The mission of the Center for Humanities Communication (CHC) is to help recognize, train, and support humanities communicators — both professionals (similar to “science communicators”) placed across a broad spectrum of organizations and media, and “new voices” of the young and old across the spectrum of society. Through our Humanities Communication Training Institute (HumComm) we want to help students, early-career professionals, retired people, and others who have a passion for or expertise in the humanities to enter organizations, professions, and media roles that bring the humanities to the public.
Our related mission is to help create and curate resources that support the work of humanities communications. We are aiming for an open-access digital Humanities Communication Interchange (HumSource) that contains quality humanities advocacy and communication resources, materials, and tools. Our Bibliography is a start on defining the scope and gathering materials for such a clearinghouse.
We believe that a Center for Humanities Communication can effectively prepare and support individuals, groups, and organizations in their work advocating and communicating the humanities.
Our Model
Just as the National Science Foundation’s high-impact Science and Engineering Indicators reports helped inspire the American Academy of Arts & Science’s Humanities Indicators project (started in 2009), so the model of professional and citizen science information-gathering, science writing, and science communication generally can offer the humanities a model to adapt for publicizing the importance of the humanities in society.
Our goal is to support and expand communication about, and from the point of view of, the humanities through knowledgeable, skilled, and trained humanities communicators. Humanities communicators curate and spread high-impact news, reports, excerpts, interviews, podcasts, social media, and other media about the humanities in a way that parallels the historically successful model of science communication.
There are many talented humanities communicators now spread out across a broad range of institutions, social sectors, and jobs. And there are many potential new humanities communicators from diverse ages and groups who will be willing to work or volunteer in humanities communication. Creating a framework for this network of people to work together with shared materials in a sphere of activity recognized publicly and professionally as “humanities communication” is our model, which will be structured around:
Who We Are
See who is behind our Center for Humanities Communication and what parts of our initiative they are leading or working on: Who We Are. (And here are our individual professional biographies.)