This spring, the Central New York Humanities Corridor continues its collaborations with the New York Council for the Humanities through two initiatives aimed at engaging the community with humanities scholarship: The Graduate Student Public Humanities Fellowships and a Community Partnership Grant.

 Now entering its third year, the Graduate Student Public Humanities Fellows program at Syracuse University is a partnership between the New York Council for the Humanities and the Central New York Humanities Corridor supported through an award from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The yearlong fellowships bring humanities scholarship into dialogue with the public realm through projects conceived of by doctoral students and implemented in partnership with community-based organizations. Syracuse University’s 2015 – 2016 Central New York Humanities Corridor’s Public Humanities Fellowships have been awarded to Paul Arras (Ph.D. candidate, History) and Scarlett Rebman (Ph.D. candidate, History). In addition to an $8,000 stipend, fellows receive training in collaborating with community organizations and opportunities for professional development through the New York Council for the Humanities. 

On Wednesday April 22 Syracuse University’s 2014 – 2015 Public Humanities Fellows, Tom Guiler (History) and Jason Luther (Composition and Cultural Rhetoric) will present a CNY Humanities Corridor Seminar on their respective projects and fellowship year experiences. The seminar will take place from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. in the Humanities Center’s Seminar Room (304 Tolley). The event is open to the Syracuse University community. Space is limited, to RSVP please contact Mellon Coordinator, Mi Ditmar at 443-5944 by Monday April 20

Through the New York Council’s Community Partnership Grant program, on April 6 – 7, the Central New York Humanities Corridor sponsored the hands-on workshops “DIY Time Travel in the Afrofuture” in conjunction with the Urban Video Project at Light Work Lab and the Syracuse Model Neighborhood Facility (formerly the Southwest Community Center). The workshops brought Rasheedah Phillips, a public interest attorney and a science fiction author from Philadelphia, PA to explore the ways in which the tactics of science fiction and afrofuturism can be put into use as a tool of empowerment in everyday life.

The Public Humanities Fellowships and Community Partnership Grants are only part of the ongoing relationship between the Central New York Humanities Corridor and the New York Council for the Humanities. Case in point: last fall, the two organizations also partnered to present the veterans’ reading and discussion series Serving: Standing Down, hosted at the Syracuse University Humanities Center.

“The New York Council for the Humanities’ many initiatives provide the Corridor with unique opportunities to engage both the campus and the community in humanistic scholarship,” says CNY Humanities Corridor PI and Dean’s Professor for the Humanities, Gregg Lambert. “Collectively, such programs provide a robust response for how and why the humanities matter, not just in the academy, but in society as well.”

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The Central New York Humanities Corridor is a unique regional collaboration between Syracuse University, Cornell University, the University of Rochester, as well the schools of the New York Six Liberal Arts Consortium in seven different areas of research and humanistic inquiry.  Each institution brings a vibrant and distinguished humanistic scholarly tradition to the collective work of the CNY Humanities Corridor.

The New York Council for the Humanities is a private, non-profit organization that helps all New Yorkers to lead vibrant intellectual lives by strengthening traditions of cultural literacy, critical inquiry, and civic participation.  To find out more about the Council, visit www.nyhumanities.org.