The vanguard of the climate struggle is not solely in areas we designate as “rural,” “remote” or “natural.” In fact, the popular assumption that it is—the myth of wilderness—might be part of our problem. The historian William Cronon argued this in his great essay, “The Trouble with Wilderness: Or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature,”…

On the 30th of March, the exhibition, “Inter-Rituals: Between Materiality and Performances” took place at the Caelum Gallery in Chelsea. Curated by Jin Wang, Ph.D. student in Art History at the CUNY Graduate Center, the exhibition featured works by three Chinese female artists working in the US, Kun Hong, Yin Zhang, and…

It’s astonishing to me that there is so much in Memory, yet so much is left out: emotions, thoughts, sex, the relationship between poetry and light, storytelling, walking, and voyaging to name a few. I thought by using both sound and image, I could include everything, but so far, that is not so. —Bernadette…

The breadth and depth of our environmental crises encourages us to think beyond the bounds of traditional academic disciplines. To me, this is one of the most promising aspects of the environmental humanities as it’s currently taking shape. But, of course, for environment knowledge to transcend and blend disciplinary practices, it must also push…

Vanessa S. Troiano, a Ph.D. candidate in Art History at the CUNY Graduate Center, reflects upon working with American artist Susan Weil to document her nearly 40-year practice of synthesizing art and poetry into daily poemumbles. Supported by an archival grant from Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative, Troiano’s research forms part…

Celina Su is the Marilyn J. Gittell Chair in Urban Studies—through which she anchors the Gittell Urban Studies Collective—and an Associate Professor of Political Science at the City University of New York. This interview was conducted by Kendra Sullivan. Can you tell me a little about the Gittell Collective and your work with it?…

In this series of essays and interviews, Distributaries spotlights scholars, instructors, and students engaged with public-facing environmental humanities projects across the City University of New York. The aim is to explore that term—“environmental humanities”—by talking with some of the people who are shaping its meaning. For this initial essay, I reflect on my own…

Helena Najm in Conversation with Nawal Muradwij, Dunni Oduyemi, and Alexandra Rego of Mindscapes On May 20, 2022, CUNY’s Center for Humanities welcomed Kamau Ware, a storyteller and founder of the Black Gotham Experience, for an event “For What? For Whom? An Evening of Collective Storytelling” at the CUNY Graduate Center. The event was…

Neither Celina Su nor I grew up speaking in English, yet English has become the language of most dimensions of our lives. It’s also the language of our friendship. In our ongoing conversation on the politics of language, we often reflect on the fluidity in navigating cultures and linguistic registers, and on what kind of…

Over the past year, as Writer-in-Residence at Distributaries, I’ve had the privilege of speaking with several public humanities practitioners scattered across the CUNY campuses. I picked their brains about a range of topics: how they understand the term ‘public humanities,’ how they see their public humanities/public scholarship initiatives taking shape within and against…

How can art help us heal from trauma? Artist Guadalupe Maravilla explores the relationship between art and healing in his exhibition, Tierra Blanca Joven,on display at the Brooklyn Museum from April 8 to September 18, 2022. The show explores themes of migration, illness, and healing, drawing from Maravilla’s own experience of displacement during El Salvador’s…

Lost & Found General Editor Ammiel Alcalay interviews Lost & Found Editor Mary Catherine Kinniburgh on the origins and journey from CUNY Graduate Center student and Lost & Found scholar to her present position as partner with Granary Books—and the book that she wrote along the way. Her new book Wild Intelligence: Poets’ Libraries and…

Archives in Common is a collaborative project radically situated in the space-time of the pandemic as it has been lived in the South Bronx. The project and website can be thought of as a living archive of mutual aid initiatives and other collaborative and creative efforts devised since April 2020 by the Saavedras, an…

Via this series of interviews, Distributaries seeks to sketch out the contours of the public humanities ecosystem—the centers, institutes and initiatives undertaking the work of the public humanities—at the City University of New York. Apart from sharing the specific work these programs and centers do, we also wish to offer up their visions of…

Via this series of interviews, Distributaries seeks to sketch out the contours of the public humanities ecosystem—the centers, institutes and initiatives undertaking the work of the public humanities—at the City University of New York. Apart from sharing the specific work these programs and centers do, we also wish to offer up their visions of…

Via this series of interviews, Distributaries seeks to sketch out the contours of the public humanities ecosystem—the centers, institutes and initiatives undertaking the work of the public humanities—at the City University of New York. Apart from sharing the specific work these programs and centers do, we also wish to offer up their visions of…

Via this series of interviews, Distributaries seeks to sketch out the contours of the public humanities ecosystem—the centers, institutes and initiatives advancing undertaking the work of the public humanities—at the City University of New York. Apart from sharing the specific work these programs and centers do, we also wish to offer up their visions…

In anticipation of the 2022 Ukrainian Contemporary Music Festival which takes place Friday, March 18th to Sunday March 20th, and is now in its third year, organizer and creative director Leah Batstone offers an update on Ukraine’s musical landscape since the inaugural Ukrainian Contemporary Music Festival in 2020. Since my blog post regarding research…

By Queenie Sukhadia The central mission of the PublicsLab at the Graduate Center, CUNY, is to work toward transforming doctoral education to be more publicly engaged. The PublicsLab undertakes this work through various channels: by running an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation–funded program for doctoral students called the Mellon Humanities Public Fellowship program;…

By Nga Than I had the pleasure of interviewing Eric Dean Wilson, author of After Cooling: On Freon, Global Warming, and the Terrible Cost of Comfort, and Teaching Fellow in the Mellon Seminar on Public Engagement and Collaborative Research through the Center for Humanities at The Graduate Center, CUNY. Eric gave insight on…

Via this series of interviews, Distributaries seeks to sketch out the contours of the public humanities ecosystem—the centers, institutes and initiatives undertaking the work of the public humanities—at the City University of New York. Apart from sharing the specific work these programs and centers do, we also wish to offer up their visions…

Mindscapes and the Center for the Humanities at The Graduate Center, CUNY are pleased to announce the 2022 cohort of Graduate Research Assistants that will be working on public programming relating to Mindscapes, an international cultural program organized by the Wellcome Trust that aims to support a transformation in how we understand, address and talk…

Via this series of interviews, Distributaries seeks to sketch out the contours of the public humanities ecosystem—the centers, institutes and initiatives undertaking the work of the public humanities—at the City University of New York. Apart from sharing the specific work these programs and centers do, we also wish to offer up their visions…

Aurash Khawarzad The Public Humanities Map, created for the Center for the Humanities, is an attempt to frame the geographic scope and social connectivity of research projects being carried out by faculty in the Andrew W. Mellon Seminar on Public Engagement and Collaborative Research. Humanities programs at CUNY have been at the forefront of…