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
2018 - 2019 Reimagining the Humanities PhD Scholar
Amanda Doxtater (she/her/hers)
Cinema and the Public Institution
This new graduate seminar will introduce students to methods and practices in public scholarship by first considering the national film institutes in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Iceland, and Finland as models for public humanities. Drawing from their own particular expertise in cinema, students will then work collectively to curate an international film series titled, Going Public: Cinema and the Museum for Seattle’s new Nordic Museum in Ballard, opening in May 2018. The course, along with its resulting programming, will combine local and international cinema cultures to encourage new cinema publics in the institutional space of the museum.