This program grants graduate faculty members summer stipends so that they can design new graduate courses with significant public and/or digital humanities scholarship components. 

2022 Awardees

With the goal of creating a popular history of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure that is both scholarly and entertaining, Kathy George, Professor of Theatre Arts, will develop a seminar in which students collaborate to create an edited manuscript that covers some 350 years of Shakespeare productions and which allows for podcasts and public appearances.

• Curricular Design Experience: My Measure for Measure Summer
• Syllabus: A Performance History of MEASURE FOR MEASURE (PDF)

In collaboration with members of the Staycee Pearl Dance Project and with input from other faculty, Associate Professor of Music Amy Williams will develop the course “Interdisciplinary Performance Laboratory.” This course will provide graduate students with valuable perspectives into cross-disciplinary creative processes and culminate in a public performance of new multi-disciplinary works, organized around a relevant social issue.

2021 Awardees

Run in collaboration with Sharing Our Story, Assistant Professor of Music Shalini R. Ayyagari’s course “Transmedia and Sounding Publics: Refugee Stories in Pittsburgh” will involve developing multimedia skills, conducting ethnographic research, working with local non-profit organizations, and collaborating with refugee communities in Pittsburgh.

• Curricular Design Experience: In the Making: Transmedia and Sounding Publics, Refugee Stories in Pittsburgh
• Syllabus: Transmedia and Sounding Publics: Refugee Stories in Pittsburgh (PDF)

Associate Professor of Communication Caitlin Bruce will foreground alternative forms of scholarly production, such as websites, podcasts, and blog posts; site visits; and partnerships with community organizations in her course, “Rhetoric of Space and Place in Western PA: Generating Scholarship with Place.”

• Curricular Design Experience: Designing “Rhetoric of Space and Place in Western PA: Generating Scholarship with Place” and Thinking about Infrastructure for Engaged Scholarship
• Syllabus: Rhetoric of Space and Place in Western PA: Generating Scholarship with Place (PDF)

In Associate Professor of History Laura Lovett’s “The Public-Facing History Laboratory” course, students will engage with public partners, such as museums, libraries, archives, historical societies, and other local organizations, to create experimental and collaborative historical products and tools for the public.

• Curricular Design Experience: Behind the Scenes of the Public-Facing History Laboratory
• Syllabus: Public-Facing History Laboratory (PDF)

2020 Awardees

For “Digital and Critical Approaches to Asian History,” Raja Adal, Assistant Professor of History, updated an introductory graduate seminar focusing on Asian history to include working with datasets, data analysis and visualization and culminating in a substantial blogpost for an educated general audience.

• Adal Project Description
• Curricular Design Experience: Digital and Critical Approaches to Asian History 
• Syllabus: Digital and Critical Approaches to Asian History Syllabus (PDF)

Elizabeth Pitts, Assistant Professor of English, created the course “Public Communication of Science and Technology” in conjunction with an exhibit she organized called Art's Work in the Age of Biotechnology. She aims with these projects to facilitate greater public participation in the shaping of emerging technologies.

• Pitts Project Description
• Curricular Design Experience: At the Intersection of Science and Democracy
• Syllabus: Science, Humanities, and Public Engagement Syllabus (PDF)

Associate Professor of English Annette Vee developed the course “Automated Writing from Amanuenses to AI” as a historical and technical exploration of why people have developed automated writing systems (AWS), what challenges AWS offer, and how to implement AWS using natural language processing and public data sets.

• Vee Project Description
• Curricular Design Experience: Designing Automated Writing
• Syllabus: Automated Writing from Amanuenses to AI Syllabus (PDF)