Rediscovering American Democracy: Teaching the Humanities in the Time of COVID

Four one-year post-doctoral positions, one full-time graduate student position, and supplemental summer funding for nine existing humanities faculty positions. Montclair State University is a Hispanic-Serving Institution in New Jersey, which has one of the highest rates of COVID-19 deaths in the nation. Yet this terrible hardship offers a chance to transform the teaching of the humanities by directly engaging social and political issues of urgent concern to students. We propose a year-long initiative to bring together three sets of scholars: 4 new postdoctoral fellows in humanities; 9 current Montclair State faculty; and 5 experts from various disciplines of American Cultural Studies. Together these scholars will create a new academic major that will engage students by illustrating the relevance of the humanities to the desire for social, racial and environmental justice. The collaboration will culminate in a public conference. Ultimately, it will launch a new humanities program and maintain demand for current ones by examining the historical injustices and inequalities in American life that the pandemic has brought to public awareness.