Advancing Humanities Research
Each year, the Humanities Center runs programs to help faculty develop their scholarship, publish it, and explain its value to society. The center's workshops address topics such as communicating with public audiences, developing grant proposals, new digital methods, and publishing. We also host events such as New Books at Miami, where faculty authors can present new work to the community.
In January 2027, the institute will offer a Winter Writing Workshop coordinated by Professor Madelyn Detloff (English/GIC).
The program offers guidance on disseminating research; detailed review of work-in-progress; and time to brainstorm, process feedback, write, revise, and problem-solve. Participants who complete the workshop will receive a $400 professional expenses fund, gain insight into the writing process, and forge collaborative writing partnerships with colleagues.
The workshop will also feature a session with Stephanye Hunter, Editor-in-Chief of the University Press of Florida. Participants who are working on book proposals will receive a thirty-minute, one-on-one consultation with Stephanye.
The workshop will meet Wednesday, January 20 and Thursday, January 21, 2027 from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. in the Humanities Institute Commons. (Participants will be asked to hold Friday, January 22 open as a snow day.) Consultations with Stephanye Hunter will be scheduled at a mutually agreeable time in January.
In addition to the workshop, the Humanities Institute Commons will host Open Writing Hours from 8 a.m. - noon on Tuesday, January 19 through Friday, January 2. Workshop participants are strongly encouraged to use these optional sessions, which are also open to all faculty, whether they are in the workshop or not.
Breakfast, coffee, tea, and snacks will be provided for all during Open Writing Hours. Lunch will be provided to all workshop participants from 12 noon to 1 p.m. The final workshop session will be followed by a reception with refreshments.
Workshop participants must commit to the following: 1) sharing a draft of emerging research or creative activity (2,000-10,000 words), no later than January 13, 2027; 2) writing and sharing detailed reader’s reports for at least two colleagues by January 19, 2027; 3) reading the work of group participants and related reader’s reports; 4) participating energetically in workshop activities.
Some feedback may be given in small groups organized with the goal of equalizing workloads and making participation manageable. Small group sessions will alternate with large group sessions and time for individual work.
Interested faculty should submit a short statement of interest (approximately 300 words), including a brief description and projected length of the applicant’s writing project, a list of 3-5 possible publication outlets, a one-sentence statement of career stage and university service, and a request to meet with Stephanye Hunter (if working on a book project). Please submit applications to humanitiesgrants@miamioh.edu with “Faculty Writing Workshop” in the subject heading of your message. Applications are due Friday, November 20.
This program is open to all full-time faculty members in the humanities, broadly construed, including prior participants. Visiting faculty are eligible to apply. In the event of limited space, priority will be given to new applicants and continuing CAS faculty. Participants will be asked to agree to meet the deadlines and expectations described above shortly after acceptance.
Among the most popular Humanities Center programs, the Book Proposal Workshop has helped more than 70 Miami University faculty members refine book projects and ready them for submission to a press.
The program was last offered in Winter 2025. Please consult the Book Proposal Workshop page for further information and applications guidelines.
The program begins with an intense, two-day workshop. After receiving feedback on a draft book proposal, participants revise their proposal and the Humanities Center shares it a senior visiting editor at a major scholarly press. The editor then visits campus to give a lecture on scholarly publishing and provide one-on-one consultations with each participant in the workshop. In addition to this feedback, participants also receive $250 in research funding.
The Humanities Center launched the Book Proposal Workshop program in 2014 and it has been offered numerous times since. Seventeen faculty members from three divisions participated in the inaugural workshop run by Drew Cayton, Distinguished Professor of History, and later received individual consultations with Robert Lockhart, Senior Acquisitions Editor at the University of Pennsylvania Press. In 2016, twelve faculty members worked with Mary Jean Corbett, Distinguished Professor of English, and later met with Peter J. Potter, Editor-in-Chief of Cornell University Press. In 2017, a special workshop for junior scholars, "From Dissertation to Book," was chaired by Steven Conn, W. E. Smith Professor of History, and featured a visit by Nancy Toff of Oxford University Press. In 2018 the workshop was chaired by Elaine Miller, Professor of Philosophy, and concluded with a visit by Courtney Berger of Duke University Press. In 2019, it was coordinated by Jonathan Strauss, Professor of French, and featured a visit by Tom Lay of Fordham University Press. In 2022, the workshop was led by Andrew Casper, Professor of Art History, and concluded with a visit by Douglas Armato, Director of the University of Minnesota Press. Participants have routinely praised the workshop as an essential aid in refining their ideas and assisting with publication, tenure, and promotion. In 2025, the workshop will be led by Denise McCoskey, Professor of Classics, and will conclude with a visit by Adina Popescu, Executive Editor of Yale University Press.
The program is not offered every year. Please consult the Faculty Opportunities page for information about when the program is running and for application deadlines.
This program helps faculty members communicate their work to non-scholarly audiences. The workshop includes practical exercises, information on pitching and crafting articles and book manuscripts, and collaborative discussion of participant writing. Participants leave the workshop with a short article ready for submission or a major proposal ready to pitch.
Writing for the Public was first offered in 2016 by Priscilla Wald, Professor of English and Women's Studies at Duke University, and frequent public commentator on medical humanities issues. Ten Miami University faculty members worked with Wald on op-ed pieces and then attended her lecture, "Cell Lines to Bioslaves: Biotechnology and the Politics of Health."
In 2020, the workshop was led by Christopher Schaberg, Dorothy Harrell Brown Distinguished Professor of English at Loyola University of New Orleans and author of numerous books. Schaberg is founding co-editor of Object Lessons--a series of books about objects such as bread, refrigerators, neckties, and sewing needles--and the leader of a national series of NEH Institutes on public writing.
In 2022-2023, the program allowed 20 faculty members to attend a two-day virtual workshop hosted by the Op-Ed Project. Participants then critiqued each other's essays in a workshop coordinated by Professor Kimberly Hamlin in early March. Participants received $250 in professional expenses.
To date, nearly 20 program participants have published articles in high profile newspapers and online journals such as The Conversation, The New York Times, and The Washington Post.
The program is not offered every year. Please consult the Faculty Opportunities page for information about when the program is running and for application deadlines.
The Humanities Center Grant Development Workshops aim to increase external funding for individual and collaborative faculty projects.
The inaugural workshop was coordinated in January 2021 by Mary Jean Corbett, Distinguished Professor of English. Fourteen faculty members participated, including two collaborative project teams. They met for two intense days of proposal review. Each received $250 in research funding and a proposal review from Fred Winter, Senior Program Officer at the National Endowment for the Humanities. Teams developing collaborative applications also received up to $2,000 to plan on-campus events related to their research proposal.
The 2021 Grant Development Workshop also included an initial information session explaining university policies related to humanities grants and a talk by Fred Winter on how to identify and secure significant external funding to support humanities research.
This program is not offered every year. Please consult the Faculty Opportunities page to for information about when the program is running and for application deadlines.
The digital methods workshop allows humanities scholars to explore new ways of studying, visualizing, and analyzing human experience. The 2016 workshop took place in Miami's Geographic Information Science laboratory, where faculty members worked on ways of mapping complex historical and cultural data sets. Participants have used mapping technology in subsequent research and digital humanities projects.
This program is not offered most years. Please consult the Faculty Opportunities page to for information about when this program is running and for application deadlines.
