Courses

Degree Requirements

Students are required to complete 30 credits for the M.A. in Engaged & Public Humanities. The course curriculum includes:

1. Four 3-credit core courses.
2. Four 3-credit elective courses in a disciplinary or interdisciplinary area chosen from across the Main Campus and the Capitol Campus under the guidance of a mentor.
3. One 6-credit mentored Internship and/or a Public Humanities Report. (Note: Public Humanities Reports are permissible only if the student is already working in a public humanities organization.)
4. A capstone project that integrates the student’s humanities scholarship with their internships or field research projects, designed to reach a public audience.

Core Courses: 12 Credits

ENPH 5501 “Introduction to Public Humanities: Theory, Methods, Ethics, and Practice”

This course is an introductory, cohort-shaping proseminar that introduces students to the core theories, methods, ethical questions, and practices of the engaged and public humanities (ENPH). ENPH is an emergent discipline with a long history that is only now beginning to be recognized. We will trace that history and a wide variety of related subjects by employing methods and methodologies developed in the humanities and humanistic social sciences. Our primary goal in this course is to grow as and into scholar-practitioners who are reflective about our roles, responsive to the needs of our communities, responsible and accountable for the impacts of our decisions, and receptive to the many possibilities, challenges, and rewards of work in the engaged and public humanities.

ENPH 5502 “Culture and Communicating for the Public Sphere: Oral/Print/Digital Media”

This course focuses on doing many of the most important kinds of writing and communicating that you will use in your career in the engaged and public humanities. Ranging from advertising copy to infographics to web content to grants, the course’s activities will familiarize you with the primary modes of communication in the contemporary nonprofit world. It will also introduce some of the methods of improving (“optimizing”) your copy and graphics for better outreach to target audiences through techniques such as search engine optimization (SEO), A/B testing and heat mapping. The aim of the course is not to build expertise in any single area of nonprofit communication, but to equip you to recognize the differences between these modes and when you need to grow in an area, how to look for models of good practice, and how to emulate those models.

ENPH 5503 “Humanities in the World”

This course introduces the institutional structures (including government, media, museums, and both non-profit and profit-driven entities) in which humanities graduates are employed, exploring where the humanities intersect with professional practice and public life, but also where fissures persist between our understanding of the humanities and the arts and their purpose in contributing to the common good. Every week, a guest speaker with a background in the humanities will share insights into their line of work and provide details from their own career trajectories. The course allows students to pursue research into a particular institution, business, or non-humanities discipline and its relationship to the humanities. Throughout the semester, students will be asked to conduct informational interviews, create job materials, and present either a review of an industry of their choosing or an intellectual autobiography detailing their personal, intellectual, and professional commitments.

ENPH 5504 “Digital Humanities in the Service of Public Humanities”

This course covers the main areas of what we call Digital Humanities (DH) today: DH as a research tool, DH as a driver of pedagogical innovation, DH as the agent of social change, DH as itself an ontological register for expressive work open to humanities study, and DH as the shorthand for non-print-based, alternative media platforms for the production of knowledge. Students will develop an understanding of the debates that currently drive growth in this field through reading theory as well as analyzing current applications and then develop a digital project of their own related to their larger ENPH goals.

Elective Courses: 12 Credits

Students will take four courses in their area of interest. These include available graduate courses or upper-level undergraduate courses (adjusted for graduate credit) in their discipline or in an interdisciplinary area with departmental and instructor approval, combining them with independent studies and tutorials.

Georgetown offers an extensive list of potential courses, from those in the classics to art history (museum architecture, icons and iconoclasm), to philosophy courses in bioethics, political philosophy, and other relevant topics. A student interested in a foreign language, for instance, might wish to take advanced undergraduate or graduate courses in the literature and culture of the non-English speaking world while pursuing a project in a bilingual non-profit or corporate environment.

Some of the electives that ENPH students have taken include:

Spring Electives

• AMUS 5200 “American Women Printmakers”
• AMUS 5208 “Museum Administration”
• ENGL 7170 “Disability, Art, and Culture”
• ENGL 6100 “The Culture of the Thirties”
• GHDP 4970 “Dev Relig Act: Diverg Cmn Grnd”
• GOVT 4238 “Political Polarization”
• INAF 351 “Post 1979 Pakistan, Afghan, Iran”
• KREN 3041 “Korean Narratives: Film & Literature”
• LASP 7502 “Culture & Power in Latin America”
• PPOL 6612 “Philanthropy, Power, Politics”

Fall Electives

• AMUS 5202 “Collections Management”
• AMUS 5204 “Museum Education/Interpretation”
• AMUS 5206 “Curatorial Studies”
• ENGL 4145 “Black Home Spaces in the U.S.”
• ENGL 7120 “Intro to Critical Theory”
• GERM 4600 “Decolonizing the Museum”
• HIST 6002 “Thinking About Archives”
• KREN 3045 “Korean Language and Culture”

Summer Electives

• GOVT 432 “Politics & Film”
• LING 401 “General Linguistics”

Visit the Registrar’s Catalog of Classes to view a comprehensive list of the courses offered at Georgetown University.

