Leveraging methodologies from public and engaged humanities is pivotal for students learning to avoid falling into the trap of discounting others’ lived experiences and non-academic knowledge as inconsequential to their own.
At the beginning of each semester, students receive syllabi, which serve as roadmaps for navigating their courses and managing the demands of academic life. Over the following weeks, these syllabi undergo a gradual transformation: creases, stains, highlights, and hastily scribbled notes indicate the students’ engagement with the course material. Despite the careful attention these documents may receive during the term, they typically meet an anticlimactic fate once the course concludes: the trash.
Syllabi need not be disposable, however. These documents are the direct meeting point between an educator’s vision and the student experience. The syllabus is a valuable touchstone because it specifically incorporates the instructor’s intentions, course materials, and student reception. As a recent graduate rather than a seasoned educator, I offer the perspective of a former humanities student whose intellectual and professional journey has been shaped by my instructors’ pedagogical and curricular choices. This essay explores what happens when educators and students critically reexamine the content and scholastic strategies their courses prioritize.
Much like an ephemeral syllabus, certain humanities classes may be relegated to the waste bin for some students, especially if understood as merely fulfilling diversification requirements. At worst, such courses perpetuate stale approaches to curricular development and do injustice to what the humanities can offer.
Yet, individual classes also have the capacity to ignite enthusiasm and frame the relevance of an entire discipline. Educational curricula are neither neutral nor exhaustive; they are curated to emphasize particular content and perspectives. Considering the creation of a class from the student’s perspective may require more time and effort, but it has the potential to transform the learning experience.
As with any curatorial endeavor, course content is not immune to the inherent biases of an educator’s methodological frameworks, scholarship, and educational agendas. A student may think, “Why do I have to read this book from the 1980s about topics that feel irrelevant to me?” A well-curated course anticipates and articulates why content matters and how it relates to our world, thereby equipping learners to ask what their humanities education can do beyond the classroom walls.
As young learners and budding scholars, it is dangerous to fall into the trap of discounting others’ lived experiences and non-academic knowledge as inconsequential to one’s own. Leveraging methodologies from public and engaged humanities is pivotal as students learn to recognize the value of alternative forms of knowledge. These approaches promote questions like: “What can I learn from people whose lived experiences differ from mine?” and “How can I engage with and amplify diverse forms of knowledge and expertise?”
Across the United States, efforts to connect humanities research and teaching to initiatives that advance democracy, social justice, and civic engagement have gained significant traction in higher education.[1] These undertakings invite culturally responsive teaching and offer promising avenues for reimagining the humanities’ role beyond the exclusivity of academia and the insularity of the classroom.
Despite burgeoning interest in this engaged work, these approaches still face significant resistance. Some critics dismiss public-facing scholarship as diluting academic rigor, while others contend that the increasing demand for socially engaged scholarship exerts a “deforming effect” on teaching, scholarship, and the mission of the university.[2]
On the contrary, my experiences indicate that these outward-looking approaches ignite interest in the humanities’ broad applicability, inherent value, and capacity to make a real-world impact. Whether their academic interests lie in art history, philosophy, or English, it seems that the growing consensus among humanities students — both graduate and undergraduate — is that the concept of “knowledge for knowledge’s sake” warrants reconsideration.[3]
Scholars like Gregory Jay have long emphasized how the institutionalization of the humanities in U.S. colleges and universities frequently reinforces systems of privilege. Jay describes this process as “credentialing the ruling class” and “assimilating new members to the ideological club of the elite.”[4] This dynamic is frequently reflected in the “town and gown” divide — the disconnect between students attending higher education institutions and their surrounding communities.
Although colleges and universities use educational programming to bridge these gaps, these programs frequently perpetuate top-down hierarchies where the public is framed as passive recipients of knowledge. Actively engaging with the surrounding communities and local stakeholders prompts students to discover rich forms of expertise outside the university setting. Acknowledging that communities around us have just as much expertise to offer us as we do them is a critical lesson for students in higher education.
As young learners and budding scholars, it is dangerous to fall into the trap of discounting others’ lived experiences and non-academic knowledge as inconsequential to one’s own. Leveraging methodologies from public and engaged humanities is pivotal as students learn to recognize the value of alternative forms of knowledge. These approaches promote questions like: “What can I learn from people whose lived experiences differ from mine?” and “How can I engage with and amplify diverse forms of knowledge and expertise?”
