About the Public Humanities Fellowship

The mission of Humanities New York is to strengthen civil society and the bonds of community, using the humanities to foster engaged inquiry and dialogue around social and cultural concerns. Humanities New York offers the following grants and programs to help realize its mission:

• Grants:
  • Action Grants provide up to $5,000 to produce public-facing humanities projects that encourage audiences to reflect on their values, explore new ideas, and engage with others across New York State.
  • Vision Grants provide up to $1,500 in support of brainstorming, researching, and professional development for organizations working collaboratively to develop new ideas and program strategies.
  • Quick Grants are $500 grants for public humanities projects that respond to issues and ideas that capture the imagination of New Yorkers and are only available to small organizations.
• In each of Humanities NY’s Reading & Discussion Programs, participants read a series of thematically linked texts over the course of four, five, or six sessions. At each session, participants come together with others in their community to discuss a text in a conversation facilitated by a trained local scholar.
• Community Conversations enables participants to have a lively discussion on important topics they might not otherwise discuss with their friends and neighbors. These one-time events utilize toolkits with short readings focused on a topic central to American life, and are designed with different age groups in mind.

Since 2013, the Public Humanities Fellowship has been the key component of the Humanities Centers Initiative, a partnership between Humanities New York and nine campus-based humanities centers around New York State. Starting with an initial cohort of six, the program now supports eighteen Fellows a year, two from each university partner. Each Fellow proposes a public humanities project to be developed in cooperation with a community group or non-profit. Humanities New York supports those efforts by providing Fellows with a stipend, a series of skills workshops, mentorship and advice, and networking opportunities.

The main goals of the Fellowship are to develop new approaches for cooperation between the campuses and their surrounding communities, build a foundation of a new generation of public humanists in New York State, help provide the Fellows with exposure and experience for a variety of career paths, and demonstrate the continued relevance and resonance of the humanities in the public arena through the Fellowship projects. In turn, the Fellows invigorate the public humanities practice of Humanities New York by testing new program models and bringing new community partners into the fold.

The Public Humanities Fellowship is generously funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.