ROSE DEIGHTON-MOHAMMED

Introduction to Public Humanities  uses applied, experiential, and hands-on learning to challenge students’ understanding of the humanities. What are the humanities for? What can the humanities do? What is the role of the university in the creation of culturally valuable knowledge? How can humanities scholars on and off campus learn from each other’s methodologies, praxes, and genres of communication and knowledge sharing? How can undergraduates participate as humanities practitioners in the creation and transmission of culturally valuable scholarship? In this class, students will explore and reflect on these questions through direct, experience-based learning in one of two local bookstores. Public Humanities is an interdisciplinary approach to humanistic scholarship that combines reflection on the history of the humanities, critical university studies, and the practice of community-engaged research and scholarship. Students in this class gain hands–on experience by serving as public humanities practitioners in the context of independent bookstores in Atlanta, GA. Based on students’ interests, majors, and skillsets, the class will be divided into two groups that work on projects with Charis Books, the Southeast’s oldest queer-feminist bookstore, or Little Shop of Stories, a multicultural children’s bookstore in Decatur. Community partners  from Charis Books and Little Shop of Stories will collaborate with and supervise students on projects relevant to their current community-based initiatives for social change.