125 (Spring 2000): 48-49
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Special Section
University Outreach: Humanities Out There
Introduction
JULIA REINHARD LUPTON
HUMANITIES Out There began as an invitation and an assignment, a chance to make something happen in an area about which I knew almost nothing. In spring 1997, Michael Clark, then the acting dean of the School of Humanities at the University of California, Irvine, asked me to organize and expand the school's K-12 outreach efforts. Largely uninitiated in the world of outreach, I began my work by coming up with a name for the program--Humanities Out There, or HOT. The name sums up my basic method of teaching classical and Renaissance literature to undergraduates: namely, to "make it hot": to make it fun, passionate, exciting, rewarding; to make it "out there" in the sense of cool, hip, a little on the wild side. This seemed like a good stance to take "out there" into the community as well: to show K-12 students from all backgrounds, but especially disadvantaged ones, that the humanities are hot, that it's not only worth studying but also fun to study, both the old and the new in the special critical environment offered by a research university.
HOT is now completing its second full year of operation. In two years we have reached as many as one thousand K-12 students in Santa Ana. We have run at least sixty workshops in over thirty classrooms, and we have developed programming in such areas as creative writing, world mythology, American studies, Shakespeare, philosophy, women's studies, and telemedia literacy. A growing number of graduate students and undergraduates can count HOT among their experiences at UCI; for many, it has been a formative one that has broadened their sense of vocational possibility.
What has arisen from and given shape to this work is a philosophy and structure for humanities outreach that has the potential to extend beyond the classrooms served to become a model for other programs across the country. Outreach in the past has commonly stemmed from student services, as an outgrowth of student activities on the one hand and recruitment efforts on the other. In such ventures, literacy is often a catchall term for a battery of content-neutral remedial skills whose tutelage can be undertaken by any reasonably competent adult with a minimum of training and supervision.
Departing from this model, HOT stems from an academic unit renowned for its research--UCI's School of Humanities--and takes its intellectual leadership from faculty members and advanced graduate students who are busy pursuing their own research or creative projects. These interests in turn drive the workshops that take place in the schools and that are designed to develop basic literacy--reading, writing, and critical thinking--through exposure to intellectually challenging artifacts and exercises. The undergraduate tutors involved in these projects require intensive training and ongoing mentorship, as well as prior in-depth work with humanities methods and materials.
At their best, these workshops combine teaching, research, and outreach, the overlapping homophony of the words suggesting their potential integration in a new style of intellectual work that takes shape at the intersection of the university and the community. The social and cultural focus of the humanities makes our work ideally situated to respond to, as well as influence, the kinds of knowledge encountered in neighboring educational systems. By bringing our research concerns to teachers in the schools, we can articulate our methods and goals in response to emergent social problems, creating a more vital and proactive humanities. Insofar as HOT's teaching of research and research on teaching occur in the community rather than in the university, service is an intrinsic dimension of the teaching-research partnership. Outreach provides the bridge--the means and mode of relationship--that brings together teaching and research in a productive new configuration.
After only two years of full operation, HOT recently received permanent funds through UC Irvine's Center for Educational Partnerships. This funding constitutes a major vote of confidence in the value of our enterprise and a guarantee that we will be allowed to refine HOT's mission and multiply its applications for years to come. In the process, I hope that other campuses can build on HOT's example, finding new ways to combine teaching, research, and outreach in response to local needs and national signposts. If these projects remain guided by the basic insights and methods of the humanities, our disciplines should emerge clarified and strengthened from our movement "out there" into the public sphere.
The author is Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature and Director, Humanities Out There, at the University of California, Irvine.
© 2000 by the Association of Departments of English. All Rights Reserved.
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