Mellon Public Humanities Fellowships

Call for Applications 2021-2022

Due Wednesday, March 3, 2021

The Center for the Humanities invites applications for three Public Humanities Fellowships designed to provide advanced graduate students in the humanities with experience outside of academia. By placing fellows in partner organizations around Madison including museums, hospitals, non-profits, community centers, and emerging businesses, the program facilitates the reciprocal sharing of resources and expertise, and highlights the significance of the humanities both on and off campus. We aim not only to provide graduate students the opportunity to explore diverse career paths, but also to cultivate a practice of public humanities within their academic work.

We encourage applicants to imagine themselves into positions not obviously connected with their discipline. We have placed doctoral students in unexpected settings: a Music Theory student in a STEM education non-profit, a Geography student in a food collective, a Design Studies student in a historical society. Non-academic skills and experiences acquired prior to and concurrent with your degree are valued by partner organizations as equally as the transferable skills you have gained and refined during your education.

This year’s Mellon Public Humanities Fellowships are also part of Humanities Education for Anti-racism Literacy (HEAL), a Mellon Just Futures Initiative grant that brings together faculty, students, community members and Tribal partners to address a lack of awareness of histories of racism in academic disciplines, especially in scientific disciplines, and a lack of diverse representation in STEMM across sectors, from academia to industry.

Overview

In 2021-2022 the Center for the Humanities will award three public humanities fellowships to dissertating doctoral students at UW-Madison. Recipients of this fellowship will receive all the benefits of a graduate project assistant (including tuition remission and health care) and be paired with an organization in Madison for a nine-month (academic year) residency. These residencies will give fellows the opportunity to use their humanities experience and expertise to develop new programs, expand existing ones, and translate their academic skills into the public sphere. The fellowship period is Aug 23, 2021 to May 22, 2022 and fellows will be in residence at their assigned organization 20 hours a week (excluding academic breaks) during that period.

Full instructions for preparing your applications are at the end of this document.

Available Positions (links lead to position descriptions within this document)

1. The Foundation for Black Women’s Wellness, Communications Fellow

2. Odyssey Beyond Bars, Prison Education Communications Fellow

3. The STEM Collective, Publications Fellow

Eligibility and Criteria

This competition is open to UW-Madison PhD students in the humanities and related fields who will have completed all coursework and will be dissertating at the start of fall semester (Aug 23, 2021). We expect that applicants will bring to these positions a host of skills drawn from their scholarly training, including a strong research and writing background, creativity, and specific forms of field-based knowledge and expertise (in, for example, history, anthropology, art history, cultural studies, digital media, literature, languages, or film, among many others). Partner organizations will provide fellows the opportunity to undertake significant work on innovative programs and ensure that they receive appropriate mentoring. Applicants should apply for a position, rather than to the program as a whole. The final and most important round of application review and interviews will be conducted by the partner organizations independently of the Center for the Humanities.

Applicants will be reviewed based on their academic accomplishments in the humanities; relevant training and experience; and the relation between the fellowship and their professional goals.

For questions, email Aaron Fai, Assistant Director of Public Humanities, at fai@wisc.edu.

Please do not contact any of these organizations with questions about the positions.

Position Descriptions

The Foundation for Black Women’s Wellness

Communications Fellow

Organization Description

Established in June 2012, The Foundation for Black Women’s Wellness is a Wisconsin based non-profit organization committed to mobilizing African American women to pursue and sustain mind-body-spirit wellness, and to raise the visibility and support of Black women’s health as a community and public health priority.

Our mission is to eliminate health disparities and other barriers impacting the lives of women and girls of African descent. We achieve this mission through education and outreach, advocacy, support circles, and powerful partnerships. We work to radically transform Black Women’s health by creating a world where Black women and girls live long, happy and thriving lives, defined by healthy minds, bodies and spirits.

