Rethinking Tenure Assessment: Thoughts from a Humanities Center Director

We asked Stephanie Kirk, Director of the Center for the Humanities at Washington University in St. Louis, some questions about, “Rethinking Tenure Assessment in the Humanities: A Blueprint for Transformation and Innovation,” a collaboration between the Center and the Program in Public Scholarship at the university, which will take place on Monday, November 6, 2023.

Featured guests include Kal Alston (Syracuse University/Imagining America); Antoinette Burton (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign); Ulrich Baer (New York University); Alenda Y. Chang (University of California, Santa Barbara); Paula Krebs (Modern Language Association); Timothy Morton (Rice University); Joy Connolly (ACLS), and Heather Hewett (ACLS).

HH: How did the idea for the event originate?

SK: My idea for the event came up during a conversation with two colleagues. They had attended the Luce Design Workshop at ACLS and were interested in how humanities faculty might rethink tenure standards to meet the needs of evolving scholarship in the humanities.

HH: What are you hoping will come out of the event?

SK: I’m hoping to energize and encourage early career scholars by letting them know that those of us who are further along in our careers believe in innovation and want to support the work they are doing. I’m also hoping to begin to delineate sustainable ideas for measuring and encouraging transformative research excellence in the humanities, providing us the tools to recognize and assess scholarship that goes beyond the traditional monograph and articles to include other manifestations such as digital work, creative practice, public scholarship and community engagement.

HH: What have you learned so far?

SK: How many people across the humanities are committed to this work of innovation and transformation both at my institution and in the wider field. It is also clear to me that the conversation around tenure standards is just a small piece of a much bigger discussion about equity, access and communication within the humanities.

Those who are interested in attending this in-person event can RSVP here.