I realized the value of asking these questions as part of a graduate certificate program in Public Humanities and Civic Engagement, launched at Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) in Fall 2022. In a course titled “The City as Museum: Monuments and Memory,” taught by Erin Benay, Associate Professor of Art History and Distinguished Scholar in the Public Humanities, CWRU students partnered with the Cleveland-based nonprofit LAND Studio in order to consider how curatorial interventions might expand the impact and audience for The City is Our Museum, a free app providing virtual public art tours across Cleveland.
My group decided to conduct oral histories with groundskeepers, administrators, students, and other community members whose contact with public art is seldom recorded for posterity. We included soundbites from each interview alongside written didactics discussing the public artworks. This ensured each interviewee’s voice was central to narrative production on the app. By breaking down the binary between “scholars” and “participants,” we aimed to foster deeper considerations about the cultural nuances and everyday experiences people have with public art and spaces within Cleveland neighborhoods.
As a traditional art history course on the history of public art, this class might have been conducted with considerably less effort. The instructor could have drawn upon an identical set of readings; she might have lectured about these materials, and we could have discussed them without ever leaving the classroom. Because course goals were oriented towards partnership with a community organization, students were responsible for applying theoretical content and research to support that relationship.
This kind of project-based learning afforded my group distinct learning experiences, such as coordinating with community members, conducting oral history interviews, and cultivating a safe environment for meaningful dialog. We gained a genuine appreciation for the broader implications of public art outside of the realm of theory while developing transferable skills—such as interviewing, audio editing, and presenting—that continue to serve us long after the course.[5]
Later that year, I enrolled in another engaged humanities course: “Plastocene Era: Art, Plastics, and the Future of the Planet,” taught by Andrea Wolk Rager, Associate Professor of Art History and Associate Director of Fine Arts at the Center for Medicine, Society, and Culture at the CWRU School of Medicine. Organized in partnership with SPACES, a Cleveland-based arts nonprofit, our class of undergraduate and graduate students met weekly at the SPACES Gallery. Taught alongside the development of Everlasting Plastics, the exhibition for the U.S. Pavilion at the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale, the course allowed students to contribute to the exhibit’s implementation and programming by working closely with the co-curators Tizziana Baldenebro and Lauren Leving.
We examined the history of petrochemical plastics, the industries in which they were (and are) developed, and the evolution of plastic’s public reception. We also investigated plastic’s social and political implications within the global environmental crisis, inquiring about how artists draw upon plastic as a medium to address diverse themes such as socio-environmental injustice, cultural plasticity, and ubiquity. Throughout the semester, we discussed contemporary scholarship with assigned readings like Heather Davis’ Plastic Matter (2022) and the Vitra Design Museum’s Plastic. Remaking Our World (2022). We also interacted with the course topics through a series of podcasts, films, and interdisciplinary public scholarship.
These integrative, multi-media approaches to pedagogy ensured the course was energizing and academically rigorous. The course assignments enabled students to invite the greater Cleveland community into conversations about the implications of plastic while also generating long-term deliverables for the Everlasting Plastics exhibition and SPACES Gallery. Groups of students organized a community town hall forum and a symposium hosted at the Cleveland Museum of Art that reunited the Everlasting Plastic artists.[6]
Planning and executing public-facing events required students to move beyond their comfort zones and develop skills such as grant writing, event planning, communication, and task delegation. While not all engaged humanities opportunities require partnerships with external organizations like the courses I have described, many of the most compelling experiences draw students outside the classroom.
A recent publication by Heather Flaherty and Jodi Kovach, Language Learning in Academic Museums: New Paradigms for Cultural Study, Language Acquisition, and Campus Engagement, demonstrates how third spaces — outside the classroom — can become “pedagogical laboratories” where learners can practice critical inquiry and interdisciplinary thinking.[7] Drawing upon the perspective of faculty and museum educators working at the nexus of learning museums and institutions of higher education, the authors compiled case studies showcasing how integrating contemporary museum practice and educational programming supports and enhances foreign language learning programs.
Overwhelmingly, educators reported that these interactive and collaborative exercises generated deeper engagement with course materials, promoted critical thinking, and fostered a sense of community among learners.[8] These programs necessitate that museum professionals work collaboratively with educators from across academic departments to incorporate artworks into their teaching. This process requires professors to relinquish some control, loosening the structure and timelines of their courses if necessary.
