PublicsLab

Dear Graduate Center colleagues,

It is with great pleasure that I write to you to announce the appointment of Dr. Stacy Hartman as the director of The Graduate Center's new PublicsLab. I am also delighted to announce that Professor Bianca Williams will serve as the faculty lead for the project.

The PublicsLab is the focal point for The Graduate Center's Mellon Foundation-supported initiative to re-form doctoral education, particularly in the humanities. A top priority is to ensure that The Graduate Center's humanities doctoral programs prepare students for careers both within and beyond academe. We will also encourage doctoral students and faculty to engage in scholarship that is accessible to diverse audiences and that deepens our understanding of issues vital to the public good.

Stacy brings impressive experience and a deep commitment to her new role.

She is joining The Graduate Center from the Modern Language Association (MLA), where for the last three years she served as the project manager for the MLA's Mellon-funded Connected Academics program. At the MLA, she was the principal organizer for the Connected Academics NYC Proseminar, a year-long career-exploration seminar for graduate students in the greater New York City area, as well as for an intensive version of the proseminar at the 2018 MLA Annual Convention. She received a Ph.D. in German Studies from Stanford University. While there, she initiated two public speaker series, one devoted to staff members with Ph.D.s and the other to the public humanities.

As the project's faculty lead, Bianca will partner with the PublicsLab and Graduate Center faculty colleagues to help students take advantage of diverse professional opportunities.

Bianca joined The Graduate Center in 2017 as an associate professor of anthropology. Prior to coming to The Graduate Center, as a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, she received the 2016 American Anthropological Association and Oxford University Press Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching of Anthropology. She is the author of The Pursuit of Happiness: Black Women, Diasporic Dreams, and the Politics of Emotional Transnationalism. She has demonstrated her commitment to breaking down false barriers between academia and the public through her writing, scholarship, and facilitation of teaching and professionalization workshops for Graduate Center students. She received a Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology and a graduate certificate in African and African American Studies from Duke University.

Please join me in welcoming Stacy to The Graduate Center and congratulating Bianca on her new role.

I look forward to working with them on an initiative that will create new opportunities for our students and reshape our approach doctoral education.

Sincerely,

Joy