Public Humanities at Yale | E-Newsletter | Spring 2026

Dear Public Humanities community,

This semester saw a dynamic slate of Public Humanities programming done in collaboration with partners new and old across New Haven, including the Yale Film Archive, the New Haven Museum, and La Casa Cultural, as well as a gathering of the North Eastern Public Humanities (NEPH) consortium that brought colleagues from across the region to Yale's campus. The reflections below capture some of the centrality of collaboration to the work that Yale Public Humanities undertakes. Read on for recaps of our spring activities, student and faculty news, and events to look forward to in the 2026–27 academic year—and, as always, a custom crossword puzzle by Matthew Stock, Yale College '18.

As always, if you have ideas, feedback, or questions, don't hesitate to get in touch with us at publichumanities@yale.edu. If you are a graduate student and would like to be involved with the Public Humanities Working Group, please also feel free to reach out.

–Public Humanities at Yale

"Fair Haven Festival Poster, 1982, New Haven, Conn.," New Haven Free Public Library Digital Collections.

Upcoming Events

ALL EVENTS ARE FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED

Fall 2026 Course:
What is an Archive? with Melissa Barton

This graduate seminar seeks to answer the question in the course’s title by looking closely at professional archival descriptive practices and broader, looser uses of the term in cultural and literary studies, art history, history, and beyond. By looking at these distinct but curiously, even suspiciously, concurrent genealogies, we seek to explain why the term “archive” has become so demonstrably popular, in multiple senses of the word, even as archival practice has become more professionalized and specialized. For more information, see the description in Course Search or the Canvas site. Enrollment limited to 12 students. Interested students should complete the brief, short-answer application form and will be notified of admission on a rolling basis before registration ends.

October 30, 2026
"Writing About Music" Symposium

Join us on October 30 for a daylong symposium on writing about music, to be held at 320 York Street. Conversations will include: Daphne Brooks & Alexandra Vazquez; Matt Jacobson & Michael Veal; and Teju Cole & Jeremy Eichler. The full schedule and details will be available soon at the Yale Public Humanities website. Yale graduate students will also be eligible to apply for an associated micro-credentials in Public Writing in the fall semester, with more information forthcoming.

April 9–11, 2027
2027 North Eastern Public Humanities (NEPH) Symposium

The North Eastern Public Humanities Consortium (NEPH) fosters public projects animated by humanistic inquiry in support of art, culture, history, and education for a more democratic society. Save the date for our 2027 symposium on April 9–11, which will feature site visits, panel conversations, and more.

Spring 2026 Event Reflections

January–February: Oral History Micro-Credential

Mary Marshall Clark (Director of the Columbia University Center for Oral History Research and Founding Co-Director of Columbia's Oral History Master of Arts Program) led a graduate student micro-credential on oral history. Over four meetings in January and February, the class explored multidisciplinary methods, including oral history interviewing, analysis and public forms of dissemination. Students conducted interviews based on in-class fieldwork training and co-interviewing and learned about the evaluation of interviews for public and academic use, as well as ethical protocols for interviewing people in vulnerable situations.

February 18: Greg Mottola and Richard Deming on The Daytrippers

Yale Public Humanities and the Yale Film Archive co-presented a special 30th anniversary screening of 1996’s The Daytrippers with director-writer Greg Mottola in conversation with Yale's Richard Deming. The film brought a nearly full-capacity crowd to the large auditorium at 53 Wall Street. Performed with deadpan virtuosity by a top-flight ensemble cast that includes Stanley Tucci, Hope Davis, Parker Posey, Liev Schrieber, and more, The Daytrippers is a wry and piercing look at family bonds stretched to the breaking point.

April 3: North Eastern Public Humanities Consortium (NEPH) Spring 2026 Meeting

Colleagues from Rutgers, Lehigh, Columbia, Bard Graduate Center, CUNY Graduate Center, Cooper Union, Tufts, University Of Maryland Baltimore County, the Guggenheim Museum in New York, and Yale gathered on campus for a special meeting of the North Eastern Public Humanities Consortium (NEPH). Participants shared past projects, works in progress, and reflections on the state of public humanities as a field, with an eye toward a multi-day NEPH symposium to be held at Yale next April 9th–11th, 2026 (save the date!)

April 16: La Planta: Latinx Worker Survival in U.S. Slaughterhouses

Clara Mejía Orta (PhD candidate, History) organized a capstone event for her Public Humanities Graduate Certificate, featuring oral histories of meatpacking workers collected during field research for her dissertation about labor organizing in slaughterhouses. The event featured a Q&A with meatpacking workers and staff from the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, as well as a gallery walk featuring meatpacking worker portraits by Latina Art Collective Lavaca Studios, and catering from La Cocina de Sandra. Learn more about La Planta and hear the oral histories at the project website.

