Latina/os of Caribbean, Latin American, and Mexican descent. We will critically examine transnational cultures, patterns of circular migration, and intergenerational transformations from a historical perspective while also using methodologies from the humanities and social sciences. Topics will include the conquest of Mexico’s northern frontier, Chicana/o and Nuyorican movements, Latina feminist thought, Latina/o arts, Central American migrations in the 1980s, Latina/o religiosities, as well as philosophies of resistance and acculturation.

ANTH0274: Migration and Social Justice

Migration and Social Justice: Power, Place, and Human Experiences.
This course examines migration through bottom-up approaches, drawing on interdisciplinary perspectives from political and legal anthropology, feminist and decolonial studies, and social scientific and historical methodologies. It critically explores how gender, race, ethnicity, social class, and global disparities shape migratory experiences and influence notions of justice, agency, and belonging. Key topics include migration governance, borders, economic aspects of migration, climate displacement, refugee camps, and everyday lives, agencies, and solidarity practices of migrants; themes explored across South-to-North and South-to-South migration to illuminate the global and interconnected dimensions of migration experiences and governance. Through diverse materials – ethnographic texts and documentaries, primary legal sources, art and activist projects, and podcasts – students will analyze the lived experiences of migrants alongside the structural realities that shape migrants’ lives.

HARC0362: Art, Migration, and Museums

Art, Migration, and Museums
Can artists and museums respond to the current refugee crisis? The 21stst century has witnessed the undeniable prevalence of the refugee, the migrant, and the politically displaced — categories produced by global capitalism’s uneven distribution of resources. Against this reality, artists and curators engage with representations of the disposed. In this course we will consider how the art world integrates the figure of the refugee into the traditionally reified space of the museum and examine the possibility of art to transcend barriers and generate empathy and solidarity. Possible topics include art programming and refugee integration; museum responses to the migrant crisis; migration and repatriation; boycott and divestment efforts.

THEA1339: La Vida en VT: Reflections

La Vida en Vermont: Reflections of the Migrant Community
In this course we will engage with local migrant community members predominantly from Latin America to learn about their lives in Vermont. How do newcomers navigate different cultural landscapes? What do they miss of their homelands and where do they find resonance in New England? Materials such as El Viaje mas Caro The Most Costly Journey will provide historical and ethical foundations. Representatives from community partner organizations such as Addison Allies will support our understanding of local circumstances. Following interviews working with applied theatre skills, students will prepare staged readings to share the stories of migrant community resilience for English and Spanish speaking audiences.