Mentored Internships: 6 Credits

The mentored internship is designed to be completed as an intensive six-credit internship during the summer, in tandem with the capstone. Students should start looking for internships one year before when they intend to apply to various prominent institutions and plan ahead, being mindful about the application process, requirements and dates. Students are expected to work closely with a faculty advisor or the program director to align their internship expectations with the program requirements, as internships must be approved by the director.

There are two possible tracks. Full-time students will take all six credits of the internship during the summer of their degree program, working full-time for 10-15 weeks, culminating in the finishing of the capstone. Part-time students will split the mentored internship in two and work part-time – the first summer for three credits, and the second summer for three credits – at the public humanities organization of their choice. Part-time students will also register for the capstone during their second summer. The internship is assessed on a pass/fail basis dependent on the work at the sponsoring organization, their weekly journal, and their end-of-internship report.

ENPH 7951 “Internship #1” & ENPH 7952 “Internship #2”

The mentored internship is meant to ground the student in the reality of daily life in their public humanities organization of interest. Students will work with the program director and other faculty mentors to identify their interests and potential organizations, institutions, businesses, or non-profits that supplement their course of study in the M.A. program. The student must be proactive in arranging their internship.

Once the internship conditions and scope of work have been agreed upon by the student, the program director, and the internship sponsor, the student will work with the director to design a short reading list (6-10 texts) to supplement their internship experience. Students will keep a weekly journal that they will turn in to the director and/or their faculty capstone advisor at the end of their internship. There is no prescribed format for the journal, but students should make connections between the reading list, their studies, and the professional experience as the internship progresses. As the internship finishes, students will also write a 7-10 double-spaced page report discussing the work they’ve accomplished as part of their internship. The weekly journal and the report, once complete, will be graded on a pass/fail basis. Students on internship will meet in groups with the director for coaching and troubleshooting three times during the internship.

If a student is part-time and separating out the six-credit internship into two three-credit internships over two summers, the student should still develop a short reading list (3-7 texts), keep a weekly journal, and be prepared to write a 4-6 double-spaced page report on their experience for each internship experience.

ENPH 5507 “Public Humanities Report”

Occasionally, a graduate student is already involved or employed in the engaged and public humanities and a mentored internship will not further their careers or supplement their academic knowledge as intended. In these cases, with the prior approval of the Director, the student may write a public humanities report (PHR) while enrolling in six academic credits.

The PHR is a written document that blends research (both academic and non-academic), investigation, and proposed solutions. The PHR should address a question or a problem significant to the engaged and public humanities and present a thorough answer to the question or solution to the problem.

A graduate student writing a PHR should be prepared to work one-on-one with the Director while drafting the report. It is highly recommended that a student writes a brief proposal outlining their field in the context of the engaged and public humanities and the question or problem the student has chosen to address. The student should expect to submit writing for review every three weeks for comments by the Director. The consultation of a public humanities leader outside of the academy is not required, but highly encouraged, particularly for approval of the final draft.

In drafting the report, the student should engage in a variety of approaches to collect information: interviews with non-academic experts; collecting data from industry non-profits or non- governmental agencies; surveying public humanities leaders; researching past initiatives, events, or recommendations in the public sphere; and delving into archival or library research in the engaged and public humanities. To that end, the student can expect to be working at least 15-20 hours a week collecting and reading through information as they write the PHR. Like the mentored internship, the graduate student should think about the PHR as a supplement and lead-in to the capstone project, which is a separate graduation requirement.

The final draft of the PHR should be read for approval by Director approximately 8-10 weeks after starting research and completed by the end of July of the student’s graduating year. The public humanities report will be published in PDF format on the program website.

Check out our Internships page to learn about the internship experiences of our ENPH graduate students and more internship opportunities offered across the Washington, DC, area.

Capstone Project

ENPH 5510 “Capstone Project”

The capstone project is the culmination of a student’s studies in the Engaged & Public Humanities program. The capstone project integrates the student’s humanities scholarship with their internship(s) or field research projects. The capstone project is designed to showcase the student’s interdisciplinary skills, build on their experience in the ENPH program and reach a public audience. It should be developed and completed with the active involvement of a faculty advisor or the program director. The capstone project is also meant to be developed during the mentored internship where a professional advisor can provide feedback on feasibility, logistics, effectiveness, and execution.

Students are allowed to design wide-ranging projects and are expected to use this opportunity to integrate their personal and professional interests. There is no prescribed format for the capstone, and students should take the opportunity to reimagine what humanities scholarship can be when it is public-facing. Capstone projects include but are not limited to: several episodes of a podcast; a documentary; an oral history archive; a digital or physical exhibition; online articles for publication; project proposals; a white paper + social media campaign; a series of performances or events, etc.

The capstone must be completed and approved by the program director and the faculty mentor before graduation.