Why are those with humanities PhDs mostly confined to careers within the academy? In what ways can humanities PhDs thrive and serve others with vocations outside of the academy? What would a more holistic humanities graduate education for broader careers and relationships with the local community look like? Who benefits from the dominant culture of humanities graduate education, and who is responsible for improving or reconfiguring that culture? What role should equity and social justice advocacy play in humanities PhD work outside of the classroom and beyond traditional research? How should humanities graduate education look in the times of Covid-19?
We explore these questions and more with Katina Rogers through her most recent book Putting the Humanities PhD to Work: Thriving in and beyond the Classroom (Duke University Press, July 2020). Her work traverses higher education reform, scholarly communication practices, humanities professionalization and career development, public scholarship, and scholarly fair labor advocacy. Rogers is co-director of the Futures Initiative at the CUNY Graduate Center, which Roger’s describes as an “an incubator that advances equity and innovation in higher education through student-centered teaching and learning, and promotes reinvestment in higher education as a public good.” She is also the co-director of the CUNY Humanities Alliance, Director of Programs and Administration of HASTAC, and is an adjunct faculty member in the GC’s Master’s Program in Digital Humanities.