Reciprocity and Redistribution: Methodologies for Rethinking Public and Community-based Humanities Research

This chapter offers a history of how Humanities Without Walls (HWW), a consortium project funded by the Mellon Foundation, has taken up the promises and challenges of the public humanities. HWW is a seedbed for modeling ethical practices of genuinely reciprocal and redistributive relationships as the foundation of a world of inquiry “without walls.” Here the development of reciprocal and redistributive (R&R) methodologies in one aspect of the HWW grant work: the Grand Research Challenge awards, is charted. The story is told of what interdisciplinary collaborative grantmaking has become over the life of the grant since 2015, as a result of both recent convulsive social and political changes and of the long-standing underlying conditions of economic inequality and racial injustice that are an ongoing feature of contemporary life. The process has shifted to centering colleagues in and outside the research/R1 university who already do this work, making their methods available to prospective grantees as part of how the R&R concept is socialized. The chapter details the ways HWW has encouraged collaborators to make co-designing a priority from the start of their work. In the process, the stakes of the “publics” in the public humanities at this historical juncture are discussed.