Position Description

FFBWW seeks a team member who will work with the leadership team to develop, implement and manage an organizational communications portfolio to boost targeted health outreach, branding and marketing capacity of FFBWW.

Currently, FFBWW is in a marked growth period as an organization, focused on expanding programming, partnerships and organizational capacity through development of staff and standardized operations. Communication strategies remain integral to creating and maintaining current practices, as well as expanding our targeted health promotions outreach for Black women and their families, while concurrently actively engaging partners, funders and the community at large.

We are looking for support from a Public Humanities Fellow who will work with the team to create an organizational communications portfolio, including standard operating procedures across all of FFBWW platforms, encompassing branding and social media markets with an emphasis in health promotion standards for programming.

Through research, engagement, and communications, the Fellow will collaborate with the FFBWW team to produce communication strategies and products to support our mission. The position contributes to our work by:

· Leading the creation of communication strategies reflective to the mission of the FFBWW, the current community and market environment, and the long-term growth goals of the leadership team;

· Applying a racial and ethnic equity lens to communication strategies and products;

· Developing relationships with Black women artists and photographers to create a media library, representative of local Black women and their families to support marketing development;

· Coordinating the FFBWW communications calendar for 2021-22;

· Actively engaging in the development of FFBWW organizational capacity in relationship to its commitment to the holistic well-being of Black women and their families;

· Supporting other tasks that are relevant to the Fellow’s expertise communications, marketing and health promotion strategies.

The Fellow should expect to attend twice weekly team meetings, meet regularly with the leadership or student development team, and interface with community members. Fellows should have regular access to a computer, internet and a communication device, as the fellowship will be virtual in light of the current worldwide pandemic.

Qualifications

The ideal candidate will combine strong communication and marketing knowledge with health education experiences and health promotion skills. The position requires excellent strategic, analytical, communications, and interpersonal competencies.

Below are the competencies that will help an individual succeed in this role. It is not a mandatory or comprehensive list.

· Working knowledge of the local and statewide Black community and its history.

· Have some working knowledge of targeted health promotion and marketing.

· Sincere passion for the mission and values of the FFBWW, and the ability to articulate and share that passion with internal and external audiences.

· Demonstrated understanding of and commitment to racial, ethnic, social, and economic justice.

· Working knowledge of inclusive outreach and engagement models leading to diverse and effective communication strategies.

· Proven interpersonal and team building skills with an orientation towards equity and inclusion.

· Proven ability to work on multiple projects, manage priorities and workflow, and meet milestones.

· Writing, editing, and digital media skills with an ability to convey complex issues in a clear, direct, and engaging style.

· Willingness to work in an adaptive, engaged, collaborative work environment.

Odyssey Beyond Bars

Prison Education Communications Fellow

Organization Description

Odyssey Beyond Bars is part of the UW Odyssey Project, an educational outreach program that offers free humanities courses, advising and tutoring to students in underserved populations. Since 2003, the Odyssey Project has empowered entire families to overcome adversity and achieve dreams through higher education.

Odyssey Beyond Bars works specifically with students incarcerated in our state prisons. The effort began as a series of noncredit humanities courses and has recently expanded to offer credit-bearing UW-Madison courses as well. This effort complements UW System’s new prison education initiative that aims to offer UW courses to incarcerated students statewide.

Position Description

Odyssey Beyond Bars is expanding the number of UW-Madison courses we deliver to our students in prison, and the Fellow will create materials and protocols to help our faculty develop and deliver these courses. The Fellow will also assist with outreach to other UW System campuses involved in prison-based education and will represent Odyssey Beyond Bars at regional and national meetings and conferences.

