Call for Participants: 2023 Anisfield-Wolf Faculty Seminars

Anisfield-Wolf Faculty Summer Seminars

CALL FOR PARTICIPANTS!

Anisfield-Wolf Summer Seminars

$1,000 Participation Award

The Cleveland Humanities Collaborative is pleased to announce the dates for our two, annual, week-long, intensive summer seminars for faculty, staff, independent scholars, community educators, and graduate students. As before, alumni from prior cohorts will lead this year’s seminars. The seminars will be held in person on the campus of Case Western Reserve University and funding to support travel for out-of-town participants will be available on a limited basis.

 

Each seminar will have two leaders, and we are privileged to have four, outstanding leaders this summer: Barbara Harris Combs, Chair and Professor of Sociology, Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice, Kennesaw State University, Denise Harrison, Associate Lecturer, Department of English/Pan African Studies, Kent State University, Michelle Rankins, Assistant Professor, English, Cuyahoga Community College (Tri-C), and Valentino Zullo, Anisfield-Wolf Fellow in the Department of English, Ursuline College.

 

Seminar 1: Monday, July 17, 2023 – Friday, July 21, 2023

Seminar 2: Monday, July 31, 2023 – Friday, August 4, 2023

 

Seminar Format

The seminars this year will center on one of the 2023 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award winners for fiction, The Family Chao, by Lan Samantha Chang. For more information about this year’s winners, see the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award winners for 2023. In addition to discussing how this book engages the history, experiences, and stereotypes surrounding Asian Americans, seminar participants will examine how we teach and have productive dialogue about our history and complex social issues. Seminar meetings will take place every day for five hours, and the CHC will provide lunch and parking.

Books and supplemental readings will be distributed in advance. Participants are encouraged to develop and suggest additional readings to supplement their discussions of the text, which the administrators will help distribute. All participants will be required to submit an evaluation of their seminar experience upon completion. Participants in the seminar are invited to attend the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards and Cleveland Book Week events. The Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards are scheduled to take place at the Maltz Performing Arts Center on Thursday, September 28, at 6:00pm.

 

Participant Eligibility

  • Faculty from educational institutions in Northeast Ohio and from CWRU’s North Star Award Institutional Partners.
  • Advanced graduate students in Ohio and from North Star Institutional Partners.
  • Full-time staff and community educators from Northeast Ohio educational, arts, and cultural

 

How to Apply:

To apply, please complete the 2023 Anisfield-Wolf Summer Seminar Application by June 1, 2023.  Space is limited to 15 participants per seminar.  Selected participants will be notified by June 15, 2023.

If you have questions about the seminar, please contact the CHC’s Associate Director, Dr. Lisa Nielson at: len12@case.edu

 

Seminar Expectations:

  • Each participant will be expected to read the assigned text(s) prior to the seminar meeting week, and be prepared to discuss.
  • Each participant will agree to adhere to the community standards for engagement.
  • Seminar participants must attend and participate in each of the daily meetings.

 

 

 

About the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards

In 1935, Edith Anisfield Wolf established what she initially called the John Anisfield Book Award to honor nonfiction books that furthered the cause of “race relations” (as she later wrote in her will), deepened our understanding of racism, and enhanced our appreciation of the rich diversity of human cultures. At its founding, the prize took “race relations” to mean relations among Black, White, and Jewish Americans. Yet, the Award quickly broadened, recognizing books about immigrants and Native American histories. Winners have included Nobel Laureates Ralph Bunche, Toni Morrison, Derek Walcott, Nadine Gordimer, Gunnar Myrdal and Wole Soyinka, along with other major literary figures such as Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston. Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was recognized in 1959 for his book Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story, well before he became a national figure. Recent honorees have included James McBride, Natasha Trethewey, the poets Donika Kelly and Victoria Chang, and Lifetime Achievement winners Ishmael Reed and Isabelle Allende. Eighty-eight years later, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards continue to honor writers who expand our grasp not only of race, but diversities of disability, religion, ethnicity, and gender, drawing from a variety of disciplinary perspectives in the humanities.