Most humanities graduate students end up working outside the academy. But most people in graduate training programs expect to work within the academic subject they’ve trained in, and graduate education usually only prepares scholars for academic careers.
This disparity is big, and has lasted for decades. By and large, humanities graduates aren’t being trained for the careers they’ll end up working in. And, as a result, there’s a major disconnect between the humanities as practiced within academia, and the public sphere, where humanistic training and thinking could and should be in high demand.
With funding provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), as part of their Next Generation Humanities PhD intitiative, Syracuse University Graduate School has implemented a series of programs to address these two issues: to increase awareness and training opportunities of careers outside the academy; and promote the role humanities training can play in the public sphere.
Our current programming includes:
Humanities Summer Internship Program
In June 2021, the Graduate School launched the Humanities Summer Internship program, supporting two humanities Ph.D. students through paid internship opportunities at Syracuse University Press and the Syracuse University Art Museum. The internships gave the students the chance to apply their humanistic skills in work settings aligned with their disciplinary backgrounds, while exploring job sectors of interest to them. <quotations from this year’s cohort/hosts?> The internships at SU Press and Art Museum are expected to be offered again in 2022, and positions with other local organizations may be added. Look out for the call for applications in Spring 2022.
Humanities Graduate Mentoring Network
The Humanities Graduate Mentoring Program provides the opportunity for current graduates in the humanities to contact Syracuse graduate alumni around the country, and PhD holders working in the Syracuse area, to learn about the varied career paths that can be pursued with a humanities PhD. You can learn more about the mentors, and their careers since receiving their doctorates, as well as tips and advice for effective informational interviewing.
Non-Monographic Dissertation Project
Syracuse Graduate School is an advocate of Non-Monographic Dissertations, a new way to approach the dissertataion process. A Non-Monographic Dissertation, or an NMD, is any doctoral project whose form goes beyond the traditional written monograph. It can be a website or other digital product, it can be a graphic novel, a documentary, or even a music album.
Check out our NMD website, which explores some of the possibilities of these kinds of projects, showcases some notable projects from recent years, and gives you the guidance and advice you need to think about undertaking an NMD yourself.
Humanities Beyond the Academy Working Group
As part of the Central New York Humanities Corridor, Syracuse has teamed up with Cornell University and the University of Rochester to host a multi-institution working group that explores how we can improve humanities graduate training and careers, and increase public engagement by humanities scholars. Recent speakers have included:
- Katina Rogers, author of Putting the Humanities to Work
- Lenny Cassuto and Bob Weisbuch, authors of The New PhD
- Christopher Caterine, author of Leaving Academia: A Practical Guide
The group aims to bring together anyone at the three institutions interested in public engagement in the humanities. The group runs a series of workshops and discussions involving notable public humanists or champions of graduate education reform, as well as connecting those involved in non-academic career development to share resources and best practice. Humanities Beyond the Academy is open to anyone, and particularly welcomes humanities students, as well as faculty and administrators working in the fields of public engagement and the public humanities, or working to support graduate students pursuing careers outside of tenure-track academia.
Leaving the Grove: A Quit Lit Reader
As part of its commitment to increasing awareness about the realities of academic careers, and the movement of graduate-educated scholars into non-academic career paths, the Graduate School was instrumental in the creation of Leaving the Grove: A Quit Lit Reader. This edited volume is the first book-length work devoted to the phenomenon of “quit lit” — farewells to academia by scholars at all levels (from graduate student through to tenured professor) who resigned their posts or stopped looking for one. Leaving the Grove explores the vagaries of the academic job market, the work-life balance pressures of postdoctoral and tenure-track careers, and the changing landscape of the role of tenured professor. It also brings forward the stories of numerous PhD holders and the exciting new, non-academic careers they forged for themselves after leaving the academy.