Throughout March, the Mid-Atlantic Regional Center for the Humanities (MARCH) will host a series of workshops that will feature our public humanities faculty fellows in person on the first floor of 325 Cooper Street. Scholars will discuss a range of topics from case studies, writing for the public, and personal archives, and will demonstrate ways to succeed in the Humanities.
Crafting Humanities Case Studies (Monday, March 6 @ 4:00 pm)
Nathan C. Walker and Lili Myers
Business professors are well-known for using case studies to prepare future business leaders. Medical faculty use patient cases to teach residents and prepare them for working as healthcare workers. Professors of law use case briefs to teach the law and help students think like lawyers. This skills-based workshop will ask five questions: (1) How might humanities educators and researchers use case studies to revitalize their teaching and research? (2) What constitutes case studies in the humanities, especially when doing interdisciplinary work? (3) What are the core elements of a humanities case study, pedagogical objectives, and research outcomes? (4) How can case studies tap into learners’ multiple intelligences and create immersive classroom experiences? And (5) how can researchers use case studies to cultivate the public understanding of the humanities? The workshop will explore how the Moral Imagination Community at Rutgers University responds to these questions by building WISE Case Studies. The humanities cases inspire learners to situate themselves in a moral dilemma to understand all points of view by Watching videos, Interacting with games, Studying research, and Engaging one another in person and online.
Dr. Nathan C. Walker is a Public Humanities Fellow, Honors College Faculty Fellow, and award-winning instructor in the Department of Philosophy & Religion at Rutgers University-Camden. Lili Myers is a second year political science minor and legal studies minor. Lili is a member of the Honors College and on a pre-law track.
This program is made possible by generous support from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Center for the Humanities at Rutgers University-Camden and a religion and health grant from Interfaith America.
Humanities Writing for the Public (Monday, March 27 @ 11:20 am)
William FitzGerald
Writing for public audiences is a completely different skill than writing for an academic audiences, such as scholarly journals, your professors, and Canvas discussion posts! In a time when rhetoric and communicating with the public is as important as ever, this workshop will give you an introduction to the skills needed to write for a public audience.
William FitzGerald is an Associate Professor of English at Rutgers University-Camden. His primary interest is rhetoric, specifically the rhetoric of religion. He is a published author in several academic journals, collections of essays, and he co-authored The Craft of Research (U. of Chicago Press). His current project looks to track the origin of the famous Serenity Prayer.
How to Make a Personal Archive (Wednesday, March 29 @ 11:20 am)
Julie Still
We all have that drawer or shoebox we keep our precious memories in. It’s filled with the tickets from our first concert, a poem written in the third grade that we’re still proud of, and a heart-felt letter written from a close friend. These memories will be cherished by you and your family, but they can be good for so much more than that. Creating your own personal archive will help you organize and keep track of all your important keepsakes. And if you’re willing to share your archive, it will also be useful for future historians who will be able to easily identify objects and better understand their meanings.
This workshop will explain the steps of creating a personal archive. From properly identifying all of the potential artifacts, creating an index for everything, and even more!
Julie Still is a reference librarian at the Paul Roberson Library at Rutgers University–Camden. She has published work as both academic articles and book chapters. She is also an active volunteer in her community through grant writing and web work. Currently, she is working on a dissertation in American Studies at Penn State–Harrisburg.