Engaged Humanities Studio

The Engaged Humanities Studio brings together scholars, students, artists, activists, and community members through collaborative projects to address issues of pressing social concern. We focus on experiential, community-based, and critical-making practices that combine humanistic modes of inquiry and understanding with extra-humanities disciplines, non-student communities, and/or pressing social issues that would benefit from humanistic perspectives.

Humanities Methodologies + Community Engagement + Critical/Creative Making

The program also works to cultivate a campus community that better understands and appreciates the civic potential of the Arts & Humanities and the role they can play in helping us to shape a more just and compassionate world.

Learn more by reviewing the Engaged Humanities Studio Handbook.

Apply

Applications for the Engaged Humanities Studio are due on May 15 of each year for the following year.

Each year, the Studio offers:

One Project Grant ($15,000)
Two Discovery Grants ($5,000)
Two Student Grants ($1,500)

Fellowships begin at the beginning of the academic year.

Eligibility

Swarthmore faculty, staff, and students are all welcome to apply with their community partners.

Requirements

Complete a project with a community partner over a 12-18 month period.
Participate in two retreats, generally scheduled for the Friday or Saturday after the first week of classes in both Fall and Spring.
Participate in an end-of-year celebration in which Fellows share with the public, typically scheduled for the last week of April.
Meet with Katie Price on a regular basis (at least once a semester) to discuss progress, address challenges, and receive support.
Evaluate applicants for next year’s applicants.

Crafting Kin: A Year of Socially Engaged Art

Paloma Checa-Gismero, assistant professor of Art History; Daniel Tucker, Philadelphia-based artist and curator; and socially engaged artists

By inviting social practice artists for a series of workshops and programming, Crafting Kin: A Year of Socially Engaged Art will foster a culture of dialogue and mutual aid among students and the Swarthmore community. Learning from others, the project invites us to think creatively and collectively about how to resist difficult historical times.

Reparative Media Lab

Dahlia Li, visiting assistant professor and post-doctoral fellow of Gender & Sexuality Studies; Jemma Desai, Independent Curator & Cultural Worker; Amal Khalaf, Independent Curator & Cultural Worker; and Samia Labidi, Independent Curator & Cultural Worker

Four scholar-practitioners will come together to explore the meaning of repair and media through conversations rooted in somatics and diasporic/global south feminist cultural practices. They will create a free digital workbook that de-installs media from its traditional colonial framing and conceptually re-installs it within quotidian environs and embodied acts of creation.

Bonding Forms: An Intercommunity Ceramics Exploration

Isabel Llosa, sustainability and engaged scholarship fellow at the Lang Center, artist and art educator; Devon Walls, artist and community developer; and Samara Weaver, artist

Bonding Forms: An Intercommunity Ceramics Exploration will strengthen relationships between the Chester, Swarthmore and Wilmington artistic communities through a collaborative ceramic workshop series. As a form of active meditation, working with clay relaxes the mind and opens space for creative connections and collective healing. The project will culminate with exhibitions in Chester and Swarthmore.

A Multilingual Story: A Devised Performance By and About International Students

Joanna Hong ’27; Tyler Debrowski, artistic director, Philadelphia Theatre Company; Team Sunshine Performance

This project explores the challenges faced by international students at Swarthmore -- from the visa process to financial strain and racism. Through collaboratively devising a performance, it aims to create a platform for international students to share their stories in their own languages, while also fostering connection and support in the current political climate.

Connecting Through Art: A Restorative Justice-Centered Mentorship Program

Neria Spence ’28; Youth Art Self-empowerment Project

Connecting Through Art: A Restorative Justice-Centered Mentorship Program will connect Philadelphia-based socially engaged artists with young artists from the Youth Art and Self Empowerment Project to create collaborative works and conversations that center on the power of socially engaged art as a vehicle of abolition and transformative justice.

Visual notes from A Tale of Three Rivers event.

book cover of Rosine 2.0: Futures and Histories of Collective Care

House of the Living is a collaborative public artwork between FarmerJawn & Friends Foundation Fund, EMIR Healing Center, and Swarthmore College to transform FarmerJawn’s greenhouse into a monument commemorating homicide victims in Philadelphia. The project intersects environmental sculpture, photography, and agriculture practices to create a safe, nondenominational, judgment-free space where co-victims and the broader community can reflect and heal from the trauma of violence.

Photo / The House of the Living in progress.

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