Responsibilities may include:

· Assist UW faculty in developing and delivering courses to students in prison through synchronous video and a learning management system

· Produce a quarterly e-newsletter and other outreach materials to communicate program progress and news regarding prison education generally

· Develop and maintain a comprehensive listing of UW System faculty and staff who are currently involved in teaching students in prison, researching prison populations, or developing prison-based interventions

· Assist with grant research and writing

Qualifications

· Excellent written and oral communication skills

· Excellent research skills, with a strong attention to detail

· Experience creating courses in Canvas

· A passion for prison education and a desire to engage others on the issue

The STEM Collective, Maydm

Publications Fellow

Organization Description

The STEM Collective is focused on advancing BIPOC communities in STEM through accessible hands-on resources for students. The Women in STEM book project is one of the catalyst projects to launch the initiative. This book will focus on the foundational role that BIPOC women have and continue to play in our changing technology and STEM fields. This book will act as an inspiration for BIPOC girls and more to see their passions through a STEM lens and highlight the journey of other women.

The STEM Collective is an initiative of Winnie Karanja, Founder and Executive Director of Maydm. Maydm is a Madison-based tech education nonprofit with the mission of providing girls and youth of color with access to the technical programming skills, soft skills, real world experiences, and mentoring support they need in order to become innovators and technology leaders. For more information visit, www.maydm.org.

Responsibilities

· Conduct research on the historical contributions of BIPOC women to STEM fields and drafting summaries of their roles and achievements

· Develop and executing interviews and oral histories with living BIPOC women

· Compile and aggregate interview responses to create an individual profiles of each woman

· Coordinate with vendors (photographers, artists, printers) to facilitate the book’s production

· Identify and build relationships with women's and BIPOC focused publications for the launch’s public relations

· Prepare press kit, pre-launch materials, and press release

Qualifications

· Ability to synthesize and analyze archival research and oral history, and to effectively present results in written reports for a public audience

· Demonstrate an understanding of and commitment to racial, gender, social, and economic justice

· Strong time management and organizational skills with the ability to set priorities and manage deadlines

· Outstanding skills in oral history, focus groups, interviewing, and/or storytelling

· Professional written and verbal communication skills

· Sincere passion for the mission and values of Maydm, and the ability to articulate and share that passion with internal and external audiences

· Marketing, communications or public relations experience (desired)

· An understanding of the disparities and opportunities in the STEM field (desired)

Mellon Public Humanities Fellowship Application

Due March 3, 2020

Save the following application form, along with any additional required documents, as one (1) PDF file. Name your file: PHF 2122 App [your last name]

1. Name:

2. Address:

3. Telephone Number:

4. Email Address:

5. Student ID number:

6. Department:

7. Field of Specialization:

8. Dates of Preliminary Examination(s) and admission to candidacy:

9. Title of Dissertation:

10. 100-word abstract of dissertation:

11. Faculty director of your dissertation:

12. Expected date of completion of PhD:

13. Briefly state your research interests:

14. Position to which you are applying:

15. Would you be interested in interviewing for a different fellowship position? If yes, please list up to one additional choice. If we present your application to your alternate choice, we will ask you to revise your materials to be addressed to that partner organization.

16. List the names, titles, institution, and email addresses of one reference who will submit a letter on your behalf. The reference letter should address the student’s academic record and progress; qualifications for the position; past work; and potential contributions to and benefits from a Public Humanities Fellowship. The reference letter should be submitted electronically as a PDF document and sent directly by your recommenders to: applications@humanities.wisc.edu with “PHF Recommendation STUDENT NAME” in the subject. Deadline is March 3, 2021.

Additional Materials

1) COVER LETTER (required)

This should be written for the specific position you have selected. Please address your letter to the selected organization. You should explain why you are applying for this position and how your academic and extra-academic experience prepares you for it.

2) CV (required)

3) Additional materials (optional)

Present any documentation of your transferable skills that enhances and expands on but does not duplicate your cover letter or CV.

Please submit all application materials electronically, in a single PDF document.

In the subject line, please put “PH Fellowship Application_ORG NAME_STUDENT NAME”

and send to applications@humanities.wisc.edu

Applications due: March 3, 2021

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