“When we think of the phrase ‘public scholarship,’ we think of the public and orienting our work away from ourselves,” Margret Grebowicz said during her keynote remarks at the inaugural Public Scholarship Symposium last month.
“But the greatest value of this kind of work for me has been how it forces me to figure out what it is I really care about and want to put out there with my name on it,” said Grebowicz, the Maxwell C. Weiner Distinguished Professor of Humanities at Missouri University of Science and Technology.
“In short — and there’s no clearer way to put this — public scholarship has reconnected me to my own thinking, a connection I never felt I had as an academic philosopher.”
This sentiment — that public scholarship is not only a part of, but essential for academic growth — permeated the entire event, which featured remarks from the Richard G. Engelsmann Dean of Arts & Sciences Feng Sheng Hu, the inaugural Arts & Sciences Public Scholarship Prize recipients, and graduate students in the first Arts & Sciences CREATES Cohort.
The Program in Public Scholarship began as a signature initiative of the Arts & Sciences Strategic Plan, with the mission of connecting WashU faculty with new platforms and audiences to help break down barriers between the academy and society.
“In less than two years, we have made incredible strides in achieving this goal and positioning WashU as an innovator in the world of public scholarship,” Dean Hu said.
Abram Van Engen, chair of the Department of English and the Stanley Elkin Professor in the Humanities, spoke about the growth of “Poetry for All,” a podcast he cohosts with Joanne Diaz that makes poetry more accessible, one poem and episode at a time. As a recipient of the Arts & Sciences Public Scholarship Prize, Van Engen has been working to expand and amplify the podcast, which is approaching 200,000 episode downloads.
Rebecca Lester, chair of the Department of Anthropology and professor of sociocultural anthropology, also talked about the process of proposing and writing her forthcoming trade book on dissociative identity disorder — Coming Undone: One Woman, Twelve Personalities, and the Myth at the Heart of ‘Mental Health’ — as a Public Scholarship Prize recipient. In her book, Lester will bring readers inside one of the most sensational and controversial mental disorders in American psychiatry — dissociative identity disorder — and the new therapy approach she used to help a patient with 12 identities.
The symposium marked the end of a busy year for the Program in Public Scholarship as it continued supporting WashU scholars in sharing their research and creative work with broad, public audiences.
WashU scholars published books, went on podcasts, and published dozens of essays, reviews, and articles in publications like The Conversation — where earlier this month their work surpassed one million reads.
Here are five stellar examples of public-facing pieces WashU scholars published in 2024.
David Cunningham in The Conversation: “I’m a scholar of white supremacy who’s visiting all 113 places where Confederate statues were removed in recent years − here’s why Richmond gets it right”
David Cunningham, professor and chair of the Department of Sociology, wrote an article for The Conversation about his journey traveling to all 113 communities that either removed or relocated Confederate symbols between 2015 and 2023, highlighting and comparing a few cases in Virginia.
“These approaches represent different and sometimes conflicting narratives about removed monuments. But the fates of all these statues and their grounds illustrate an unfolding movement to recast the connections between the past and today.
“Who defines American values? In their respective reckonings with the Confederacy – and with modern racial justice movements – relocated Confederate statues are bellwethers of ongoing struggles to resolve this question.”
Maria Siciliano in The Millions: “Revisiting ‘Citizen,’ 10 Years Later”
In an essay for The Millions, English and American Literature Ph.D. student Maria Siciliano explored the continued salience of Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: An American Lyric:
“At the heart of Citizen is the question of what it means for language to articulate experiences of racism that cannot be simply explained, and to address another without the capacity to hear. ‘How difficult is it for one body to feel the injustice wheeled at another?’ Rankine writes. ‘Are the tensions, the recognitions, the disappointments, and the failures that exploded in the riots too foreign?’”
Siciliano’s piece resulted in a note from a thankful reader — the author Claudia Rankine herself.
Jen Heemstra in Inside Higher Ed: “A Leadership Position We Aren’t Prepared For”
For Inside Higher Ed, Jen Heemstra, chair of the Department of Chemistry and the Charles Allen Thomas Professor of Chemistry, wrote an opinion piece about a common issue in academia: faculty members are prepared for the research aspects of their job but not equipped with the leadership skills necessary for running a healthy, successful lab.
“Imagine how much more effective we could be as research mentors if we were adequately prepared to navigate difficult conversations and provide candid yet constructive feedback to the members of our lab. Similarly, having the skill set needed to create a healthy environment in our research group could help address some of the major challenges in academia, including the mental health crisis faced by graduate students and the replication crisis stemming from shortfalls in scientific rigor.”
Heemstra is the author of a new book, Labwork to Leadership: A Concise Guide to Thriving in the Science Job You Weren’t Trained For, which will be published by Harvard University Press in August 2025.
Themba Mbatha in The Philosophical Salon: “The Cruelty of Trumpist Political Optimism”
Following the November election, Themba Mbatha, assistant professor of African & African American Studies, wrote in The Philosophical Salon about the widely broadcasted falsehood that Donald Trump’s ability to garner a relatively significant portion of Black and Hispanic votes signals America’s racial progress, and that class is now a better determinant of political behavior than race.
“If the lesson from this election is that Democrats no longer appeal to the working class, then so be it. Nevertheless, responding to this rightful call to reengage the working class need not come at the expense of the fight for racial redress. Any multiracialism that wants to enter through the backdoor of democracy, as the right’s framing of Trump’s victory tries to do, is really no such thing. Rather, it may in fact be, on further inspection, nothing more than the specter of a dark past wanting to surreptitiously reimpose itself in the guise of historical progress.”
Sachiko Amari in The Conversation: “Ancient grains of dust from space can be found on Earth − and provide clues about the life cycle of stars”
Sachiko Amari, research professor of physics, wrote an article for The Conversation using the publication’s “Picture in 500 Words” format. Amari explained the significance of an image she took of an ancient grain of dust from before the creation of the solar system using an electron microscope. The article was also translated and published in Spanish.
“Presolar grains like the one in the picture help researchers understand nucleosynthesis in stars, mixing of different zones in stars and stellar ejecta, and how abundances of elements and their isotopes change with time in the galaxy.”
