On this page you will find several resources to support your career exploration and professional development.
- Advising, Coaching, and Mentoring
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Make an appointment with the Senior Director of Graduate Advising and Engagement to discuss succeeding in doctoral study, setting professional development goals, preparing for interviews and job searches in all sectors, and much more.
As Senior Director of Graduate Advising and Engagement for the Humanities, I am here to help humanities Ph.D. students flourish in graduate school and beyond. I am available for one-on-one appointments in-person and via Zoom. We can discuss a wide range of issues including...
- Identifying university resources that link to your specific intellectual interests and range of career aspirations
- Effective ways of discussing your work with a variety of audiences
- Integrating co- and extra-curricular experiences into coursework, portfolios, pedagogical training, and dissertation research
- Connecting your work with your community – both inside and outside academia
- Setting professional development goals
- Forging and maintaining strong mentoring networks
- Applying for grants for both research funding as well as career preparation purposes
- Preparing for interviews and job searches in all sectors
Consultations are completely confidential and focused on your needs and goals. I look forward to helping you navigate the integration of the many facets of academic life into a coherent and fulfilling academic and career plan!
You can schedule an appointment via email (melissalenos@pitt.edu) or using this online scheduler.
- Background Readings and Pitt Resources
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Next-Gen Humanities Ph.D. efforts "enable students to think of career diversity not as something that complicates their trajectory, but as an initiative that cultivates agency." – James Grossman and Emily Swafford, "The Purpose-Driven PhD", Perspectives on History (April 15, 2019)
The goal of Humanities Engage is to foster a culture change in how arts and humanities departments, faculty, and doctoral students in the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences envisage the broader importance of humanities Ph.D.s and the societal impact of humanistic training.
Discover Humanities strengths at the University of Pittsburgh:
- Humanities @ Pitt: centers of activity, innovative practices, diverse voices and spaces
- Humanities Careers, NEH Planning Grant 2018-2019
Learn about the national conversation around humanities PhD professional development and our local resources.
Brief Readings
- A.W. Mellon Foundation, What Can You Do With a PhD? (June 2016)
- Balleisen, E. and M. Lamonaca Wisdom, Reimagining the Humanities PhD: A Guide for Phd Programs and Faculty (2019)
- Chuvileva, Yulia and Sarah Lyon, "Doctoral Training Should Meet the Equity Moment," Inside HigherEd (July 2021)
- Grossman, James, “Career Diversity Is Not New, But Let’s Get It Right This Time,” Perspectives on History (April 2015)
- Kim, Joshua, "Defining Alt-Ac Before We Systematize Alternative Academic Career Guidance," Inside HigherEd (November 2018)
- Larson, Zeb, "We Need to Systematize Alt-Ac Career Guidance," Inside HigherEd (November 2018)
- Mallik, Tithi Basu, "Graduate Students Should Seek Multiple Mentors," Inside HigherEd (Nov 2021)
- Mintz, Steven, "The Humanities: A Status Report," Inside HigherEd (May 2020)
- Patel, Vimal, "Rebranding the Ph.D," Chronicle of Higher Education (March 2018)
- Parry, Marc, "The New Ph.D.: Momentum grows to rewrite the rules of graduate training," Chronicle of Higher Education (February 2020)
- Pszczolkowski, Amy, "Advice and Encouragement to Humanities PhDs in Pursuing Diverse Career Paths," Inside HigherEd (November 2016)
- Rogers, Katina, "10 Steps to Reform Graduate Education in the Humanities," Chronicle of Higher Education (December 2020)
- Wood, L. Maren and Beatrice Gurwitz, “Who Prepares Humanities PhDs for a Nonacademic Search?” Chronicle of Higher Education (July 2013)
National Reports
- Allum, Jeffrey R., Julia D. Kent, and Maureen Terese McCarthy, "Understanding PhD Career Pathways for Program Improvement," Council of Graduate Schools (2014)
- Bell, Nathan, Brent Bridgeman, Fred Cline, Julia Kent, Ross Markle, Patricia McAllister, and Cathy Wendler, "Pathways Through Graduate School and Into Careers," Council of Graduate Schools (2012)
- Cassuto, Leonard and Robert Weisbuch, "Reforming Doctoral Education, 1990 to 2015 Recent Initiatives and Future Prospects," A Report Submitted to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (2016)
- Loss, Christopher P., "Future of the Dissertation," Council of Graduate Schools (2015)
- Mitic, Radomir Ray, and Hironao Okahana, "PhD Professional Development: Value, Timing, and Participation," Council of Graduate Schools (2021)
- McCarthy, Maureen Terese, "Promising Practices in Humanities PhD Professional Development: Lessons Learned from the 2016-2017 Next Generation Humanities PhD Consortium," Council of Graduate Schools (2017)
- McCarthy, Maureen Terese, "Summary of Prior Work in Humanities PhD Professional Development," Council of Graduate Schools (2017)
- MLA Task Force, "Doctoral Study in Modern Language and Literature," Executive Summary (2014)
- MLA Task Force, "Doctoral Study in Modern Language and Literature," Report (2014)
- Okahana, Hironao, "Closing Gaps in our Knowledge of PhD Career Pathways: How Well Did a Humanities PhD Prepare Them?" Council of Graduate Schools (2018)
- Staff of the Humanities Indicators, "The State of the Humanities In Four-Year Colleges and Universities (2017)," American Academy of Arts and Sciences
- Wood, L. Maren and Robert B. Townsend, "The Many Careers of History PhDs: A Study of Job Outcomes, Spring 2013," A Report to the American Historical Association
Innovative US Doctoral Programs
- Versatile Humanists at Duke
- Humanities for the Public Good, University of Iowa
- Humanities PhD Project, University of Michigan
- CUNY PublicsLab
- Tulane Mellon Graduate Program in Community-Engaged Scholarship
- Mellon Humanities Ph.D. Interventions Project, Emory
- Reimagining the Humanities PhD and Reaching New Publics: Catalyzing Collaboration, University of Washington
- The "Living Humanities" PhD for the 21st Century, Fordham University
- Next Generation PhD @ Georgia State University
- PATHS at University of Chicago
- NEH Next Generation Humanities PhD Planning at Washington University
- African American Public Humanities Initiative, University of Delaware
Please contact the project leadership team for access to extensive further bibliographies and reading materials.
