Humanities for the public good

A new fellowship funded by the Taylor Charitable Trust is supporting graduate students with interests in how humanities scholarship can be tied to a public outreach focus.

The Maynard Adams Fellowships for the Public Humanities have been established by the Program in the Humanities and Human Values in Carolina’s College of Arts and Sciences. The fellowships honor the late UNC-Chapel Hill philosophy professor and their namesake, who founded the Program in the Humanities in 1979. Adams emphasized the public value of the humanities throughout his distinguished academic career.

“The College’s new vision statement is ‘Reimagining the arts and sciences for the public good,’ and the Adams Fellows program is a way of creatively thinking about graduate education and disciplinary work in the humanities, arts and social sciences for the public good,” said Lloyd Kramer, professor of history and faculty director of the Program in the Humanities.

Ten Ph.D. students from the departments of philosophy, anthropology, art, English and comparative literature, American studies and religious studies were selected by an interdisciplinary faculty committee from a pool of 37 applicants for the first fellows class.

Fellows receive a stipend for participating in workshop/dinner conversations on the connections between the humanities and key issues in contemporary public life. They will participate in an “Adams Symposium,” which the Program in the Humanities is organizing each spring to encourage public discussion of issues that were important to Adams.

To keep reading, see: http://college.unc.edu/2017/01/09/maynard-adams-fellows.