CFP Deadline 10/19/20
As our Fall funding deadline approaches, it’s a good time to emphasize that Working Groups form around all kinds of affinities and foci, supporting activities focused on particular fields, genres, and time periods but also topical issues of work/life balance, teaching/researching in the age of COVID, identity/structural questions in the academy, and more. Browse models of different working group activities on our website. You have until Monday, October 19 to submit proposals.
Corridor Survey Follow-Up
Thanks to all who completed our spring Corridor-wide survey: everyone’s lives have been disrupted in unforeseen ways, and we appreciate your thoughtful feedback. We heard from 96 respondents at all 11 Corridor institutions, including faculty across all ranks (from visiting and contingent faculty to full professors), librarians, administrators, and academic staff. People brand new to the Corridor responded, as did many who’ve been involved since our inception.
Challenges and Inspirations
As we work behind the scenes to operate the Corridor’s 11-institution network across three endowments, we face a consistent challenge: balancing our internal accounting and reporting requirements (and correlated faculty perceptions about Corridor “paperwork”) with our primary goal — supporting your research. Another perennial challenge is tied to identifying the many kinds of short- and long-term outcomes from your Working Group collaborations.
Fortunately, the survey results do begin to offer a deeper understanding of the Corridor’s positive impacts over time. What is abundantly clear is that there are many rich stories to be told by and about Corridor working groups. Survey results underscore how the Corridor supports diverse kinds of scholarship, facilitates different intellectual “neighborhoods,” enhances innovative student and public engagement, and points to collaboration as pivotal to the future of the humanities, locally and beyond. In short, your work is inspiring. Looking ahead, we want to find ways to share these insights and tell the Corridor’s “story” more fully.
Indigenous Land Acknowledgement
In direct response to survey feedback, we will be adding an Indigenous land acknowledgement to our Corridor website and materials: we also will ask Signature Event Organizers to open their Corridor events with this recognition. We are grateful to live, work, and share ideas on Haudenosaunee lands: a CNY Humanities Corridor land acknowledgement, long overdue, is a first step in explicitly recognizing sovereignty and the ongoing history of dispossession of Indigenous peoples.
Corridor-Wide Writing Retreats and Workshops
Given the positive feedback we received following our first online facilitated writing retreat in June 2020, we hope to continue offering occasional professional development opportunities. This year, we aim to offer 1-2 online workshops or mini-retreats, and in July, with grant funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, we’ll host an in-person facilitated writing retreat (postponed from summer 2020). We know people are feeling stressed and burned out: we are seeking ways to support you as scholars–finding time to write and fostering community are two ways we can help. Stay tuned.
Thank You to Our Advisory Board Members
The Corridor held its annual advisory board meeting in September: we briefed Board members on the Corridor’s progress and solicited feedback on our programs and goals. Special thanks to everyone on the board for your ideas and contributions to our governance. If you’d like to know more about the Corridor, including additional details from the survey, you’re welcome to review this year’s Annual Report to our Advisory Board. To learn about our Advisory Board (CAB) members, review our CAB roster. And, feel free to reach out to us, or Board members, at any time.