- Graduate Faculty and PhD Programs
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Explore resources on advising, curricular changes, innovative doctoral training, and more.
Humanities Engage is committed to reimagining doctoral training to prepare tomorrow’s versatile humanists. Curricular reform grounded in broad faculty and student support is a challenging yet essential element of any effort to re-imagine doctoral training. We have provided resources below to explore curricular changes, innovative doctoral training at U.S. universities and through professional associations, and more.
- Curricular Reform Resources (assignments, graduate seminars, Humanities Lab)
- Helping Students Explore and Prepare for Diverse Careers
- Innovative Dissertations: Humanities and Humanistic Social Sciences, 1999–2021
- Next-Generation Dissertations: New Approaches to Humanities Scholarship (Syracuse University): examples, planning, evaluation, resources, and more.
- Innovative Scholarship Resources at Pitt
- Innovative US Doctoral Programs
Be sure to also check out the following Humanities Engage resources:
- Funding opportunities for humanities graduate faculty and humanities Ph.D. programs.
- Our blog highlighting the exciting things faculty and graduate students are doing.
- Pitt Humanists in the World on Pitt Commons, a community supporting the professional and career development of current students and alums associated with Pitt’s Humanities graduate programs.
We welcome you reaching out to us for other resources or with suggestions on how we can best support you and your PhD program.
- Ph.D. Students
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Explore resources for humanities PhD students, including advising information, career exploration tools, career resources, tips on how to develop immersive fellowships, and more.
Humanities Engage is committed to making the full spectrum of postdoctoral humanistic careers visible, valued, and viable.
We want to understand and support your career objectives as you pursue flexible pathways toward the timely completion of your degree. We want to help empower you to develop and articulate strategic competencies for humanistic careers within and beyond academia.
As a starting point, check out the following resources:
- Advising, Coaching, and Mentoring
- Career Exploration Tools and Resources
- Dissertation Support & Innovative Dissertations
- Innovative Scholarship Resources at Pitt
- Professional Development Map for All Careers (PDF)
Be sure to also check out the following:
- Funding opportunities for professional development through immersive fellowships, curricular development opportunities, and immersive dissertation research.
- Our blog highlighting the exciting things graduate students and faculty are doing.
- Events for professional development
- Pitt Humanists in the World on Pitt Commons, a community supporting the professional and career development of current students and alums associated with Pitt’s Humanities graduate programs.
We welcome you to reach out to us for other resources or with suggestions on how we can best support your career exploration and professional development.
- Public and Engaged Humanities
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As we train the next generation of scholar-teacher-leaders within and beyond the academy, we seek to make the humanities more fully integral to tackling the complex challenges facing an interconnected yet divided world.
Humanities Engage supports public-facing humanistic scholarship, public engagement, collaboration, and the communication of research to non-specialist audiences. We encourage experimentation and engagement with new media and modes of scholarly production.
As part of our grant, we will develop a new graduate certificate in the public and engaged arts and humanities. We understand “engaged scholarship” as academically rigorous, cross- and interdisciplinary scholarship that addresses social, civic, and ethical problems and involves partnerships with community-based organizations. [1]
[1] Tufts University and Campus Compact, ”New Times Demand New Scholarship I: Research Universities and Civic Engagement: A Leadership Agenda,” Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement, 16/4 (2012), 235–69. Dorothy Holland, Dana E. Powell, Eugenia Eng, Georgina Drew, “Models of Engaged Scholarship: An Interdisciplinary Discussion,” Collaborative Anthropologies, 3 (2010), 1–36.
Here are some further background readings:
- Banac, Ivo, Jean Beethke Elshtain, & Robert Weisbuch, “The Humanities and Its Publics,” American Council of Learned Societies Occasional Paper, 61 (2006).
- Cialdella, Joseph Stanhope “Connecting Public Scholarship and Professional Development,” Inside HigherEd, 2018: Four strategies for expanding how to think about public scholarship in ways that help build skills and knowledge that are relevant for diverse career paths.
- Ellison, Julie, “The New Public Humanists,” PMLA 128 (2013): 289-298
- Humanities for All showcases over 1,800 examples of publicly engaged humanities work at colleges and universities across the United States.
- Jay, Gregory, “The Engaged Humanities: Principles and Practices for Public Scholarship and Teaching,” Journal of Community Engagement and Scholarship, 3.1 (2010): 51-63.
- Kubis, Dan, "Teaching Public Humanities at Pitt," Humanities for All (2020)
- MLA "Guidelines for Evaluating Publicly Engaged Humanities Scholarship in Language and Literature Programs"
- Wickman, Matthew, “What are the Public Humanities? No, Really, What Are They?,” University of Toronto Quarterly, 85 (2016): 6-11.
- A.W. Mellon Foundation, Humanities Without Walls: Scholars in the Midwest Partner to Solve Today’s Challenges (May 2019)
Pitt has a variety of innovative scholarship and teaching resources.
Funding opportunities exist for humanities PhD students, graduate faculty, and PhD programs to explore public humanities projects and curricular innovations.