English department faculty member Cristina Sánchez-Martín and PhD candidate Taiko Aoki-Marcial have been named 2023-2024 Public Humanities Fellows by Humanities Washington.
Together, they will create a digital project that collects and shares traditional stories from immigrant and refugee language learners in the Seattle area. This project will help participants develop, record, and transcribe traditional stories in original languages, and then the fellows will create translated texts and recordings of these stories in English. Together, these two aspects of the project will support the goals of community members to improve their language abilities while also creating a cultural and linguistic public digital archive.
Humanities Washington’s Public Humanities Fellowship program supports early-career scholars and professionals who wish to design and implement innovative projects for underserved communities. Seeking to make the humanities a resource for all Washingtonians, the Public Humanities Fellows program is the first paid public humanities fellowship of its kind in Washington State, either inside or outside of academia. In addition to receiving a stipend and project funding, fellows form a learning community with one another, getting hands-on training and building skills, networks, and connections. With a focus on community outreach and inventive program design, their projects will be planned and presented from October 2023 to May 2024.