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Fall 2024 Bulletin: Annual Report

The Humanities, Arts & Culture

A building high series of book spines (with titles ranging from the Tao Te Ching to Romeo and Juliet) adorns the exterior of the Kansas City Public Library parking garage.
Outside of the Kansas City Public Library Parking Garage. © 2007 by Jonathan Moreau. Published under a CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Deed license.

The humanities, arts, and culture are woven through virtually every Ƶ program, where artists and humanists add interdisciplinary breadth to projects in science, democracy, and security. However, the Ƶ also undertakes projects that put humanities, arts, and culture at the forefront, strengthening their practice and highlighting their importance to all aspects of the nation’s thriving intellectual life. These projects call attention to the role the arts and humanities play in enriching the growth and vitality of individuals, communities, and the nation.
 

Advisory Committee 
 

Johanna Drucker, Chair 
University of California, Los Angeles

Louise Henry Bryson 
Public Media Group of Southern California

Joy Connolly 
American Council of Learned Societies

Oskar Eustis 
Public Theater

Rubén Gallo 
Princeton University

Margaret Jacobs 
University of Nebraska

Marie-Josée Kravis 
Museum of Modern Art

Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot 
Harvard University

Sarah Maza 
Northwestern University

Pedro Noguera 
University of Southern California

Oscar Tang 
New York, NY

Ayanna Thompson 
Arizona State University

Sherry Turkle 
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
 

Advisory Committee Meeting
 

May 13, 2024 (virtual)

Members of the Advisory Committee reviewed recent work and discussed future project priorities.
 

STAFF PRESENTATIONS
 

GradFutures Forum

April 10, 2024 
Princeton, NJ

Program Director Robert Townsend participated in a panel discussion on “Public Humanities: What For?” 

Four people in business attire are seated in chairs, listening to a fifth person on the far right, who is also seated and is speaking into a handheld microphone.
Princeton’s GradFutures program hosted a panel on the topic “Public Humanities: What For?” Participants included (left to right): Carin Berkowitz (NJ Council for the Humanities), Clifford Robinson (Princeton Public Library), Robert Townsend (American Ƶ), Genevieve Allotey-Pappoe (Princeton University), and Yassine Ait Ali (Princeton University). Photo by Sameer A. Khan.

 

Arts, Entrepreneurship, and Innovation Lab Symposium 

June 6, 2024 
Virtual

Program Director Robert Townsend chaired a panel about “Arts Engagement in an AI World.”

 

Oakland University

October 17, 2024 
Rochester, MI

Program Director Robert Townsend delivered an address about “The State of the Liberal Arts and General Education.”

 

Catholic University of America

October 19, 2024 
Washington, D.C.

Program Director Robert Townsend delivered a keynote address at a symposium on “Bridging the Humanities & Technology Gap.”

Project

The Humanities Indicators
 

Four college-age students study together at a table covered by their laptops, phones, and books. Two students are engaged on their phones, another student looks at their laptop, and the last student is writing in a notebook.
Photo by iStock.com/jacoblund.

The Humanities Indicators provide nonpartisan statistical information about all aspects of the humanities: from early childhood reading, through undergraduate and graduate education in the humanities, to employment and humanities experiences in daily life, such as reading and visits to museums. Now in its fourteenth year as a publicly available website, the project tracks the condition of the humanities enterprise via analyses of data gathered by the federal government as well as through its own rigorous survey research. The project is one of the most cited activities of the Ƶ, and journalists, advocates, government agencies, and academics regularly call on the project staff for information and their expertise. 

Recent work has focused on outcomes for and trends in students earning degrees in the humanities at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. The project released state-level reports on career outcomes for humanities majors. From late 2023 to early 2024, the Indicators administered a survey to departments in thirteen humanities and humanities-adjacent disciplines, asking about the condition of their faculty, students, and programs as well as external pressures on their work. The results will be published in Spring 2025. Alongside that work, the project also entered into a cooperative agreement with the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts to develop a national inventory of nonprofit cultural organizations. The project continues to develop additional areas of original research. The Humanities Indicators are accessible at www.amacad.org/humanities-indicators.
 

Project Directors 
 

Norman M. Bradburn 
NORC at the University of Chicago

Robert B. Townsend 
American Ƶ of Arts and Sciences
 

Advisory Committee 
 

Edward Ayers 
University of Richmond

Jack Buckley 
American Institutes for Research

Jonathan R. Cole 
Columbia University

John Dichtl 
American Association for State and Local History

Michael Hout 
New York University

Felice J. Levine 
American Educational Research Association

James Shulman 
American Council of Learned Societies

Phoebe Stein 
Federation of State Humanities Councils

Judith Tanur 
Stony Brook University
 

Project Staff 
 

Carolyn Fuqua 
Program Officer for the Humanities Indicators

Maysan Haydar 
Carl and Lily Pforzheimer Humanities Policy Fellow

Sara Mohr 
Carl and Lily Pforzheimer Humanities Policy Fellow
 

Funders 
 

Mellon Foundation

National Endowment for the Humanities

Carl H. Pforzheimer III

National Endowment for the Arts

The Humanities Indicators was developed with generous support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Elihu Rose and the Madison Charitable Fund, John P. Birkelund, Peck Stackpoole Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Sara Lee Foundation, Teagle Foundation, Walter B. Hewlett and the William R. Hewlett Trust, and William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

 

Project Publications
 

Tracking the Health of the Humanities at HBCUs (American Ƶ of Arts and Sciences, October 2024)

From Matriculation to Completion: How Do Humanities Majors Compare? (American Ƶ of Arts and Sciences, November 2024)

 

PROJECT MEETINGS
 

Humanities Indicators Advisory Committee Meeting

April 12, 2024 
Virtual

Members of the Advisory Committee reviewed recent work by the Indicators staff and proposals for future research projects. 

