If you’re a student in the WRD Program, the name HumanitiesX probably sounds familiar. You may recognize the name from speaking events or seminars coordinated by Faculty Director of HumanitiesX Lisa Dush. I caught up with Lisa to talk about the program and what it has to offer to WRD students.
What is HumanitiesX? Professor Dush described it as an initiative to create more space, time, and incentives for community engaged courses. The program selects six faculty fellows from different humanities departments at DePaul, who in pairs then design three different community focused courses to run in spring quarter. So, what’s in it for WRD students? Besides the opportunity to take multidisciplinary courses with a community focus, WRD students are also afforded internship and job opportunities.
HumanitiesX Internship Opportunities
In both spring quarter of 2021, HumanitiesX is offering 4-credit internship courses that DePaul students can take for Experiential Learning (EL) credit. This internship will train you to do ethically sensitive and professional oral history and documentary work, and engage you in documenting and preserving the present moment as a member of the new DePaul Documentary Corps.
HumanitiesX Job Opportunities
Every academic year HumanitiesX hires six student employees — three undergraduate and three graduate — to help execute the six community focused courses. These opportunities last two quarters and are paid hourly, where students apply in fall, come on during winter to help plan the courses with the cohort they are assigned to, and begin attending classes when they begin in spring. Along with attending classes, students will work both with their cohort and the HumanitiesX team as a whole to offer all kinds of feedback, but likely with a focus on cohesion between the three courses relative to the theme. For 2021-2022, that theme will be “Understanding, Speaking in, and Documenting this Historic Moment.” Of course, they offer the perspective of a student, undergrad or grad, during winter quarter planning meetings. Additionally, they help with logistic happenings of the community centered courses, which require effective communication between the class and the organization, where meet-ups, visits, and interviews may need to be coordinated.
Student employees will attend their cohort’s class in spring quarter and work to document the activities, projects and general happenings in that class. At the end of Spring Quarter, they will support a spring showcase that presents the work done across HumanitiesX Cohorts that year. They may conduct research support for project-based learning or collect and organize community resources. Professor Dush commented “WRD Students will be great at it”.
Unfortunately, the HumanitiesX fellowship will not run this Spring 2021 but the fellows for Academic Year 2021-2022 have been selected.
For the 2021-21 cohort, Cary Ross (History) and Yuki Miyamoto (Religious Studies) will run a course about migration post-atomic bomb Amy Tyson (History) and Chris Green (English) will run a course partnering with Su Casa to teach writing and editing oral histories in Spanish and English.
If you’re interested in applying for a student employee position with HumanitiesX, keep an eye out for an email from the WRD department this Spring Quarter 2021. Click here for more information about the themes and cohorts.