Teresa Mangum Discusses Graduate Education in the Humanities

Teresa Mangum

Inspired by calls from the Modern Language Association and the American Historical Association, many humanities departments are asking how they can prepare their graduate students for diverse careers. Visiting Syracuse University to discuss how institutions across the country are addressing these challenges is Professor Teresa Mangum (University of Iowa), a national figure in the public humanities, who will speak Thursday, March 2, at 3:30 p.m. in Bird Library 114 (Peter Graham Scholarly Commons).

Her talk and workshop, “The Humanities as Profession and Practice,” will examine the current situation with humanities graduate programs, in which widespread and longstanding recognition of the need to prepare students for careers outside the academy has generally failed to translate into meaningful curricular reform. In many cases, graduate students are quietly going rogue, creating their own opportunities. However, some departments are also threading an “applied” approach to the humanities through students’ scholarly studies.

Mangum will discuss successful examples and reflect on the challenge of maintaining the intellectual values of humanities departments while also expanding students’ opportunities. Faculty, graduate students and administrators are invited to share their experiences and perspectives, with a view to identifying strategies best suited to the University’s profile and institutional culture.

Mangum is professor of Gender, Women’s and Sexuality Studies and director of the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies at the University of Iowa. She is an Imagining America National Advisory Board member, co-founder of Iowa’s Graduate Institute on Engagement and the Academy, and co-editor of the book series Humanities in Public Life for the University of Iowa Press. In these roles she has helped graduate students weave publicly engaged scholarship and teaching, digital humanities, and best practices in collaboration into their doctoral studies.

Her visit is sponsored by the Graduate School and the Humanities Center.