Public scholarship offers rich opportunities for students to reflect on how the ideas they have studied apply in new settings and contexts; provides direct opportunities to collaborate with and learn from community members very different from themselves; and allows them to share what they have learned with a broad range of non-academic audiences, using a variety of approaches.

Public scholarship projects utilize a range of forums for presenting student research to a popular audience, including (but not limited to) public lectures, opinion pieces, arts and media, research reports for community partners, apps and websites, and podcasts.

Examples:
  • COLQ-349 Asian Americans and Affirmative Action - For their final project, the students in Prof. Franklin Odo's research colloquium "Asian Americans and Affirmative Action" produced a series of podcast episodes covering topics including the history of affirmative action, the underlying philosophies behind each side's legal arguments, specific stakeholders in this case, the role of ethnic media, and underrepresented Asian American narratives. The podcast is available on Soundcloud.
  • AMST-270 Jews at Amherst - This research-intensive course, taught by Prof. Wendy Bergoffen, focuses on the history of Jewish experience at Amherst College.  Students in this course work with a range of primary materials in the Amherst College Archives, statistical data from the Office of Institutional Research, materials from college periodicals and published accounts, and narrative histories from Jewish alumni to produce a final essay of deeply researched institutional history. Students then present their work to the Amherst College community during Alumni weekend.
  • COLQ-337 The Expansion of LGBT Rights in the Americas and Beyond - As students in this tutorial learn about the history of LGBT rights in the Americas, they also gain the skills required to contribute to Prof. Javier Corrales’ “LGBT Timeline in the Americas” project. Students research possible entries, select entries, edit entries, work with images and copyright questions, generate infographics and other forms of data dissemination.