Reimagining the PhD Cohort
In July 2015, the Simpson Center launched Reimagining the Humanities PhD and Reaching New Publics with the generous support of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The conviction animating this initiative was that doctoral education, especially at a public university, must be guided by a capacious vision of its fundamental purpose: to contribute to the public good. From 2015-2021, the program prepared UW doctoral students in the humanities for this task by meaningfully connecting them to the diverse, access-oriented institutions of higher education in the Seattle District community colleges, and by supporting the development of both doctoral students’ public projects and publicly engaged graduate seminars taught by UW faculty in the humanities. Find out more about our programming below.
2021 - 2022 Scholars
2020 - 2021 Reimagining the Humanities PhD Scholar
BrittNEY Frantece (she/her/hers)
Manifesting the Ecstatic
BrittNEY Frantece and Nanya Jhingran’s project is a collaborative workshop series and zine developed together with Seattle’s black, brown, and indigenous spiritual community members. This project opens a community storytelling space to discuss and teach the ways in which different magickal and spiritual practices are also means of anti-capitalist, anti-colonial resistance. Central to this project is the creation of a zine that pursues world-building and community-making by inviting the participation of self-identified, faith-based practitioners whose traditions are rooted in their ancestral practices. This project aims to elevate everyday, abstractionist, and ecstatic practices of conjuring graceful futures that create relational spaces of pleasure and celebration in Seattle’s black, brown, and indigenous communities.