Learning within spaces that may be unfamiliar or challenging to teachers and students requires flexibility from all constituents. In my experience working as a teaching assistant in an engaged humanities course, I noticed some students felt uncomfortable that their syllabi offered room for change and adaptability. In these instances, educators must lead by example by implementing shared authority, reflexive thinking, and embracing trial and error — all valuable skills for students in their post-academia lives.
Practicing collaboration and shared authority within learning environments is an extension of recognizing expertise outside of the University. Both are central tenets of public humanities and build skills that prepare students to be actively engaged and mindful professionals and citizens.[9] Curiously, considerations for what students might need or desire are often absent from critiques targeting engaged scholarship and coursework. I am not referring to what Robyn Schroeder has described as the “instrumentalization of the humanities,” wherein humanities disciplines are valued solely for their practical applications, but to the vocational fulfillment that this type of work offers students who wish to explore the humanities outside of “the Academy.”[10]
For example, as an incoming student in my graduate program, my cohort met with the department chair; during this time, one doctoral student expressed her guilt about pursuing academia. While she described feeling passionate about her studies, she thought she might make a more meaningful impact by working in public service, as an activist, or with a nonprofit organization. This sentiment reveals the perceived selfishness some may feel in pursuing an academic path, but also a lack of recognition of the strengths latent in humanities disciplines that students and scholars can implement.
Reflecting on this moment again, it becomes clear that engaged scholarship offers a meaningful response to ethical and professional concerns. The integrative coursework I encountered during my studies afforded me a deep sense of vocational and pedagogical fulfillment while not forsaking academic rigor. These feelings and experiences should not be dismissed or ignored.
Educators and institutions should embrace engaged approaches, not as replacements for traditional scholarship and teaching but as complementary strategies. Exploring engaged practices prompts learners and instructors to think critically about the educational process and consider how they might apply theories and skills beyond the campus. In doing so, they will amplify the transformative role of the humanities in the public sphere, fostering the democratization of knowledge and equipping students with the critical, reflexive thinking skills essential for driving social progress in future generations.
References:
[1] Humanities for All promotes publicly engaged humanities projects from across higher education institutions in the United States. Their website provides a cross-section of 2,000 publicly engaged humanities initiatives in higher education across 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico.
[2] Justin Sider, “In Defense of Disinterested Knowledge” for the Chronicle of Higher Education.
[3] In addition to having had numerous conversations with fellow students over my six years in higher-education, I conducted interviews with students specifically for this essay. This included two undergraduate students, a Master’s student and Doctoral student, all enrolled in humanities programs.
[4] Jay, Gregory, “The Engaged Humanities: Principles and Practices for Public Scholarship and Teaching” (2010), Imagining America, 15 (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee), Journal of Community Engagement and Scholarship, Vol 3, No. 1.
[5] My contact with LAND Studio even paved the way for collaborations within my current professional capacity as a Cleveland Foundation Public Service Fellow.
[6] This event was sponsored by the Department of Art History & Art at CWRU, the Department of English at CWRU, SPACES, and the Cleveland Museum of Art, with support from the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities and FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art.
[7] Heather Flaherty and Jodi Kovach, Language Learning in Academic Museums: New Paradigms for Cultural Study, Language Acquisition, and Campus Engagement (Rowman & Littlefield, 2023).
[8] The same is applicable outside the humanities. Recent studies show that art classes enhance the critical observational and perception skills of medical students, physicians, and healthcare workers. See Jennifer L. Roberts, “The Power of Patience: Teaching Students the Value of Deceleration and Immersive Attention,” in Harvard Magazine (Cambridge, Massachusetts), 2013. See also, Anne Wallentine, “Art Classes Are Helping Transform Medical Education,” in Hyperallergic. January 23, 2022.
[9] Jay, Gregory, “The Engaged Humanities: Principles and Practiced for Public Scholarship and Teaching” (2010), Imagining America, 15 (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee), Journal of Community Engagement and Scholarship, Vol 3, No. 1.
[10] Robyn Schroeder, “The Rise of the Public Humanities,” in Doing Public Humanities (Routledge, 2021).
Title Image: Students in “The City as Museum: Monuments and Memory,” taught by Erin Benay, Associate Professor of Art History and Distinguished Scholar in the Public Humanities. Public artwork pictured: Gene Kangas, Snow Fence, 1981, steel. The John and Mildred Putnam Collection.
