About
Overview
The College of Arts and Letters is firmly committed to engagement and outreach as both a scholarly enterprise and as an important way to link up with the community.
Karin Wurst, Dean, College of Arts and Letters
Michigan State University’s humanities faculty, students, and community partners have a long history of serious commitment to civic engagement and the land grant tradition of educational opportunity and equity, social responsibility, and the public impacts of scholarship. Recent programmatic efforts and innovations reflect the enduring goals of that tradition. View the Scholars and Projects page.
However, these programs often operate in isolation from one another. The size and complexity of a major research university make it difficult for far-flung faculty to participate in or benefit from common endeavors in public work. Civic agency in the arts and humanities is, as John Dewey said of democracy itself, “primarily a mode of associated learning, of conjoint communicated experience” which can break down separation, silence, and niche competition.
The Public Humanities Collaborative (PHC) offers a new center of gravity to better align these programs. First convened by a small group of faculty in spring 2005, the PHC has since grown to over 200 faculty, students, academic and student services staff, and outreach professionals committed to engaged teaching, research, and professional service with public impacts.
The PHC provides a gathering place, a ‘commons,’ where MSU faculty, students, and outreach professionals from the arts, humanities, and design disciplines can collaborate with community groups, build strong campus-community partnerships, enhance public understanding of liberal arts for democracy, and engage in cultural work that serves the public interest. View PHC programs.
To achieve these goals, the PHC will:
- PROMOTE existing instances of effective scholarship, civic learning, and community outreach as models to build upon
- DEVELOP synergies among the community, community institutions, and humanities scholarship
- FACILITATE humanities faculty efforts to engage in public work
- MAINTAIN support within the college and university that will assure continuation of civic engagement in humanities teaching, research, and professional service
- COLLABORATE broadly, effectively, and respectfully in the continuing spirit of MSU President Lou Anna K. Simon’s Boldness by Design strategic imperatives (these five imperatives guide the University in becoming recognized worldwide as the leading land-grant research university for the 21st century)
Mission
The Public Humanities Collaborative provides an intellectual commons, an organizational base where civic/public initiatives in the cultural disciplines are coordinated, institutionally affirmed, critically examined, supported, rewarded, and systematically fostered throughout the University.
Learn more about the PHC and Public Humanities:
