Public Humanities
The Public Humanities Labs Initiative is a scholarly and pedagogical project that aims to integrate Humanities skills and expertise into public facing and/or community curated projects addressing topics of cultural, social, and intellectual importance.
These projects may involve storytelling, oral history, historical analysis, public writing, digital humanities, ethical inquiry, medical humanities, archival work, and many other areas of knowledge.
In the News
Professor of History Rebecca Bennette was featured in a September 2023 Seven Day’s article, A Middlebury College Professor Uses Graphic Novels to Breathe New Life Into the Study of History. The article highlights Bennette’s efforts to make history more accessible and relevant for today’s students—and how the general public can benefit.
About the Courses
As practitioners of public humanities, students experiment with different forms of public scholarship designed to translate their intellectual output to a broader community beyond the classroom. In doing so, they learn to combine serious intellectual rigor with commitment to civic awareness and responsibility. Some Labs classes include the opportunity to develop students’ Humanities coursework into projects co-created with community interlocutors.
Students enrolled in classes with Public Humanities Laboratory see firsthand how skills they are developing in the class can be mobilized and tested in productive new ways outside the classroom. Projects may involve any and all of the following as students engage in work of tangible importance to their own intellectual development:
- Mining Library Special Collections to create an exhibit or workshop about local history.
- Collecting oral histories about immigration to Vermont.
- Working with local museums to explore unexamined archives or create new archives.
- Learning from journalists how to craft op-eds on issues of local and national importance.
Current Courses
From 2021 to 2024, the Public Humanities Labs Initiative at Middlebury College will operate with the help of a grant from the Davis Educational Foundation established by Stanton and Elisabeth Davis after Mr. Davis’s retirement as chairman of Shaw’s Supermarkets, Inc. If you’re interested in teaching a Public Humanities Lab course, or simply learning more about this program, please contact contact Ian Barrow. See Past Courses.
Courses offered in the past four years. Courses offered currently are as noted.
BLST 0419
Upcoming
Black Middlebury
Course Description
Black Middlebury
The Black Studies Program at Middlebury College was officially established in 2019. However, (Black) students, faculty, and staff have worked toward the inclusion of Black histories and experiences in Middlebury’s curriculum and toward establishing spaces for Black members of the Middlebury community since, at least, the 1970s. In this research seminar, we will examine the experiences of Black Middlebury students, faculty, and staff as well as their efforts to organize and carve out space at Middlebury College in the 20th and 21st century. Based on secondary literature, we will contextualize the Black experience in US higher education more broadly. Then, students will work with primary sources located in Special Collections (Davis Family Library) and conduct oral histories with members of Middlebury’s Black community and activists involved in the struggle for Black Studies at Middlebury. To preserve these histories, we will create an archive and exhibit findings in the form of small media projects. (Open to sophomores, juniors, and seniors, (BLST 0101 or BLST 0201) 3 hrs., seminar
Terms Taught
Requirements
HARC 0369
Upcoming
Design, Ornament & Adornment
Course Description
Design, Ornament, and Adornment: Self-Expression and Dissent
Considering the 20th and 21st century disparagement of ornament and fetishization of minimalism by Western design practitioners and the art world, why, when, and by whom has ornament been celebrated? In this seminar course we will consider how makeup, clothing, and the curation of domestic space are related to social status, commodity culture, religious practices, and broader design cultures (product design, architecture) over a range of cultures and epochs. What constituted “power dressing” in fifteenth century Peru versus Spain? What does historical makeup application (including the use of poisonous Venetian ceruse!) tell us about social status and morality in Elizabethan England? We will read primary and secondary sources, examine material culture and physical spaces, blend pigments, design product components, and work with Special Collections to curate a physical and virtual exhibition.
Terms Taught
Requirements
HIST 0352
Upcoming
Food History in Middle East
Course Description
Food in the Middle East: History, Culture, and Identity
In this course we will examine the rich culinary history of the Middle East from the time of major Islamic Empires, such as the Abbasids and Ottomans, until the modern period. Using an array of primary and secondary sources, we will explore the social, religious, literary, and economic place of food in the region. We will study the consumption of and attitudes toward specific foodstuffs, gauging the relevance of items like spices and coffee in the pre-modern period and of various dishes within modern nationalist constructions. We will also investigate how Middle Eastern peoples from different ethnic, geographic, and religious backgrounds have historically used food to express their distinct cultural, national, and gendered identities.(Counts for HSMT credit) 3 hrs. lect./disc.
Terms Taught
Requirements
SOCI 0315
Upcoming
Writing Flash Sociology
Course Description
Writing the Sociological Imagination
In this writing course, students will create flash non-fiction that engages with sociology’s core focus: placing the personal in its social context. We will read texts that explore a variety of approaches to creatively explore the interplay of biography and history and focus on the range of craft elements these authors use. Students will write short (300-800 word) pieces that we will workshop together in class. The final product will be a portfolio of revised pieces from which students will select 2-3 pieces to share, if they choose, in a public reading for the Middlebury community.
Terms Taught
Requirements