2024-25

ACLS Leading Edge Fellowship - Application Prep Workshop
March 6, 2025
This virtual workshop session is designed for later-career PhDs interested in applying to the ACLS's Leading Edge fellowship program, which places recent humanities PhDs into nonprofit organizations committed to promoting social justice in their communities. All interested grads are welcome to join in this virtual session, featuring former Leading Edge fellow Ashley Cheyemi McNeil, who was hired by her host organization and currently supervises another Leading Edge fellow in her work with Full Spectrum Features, a social justice oriented film production organization. 

Crafting Your Humanities Resume Workshop
February 27, 2025
You’ve diligently compiled your academic CV throughout your time as a graduate student, but now you realize this format won’t work for most jobs beyond the professoriate. Join this session to gain tips and insights on how to translate your research activities, teaching, and other traditional academic labors into skills and assets visible to a broader range of employers. We'll be joined by Derek Attig, Assistant Dean for Career & Professional Development in the Graduate College at the University of Illinois, who has written extensively on career planning for graduate students for Inside Higher Ed. It’s never too early to plan your next move, so this session is open to grad students at any level.

Where to Start? A Public Humanities Primer for Graduate Students
February 21, 2025
The spring 2025 RDE workshop for graduate students in the humanities and humanistic social sciences will focus on the public humanities. Through a series of workshops and sessions led by scholar practitioners and members of key foundations (MLA, ACLS) supporting public humanities research and collaboration, students will gain exposure to public humanities methods and projects that will inspire and ignite their own project designs. They will also learn the value and importance of research collaborations with communities and organizations outside of the university and discuss how — and why — to pursue meaningful collaborative projects as a part of doctoral training. This workshop is designed for PhD graduate students in the humanities at any level; we especially encourage those earlier in their training to attend. Since a key goal for the workshop is to train students how to articulate the value of humanities skills and research to those outside of higher education, “Where to Start?” is an essential resource for any humanities student planning to pursue projects or future employment outside of higher education.

Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Innovation Fellowship Workshop
September 4–October 2, 2024
Workshop series for graduate students in the humanties and humanistic social sciences planning to submit a proposal to the Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Innovation Fellowship competition. Over the course of the workshop, participants will learn about the fellowship and the elements of its application, receive feedback on their drafted proposals, and learn about the on-campus resources for research and professional development. Attendance at every session is not required, and new participants may join as they are able.

2023–24

The Humanities in the AI Future - Graduate student lunch
April 5, 2024
An opportunity for graduate students and postdocs to casually talk with The Humanities in the AI Future symposium speakers about plotting a scholarly project that uses or focuses on AI, AI methods and the job market and other grad-oriented topics.

Writing as Advocacy
March 28-29, 2024
The spring 2024 RDE workshop for graduate students in the humanities and humanistic social sciences will focus on writing as a tool for advocacy of various forms. Through a series of writing workshops and discussions with an array of humanities practitioners, this event will explore ways that graduate students can use their most well-honed and readily deployable skill — writing — to achieve a variety of ends across the graduate school experience, both on campus and off. Students participating in this workshop will be invited to think capaciously about writing, community and the role of the humanities PhD in the contemporary world.

From Climate Anxiety to Climate Action
February 29, 2024
Faculty Books Celebration keynote speaker Nicole Seymour led a two-hour writing workshop on writing in an age of major climate upheaval. Seymour guided participants in considering how and where they can take action, identify local resources and opportunities for meaningful impact and use writing to build collectives around the issue of climate change. Echoing Seymour’s own eclectic approach to environmental humanities, the workshop also included time for slowness, reflection, deliberation and fun. 

Humanities Advocacy Day
March 10–12, 2024
Each year, the humanities center sponsors up to three graduate students’ participation in the National Humanities Alliance’s annual Humanities Advocacy Day in Washington, D.C. WashU’s participants receive advocacy training and collaborate with members of their statewide advocacy group before meeting with their state’s members of Congress on Capitol Hill to encourage support for federal funding for humanities programs such as the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Department of Education’s International Education programs.

Artistic Research in Academic Work
Fall 2023–Spring 2024
WashU’s Center for the Humanities and Tyson Research Center invited WashU humanities graduate students to participate in artistic research at Tyson’s fascinating site, which includes remnant structures from WWII built into the wooded landscape, and which culminated in a two-day on-site workshop-gathering April 26–27. 2024. Participants took part in on-site meetings, individual project development with guidance, a publication opportunity, as well as exposure to the field of artistic research. The intention was to generate community among researchers from different branches of humanistic inquiry, for whom creative practice can provide a methodologically necessary complement to their critical and intellectual work.

Graduate Writing Workshops
Spring 2024
The Center for the Humanities and the Writing Center partnered to offer writing workshops for graduate students in humanities and humanistic social sciences fields. The workshops convened approximately six people each across fields and to meet every few weeks throughout the semester. These workshops are designed for those working on long-term academic writing projects such as dissertation chapters, major fields papers, dissertation prospectuses and articles.