April 21: New Haven Climate Movement Turns 10! Dinner

Adrian Huq (Environment '26) organized a celebratory dinner and speaker event commemorating the 10th anniversary of New Haven Climate Movement as their Public Humanities Graduate Certificate capstone project. Participants enjoyed a catered dinner and a raffle, heard from speakers in the movement, and mingled with community leaders, students, and organizers. The event was generously hosted by our partners at the New Haven Museum.

April 23: Gather About Food in New Haven

The students of the Spring 2026 "Introduction to Public Humanities" course (AMST 4403) held a special capstone event at the New Haven Museum, a showcase of local food advocacy groups, restaurants, gardens, grocers, farmers, and florists meant to draw connections across the food justice landscape in New Haven. Representatives from partner organizations spoke about their work and offered interactive activities and conversational prompts.

April 24: Beyond the Dissertation with George Sánchez

George J. Sánchez, Professor of American Studies & Ethnicity, and History at the University of Southern California, joined the Public Humanities Working Group for a conversation with graduate students and early career scholars in the public humanities to discuss mentorship and professionalization strategies. The program aimed to demystify the “hidden curriculum” of doctoral study by speaking openly about the explicit and implicit professional expectations that community-engaged scholars encounter during and after the PhD program, featuring topics like strategies for navigating pre-candidacy, forging mentorship relations, working with organizations that support community-engaged research, bridging scholarship into public facing work, preparing for the academic job market, and co-creating scholarship with non academic communities.

May 11–14: "Poetry and Practice" Spring 2026 Micro-Credential

Public Humanities ran a graduate student micro-credential on the topic of Poetry and Practice, with workshops from poets Catherine Barnett, Yona Harvey, Michael Kelleher, Nancy Kuhl, and Guggenheim Museum curator/educator Cyra Levenson. Set at the Beinecke, Yale University Art Gallery, Yale Center for British Art, and the Humanities Quadrangle, each session approached poetry through the examination of a particular provocation and set of practices, such as “Poetry & Attention” and “Self-Portrait as So Much Potential: Re/Constructing the ‘I’ in Poetry.” Stay tuned for more information about the next micro-credentials in Poetry and Pedagogy and Public Writing for Fall 2026. All of our micro-credentials are open by application to any graduate student at Yale.

News

Some highlights of Public Humanities-affiliated faculty,
graduate students in the certificate program, and alumni:

Daphne A. Brooks (William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Black Studies, American Studies, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and Music) and Joanne Meyerowitz (Arthur Unobskey Professor of History and Professor of American Studies) are among the eight Yale faculty members as new members of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. They join this year's cohort of 252 scholars recognized for their notable achievements in academia, industry, policy, research, and science. Read more at Yale News.

Lucy Caplan (PhD '20 and Public Humanities alum, now Assistant Professor of Music at Worcester Polytechnic Institute) has published Dreaming in Ensemble: How Black Artists Transformed American Opera with Harvard University Press. The book is a revelatory new account of Black innovation in American opera, showing how composers, performers, and critics redefined the genre both aesthetically and politically in the early twentieth century.

Emily Coates (Professor in The Practice of TDPS and Directing at the David Geffen School of Drama) presented her new work Tell Me Where It Comes From at the Schwarzman Center in April. Drawing on her background as a former member of New York City Ballet, Coates creates an unexpected portrait of Balanchine's legacy, working with collaborators to collage far-flung remains: unanswered letters, old photographs and music exercises, lost ballets, early muses, and more. Read more at the Schwarzman Center website.

Beverly Gage (John Lewis Gaddis Professor of History) has published a new book, This Land is Your Land: A Road Trip Through U.S. History, with Simon & Schuster. From the birth of the nation in Philadelphia to Disneyland and the California dream, This Land Is Your Land offers a guided tour of thirteen places and thirteen key moments that define America’s greatest successes and challenges.

Estelle Guéville (PhD student in Medieval Studies and the Public Humanities certificate program) was awarded a 2026 Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Innovation Fellowship for her dissertation project, “Qui scripsit scribat semper.” Female Scribal Practices in Medieval Europe. Read more at the ACLS website.

Adrian Huq (Environment '26) and Clara Mejia Orta (PhD candidate in History) completed the Public Humanities Graduate Certificate. Read more about their capstone events above and join us in congratulating them both!

Daniel HoSang (Professor of American Studies; Director of Graduate Studies for American Studies) has published a new article, "Medical Education and the Harm of ‘Goodly Heritage,’" in the Los Angeles Review of Books with co-authors Marco Antonio Ramos and Alana Slavin. The article explores how eugenic ideas linger in the institutions and practices of contemporary healthcare.

Courtney Sato (PhD '19 and Public Humanities alum, now Assistant Professor, Studies in Race, Colonialism, and Diaspora at Tufts University) joined a panel conversation marking 10 years of the Yale Library Student Exhibition Program. Sato's exhibition, "Out of the Desert: Resilience and Memory in Japanese American Internment," was on view from 2015–16; read more about that exhibit at Yale News.

Caleb Smith has been named the Karl Young Professor of English. On faculty since 2005, Smith has done field-leading research into the cultural history of crime and punishment in the United States. Read more about his appointment at Yale News.