Overview
Given the incredible circumstances of COVID-19 disruption, the 2020–2021 Civic Humanist program is currently reimagining the program to continue our mission of civic engagement with educators in the Houston public schools. In order to keep our team and yours as safe and possible, we are moving our program online in a series of synchronous and asynchronous activities for the foreseeable future. Our fellows are working diligently to present you with the most engaging content possible, and we look forward to meeting with you virtually in the upcoming academic term.
Meet Our Lecturers
Nina Cook, a PhD student in the Department of English, studies nineteenth-century British literature and its intersections with painting, book illustration, and visual culture. She is also invested in how these fields intersect with the history of optics.
De'Anna Daniels, a PhD candidate in the Department of Religion, researches Black religion, the intersections of Hip-Hop, Womanism, and gender, Black speculative fiction, visual culture, and art. She is also interested in critical race theory and cultural studies.
Annie Lowe, a PhD candidate in the Department of English, researches literary spoofs on technology, the mathematics of hoaxes, faux physics, and pseudo-scientific fiction. Her dissertation project, "Hoax Machina," reconsiders coincident formalist and structuralist developments in the history of logico-mathematics, philosophy of language, and literary theory, understood as a narrative playfully doubled in hoaxic literature from the early avant garde to our contemporary period.
For a more in-depth look at our graduate lecturers, you can read about them here.
2020–2021 Lectures
- Nina Cook, "The Beauty of the Beast"
- De'Anna Daniels, "Imagineering Possibility: Black Mermaids, Imagination, and the Humanities"
- Annie Lowe, "The Art of Artifice"
Schedule of Events
For the foreseeable future, the Civic Humanist program will be operating via remote learning platforms. Our fellows are trained in a variety of online-learning technologies and resources, and they look forward to working with your students in the 2020–2021 academic year. To enhance the interaction adn
- Asynchronous sessions: All materials and lectures will be pre-circulated to teachers and students prior to our scheduled event. Each lecture will have an audio-visual component and will prompt students to consider the nuances of art, culture, and literature. We look forward to collaborating with our partner educators to facilitate asynchronous engagement with their students to make our synchronous sessions fruitful, inclusive, and engaging.
- Synchronous sessions: After students have had time to review the lectures and pre-circulated materials, educators will schedule a time for our lecturers to sign onto a synchronous session with their class. We envision this section of the programming to be a time where students share their impressions of the asychronous materials and the topics that each fellow has contributed.
Access to Materials
Once our partner educators have decided on a good time for us to meet synchronously, the Civic Humanist team will share links to the asynchronous lectures and supporting materials. We aim to send the materials within a week prior to the sycnhronous session. This advance notice will ensure that that our partner instructors are able to distribute the materials to their students in a timely manner. Giving the students enough time for students to investigate and consider the broad implications of our lecturers' carefully crafted presentations is a crucial aspect to the program's success as we navigate the unprecedented circumstances of COVID-19 disruptions.
Partners
See below for a list of partner schools that have expressed interest in working us remotely for the 2020–2021 academic year:
- César E. Chavez High School
- Heights High School
- Jack Yates High School
- Kinder High School for the Peforming and Visual Arts
- North Houston High School
- Westbury High School
- Yes Prep School
If you are an educator looking to collaborate with us, please email the program manager, Alexander Lowe McAdams, expressing your interest.