Message from the Program Director
Welcome to Georgetown’s MA Program in Engaged and Public Humanities! Since our founding in 2021 we have provided our students the opportunity to explore and deepen their interests in humanistic inquiry as well as their hopes to apply those interests to meaningful forms of public and professional practice. In doing so, our students participate in the cultivation of an exciting new field of academic inquiry with growing connections to communities, organizations, and movements beyond our classrooms and our campus.
Supported by a dedicated group of core faculty, affiliated faculty, and program staff, our students come to our program from a variety of undergraduate humanities (and some non-humanities) backgrounds, and on a variety of career paths, and over their time here they use our core courses to hone a variety of professional skills related to public humanities work, and in their elective courses they either deepen their disciplinary focus or explore new and promising intellectual possibilities. Students’ coursework provides both the intellectual foundation and the practical training that they then apply to their culminating practicum/capstone projects in completion of their degree, whether through a mentored internship experience with a community or professional organization, or a variety of alternative work projects designed by students and approved by the program.
Students can complete the program in three semesters on a full-time schedule, or over six semesters on a part-time schedule. Either way, they have full access to the array of extraordinary resources uniquely available at Georgetown, from our world-class faculty, to our connections to a global network of scholars and leaders in countless academic and professional fields, to our student-centered campus culture inspired by cura personalis, the Jesuit value of caring for the student as a whole person, to our location in Washington, DC, with its endless opportunities for professional and public engagement.
Our Mission
The Master of Arts in Engaged & Public Humanities at Georgetown University offers students the opportunity to dive deeper into a humanities discipline like literature, history, philosophy or art history, or interdisciplinary fields like museum, performance, theater, cultural, media and language studies, while providing a robust grounding in the theories and methods of the engaged and public humanities.
Working together with our faculty and a carefully selected cohort of graduate peers, students explore chosen disciplines (or interdisciplines), relating them to issues involving the public humanities in the changing ecosystems of higher education, private industry, non-profits, and the public sphere. Students have access to the rich array of internships available in the Washington, DC, area and beyond, from think tanks to museums, from research libraries to government departments, from consulting and communications agencies to community service organizations.
Humanities disciplines cultivate our ability to absorb a body of complex knowledge and then put it to work to develop alternative, imagined futures. Advanced humanities students develop their talents as critical thinkers, skillful communicators, careful researchers and rigorous interpreters of complex systems in order to address practical challenges facing our world (from our planet, to our species and others, to our democracy, our communities and our cultures).
Georgetown’s M.A. in Engaged & Public Humanities deepens habits of mind relevant to its students’ education, strengthening their ability to apply their humanistic skills, and to communicate the humanities’ worth, in service to the common good, a commitment inspired directly by Georgetown’s core Jesuit values of cura personalis, community in diversity and forming people for others.
Contact Us
Are you interested in our master’s program? Would you like to schedule an online meeting or chat with current graduate students?