 

Humanities Department Survey Stakeholders Meeting

October 28, 2024 
Washington, D.C.

The Humanities Indicators staff hosted a meeting with scholarly society leaders, humanities advocates, and funders to discuss the results from a recent survey of humanities and humanities-adjacent departments.

 

STAFF PRESENTATIONS
 

NextGen Humanities Conference

March 8, 2024 
Little Rock, AR

Carl and Lily Pforzheimer Humanities Policy Fellow Maysan Haydar and Humanities Indictors Codirector Robert Townsend organized and presented at a session on “Humanities Degrees for Career Success.” 

 

National Humanities Alliance Annual Meeting

March 11, 2024 
Washington, D.C.

The Indicators staff shared materials and recent publications at an exhibit booth and participated in conversations and sessions at the annual meeting of the National Humanities Alliance.

 

American Council of Learned Societies Annual Meeting

May 2–3, 2024 
Philadelphia, PA

Members of the Indicators team participated in conversations and sessions at the annual meeting of the ACLS.

 

Society for Scholarly Publishing Annual Meeting

May 30, 2024 
Boston, MA

Humanities Indicators Codirector Robert Townsend spoke on a panel about “The Humanities Crisis, What to Know (and Maybe What to Do).”

 

Society for History of the Early American Republic

July 18, 2024 
Philadelphia, PA

Robert Townsend spoke on the opening plenary panel “The Thrill of the Old; or, Reframing Research on Early America.”

 

AP Council for Humanities Education

October 8, 2024 
New York, NY

Robert Townsend presented on “The Health of the Humanities.”

 

University of Illinois, Humanities Research Institute

October 22, 2024 
Virtual

Robert Townsend presented on recent findings from the Humanities Indicators, as part of the Institute’s “Think Again . . .” series.

 

National Humanities Conference

November 14–15, 2024 
Providence, RI

The Indicators staff shared materials and recent publications at an exhibit booth and Robert Townsend organized and presented data on the panel “Make the Case: Humanities Degrees for Career Success.” 

 

Modern Languages Association Strategic Partnership Network           

November 21, 2024 
Virtual

Robert Townsend presented findings from recent survey research about the state of modern languages in higher education. 

Project

The History of the Ƶ Book Project
 

Stacks of antiquated books sit beside one open book with handwritten text on yellowing pages inside.
Photo by Joseph Moore.

Looking ahead to its 250th anniversary in 2030, the Ƶ selected award-winning historian Jacqueline Jones (University of Texas at Austin) to write a one-volume account of the Ƶ’s past. The anniversary history will provide a full and honest assessment of the Ƶ’s activities and membership since its establishment in 1780, and place the Ƶ within the larger history of the nation it was created to serve.

Jacqueline (Jackie) Jones is a rare academic historian who writes for both the public and a peer scholarly audience. Her work has been recognized with the Bancroft Prize, a MacArthur Fellowship, membership in the American Ƶ, and most recently the presidency of the American Historical Association. Her publications include Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family from Slavery to the Present; Saving Savannah: The City and the Civil War; A Dreadful Deceit: The Myth of Race from the Colonial Era to Obama’s America; and No Right to an Honest Living: The Struggles of Boston’s Black Workers in the Civil War Era.
 

Advisory Committee
 

Catherine Allgor
Massachusetts Historical Society

Craig Calhoun
Arizona State University

Daniel J. Cohen
Northwestern University

Paula J. Giddings
Smith College

David A. Hollinger
University of California, Berkeley

Sally Gregory Kohlstedt
University of Minnesota

David W. Oxtoby
American Ƶ of Arts and Sciences

David M. Rubenstein
The Carlyle Group

Ben Vinson III
Howard University
 

Funder
 

Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Foundation

Exploratory Meeting 
 

Center for Humanities Communication

September 6, 2024 
House of the Ƶ, Cambridge, MA

At a March 2023 Ƶ meeting to mark the tenth anniversary of the Commission on the Humanities, two of the participants (Christine Henseler, Union College, and Alan Liu, University of California, Santa Barbara) proposed the formation of a Center for Humanities Communication, intended to help recognize, train, and support humanities communicators (similar to “science communicators”) placed across a broad spectrum of organizations and media, and also to serve as a clearinghouse for information, training, and resources. This idea was discussed further during an Advisory Committee meeting for the Humanities, Arts, and Culture program area.

On September 6, 2024, the Ƶ hosted a follow-up meeting to foster dialogue between leaders in the humanities and experts in science communication and related fields. Humanities scholars, science communicators, media professionals, and philanthropists participated in a roundtable discussion that focused on practical strategies and priorities. The participants addressed two key issues: how best to help the public understand and recognize that what they value is connected to the humanities, and how to improve the sharing of information between humanities organizations about ongoing research and public initiatives. The meeting concluded with a plan to continue developing the project in the future.
 

Project Staff 
 

Maysan Haydar 
Carl and Lily Pforzheimer Humanities Policy Fellow

Robert B. Townsend 
Director, Humanities, Arts, and Culture Programs 
 

Organizers and Session Leaders
 

Kath Burton 
Routledge, Taylor & Francis

Anke Finger 
University of Connecticut, Storrs

Christine Henseler 
Union College

Alan Liu 
University of California, Santa Barbara
 

Funders
 

Ƶ Exploratory Fund

National Endowment for the Humanities

 

A person standing to the side of a white board that has writing on it as well as notes affixed to it addresses a group of people seated in front of the board.
Kath Burton (Routledge, Taylor & Francis) leads a conversation about how the humanities can develop training and professionalization opportunities for public communication. Photo by Robert B. Townsend.
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