Each year, CAHI offers one or more events focused on our professional lives as researchers and teachers in the university: we have had visits and workshops on grant-writing (with program officers from NEH, ACLS, and Mellon), discussions of changes in graduate education and the future of the PhD, and workshops focused on writing for the public.
Professional Development
Toward a More Humane University
Bill Hart-Davidson and Kathleen Fitzpatrick
Thursday and Friday, November 14 + 15, 2019
This year, CAHI and the Institute for Digital Arts and Humanties bring two colleagues from Michigan State University who have been thinking a lot about the future of the university, Bill Hart-Davidson and Kathleen Fitzpatrick. They will together present some results of recent collaborations between them in a talk titled “Toward a More Humane University.”
Hart-Davidson has been involved—as both rhetorician and administrator—with rethinking how we measure professional achievement, how we make judgments for promotion, salary, and so on. He has also developed very successful models for helping faculty in getting and making the most of grants and fellowships. Fitzpatrick has been imagining futures for academic work for years now, not least with her important work Planned Obsolescence: Publishing, Technology, and the Future of the Book (NYU, 2011). After having served for several years as Director of Scholarly Communication at the Modern Language Association, Fitzpatrick will share the wealth of her experience and reflection, and her concept of “generous thinking.”
Both Hart-Davidson and Fitzpatrick will offer workshops on the morning of Friday, November 15.
Kathleen Fitzpatrick is Director of Digital Humanities at Michigan State University, where she is also a member of the English Department. She served for several years as Director of Scholarly Communication at the Modern Language Association, and is Project Director of Humanities Commons. She is author of three books, most recently Generous Thinking: A Radical Approach to Saving the University (John Hopkins, 2019).
Bill Hart-Davidson is Associate Dean of Graduate Education and Research in the College of Arts and Letters at Michigan State University. He is also a Senior Researcher in the Writing, Information, and Digital Experience Lab. A specialist in rhetoric, composition, and digital humanities, Hart-Davidson is author of over fifty articles, and is co-inventor of Eli Review, a software service that supports writing instruction.
Thursday, November 14:
“Toward a More Humane University”
4 p.m., Dogwood Room, Indiana Memorial Union
A joint presentation by Kathleen Fitzpatrick and Bill Hart-Davidson.
Friday, November 15:
Working in Public: A Workshop on Generous Thinking with Kathleen Fitzpatrick
9:30 a.m., Hazelbaker Hall, Wells Library E159
With the Institute for Digital Arts and Humanities, Fitzpatrick will hold a “Generous DAH” workshop aimed at helping faculty re-envision some of the elements of their current research projects in light of concepts behind Generous Thinking (collaboration, collective-interest projects with a public facet), as well as how such work can be present in the classroom.
Grant Strategy Workshops with Bill Hart-Davidson
9:30 a.m., Faculty Room of the University Club, Indiana Memorial Union
Hart-Davidson will share information he has developed to help faculty researchers in arts and humanities succeed in the world of grants and fellowships: on shaping ideas, pitching, project management, and more. Faculty and students are invited to attend any or all of the modules.
Session modules:
9:30-10:00: “Charting Pathways to Intellectual Leadership”
10:15-10:45: “Creating an Idea that Others Can Invest In”
11:00-11:30: “Building a Collaborative Team”
11:45-12:15: “Building a Funding Strategy”
Buffet Lunch
12:30 p.m., Faculty Room of the Univesity Club, Indiana Memorial Union
All workshop participants are welcome to attend.


