As part of our commitment to the enrichment and professional development of UWM graduate students, C21 invites Master’s and Doctoral students from any discipline to propose an event or program for the spring semester of the current academic year. Following a competitive selection process, one applicant, or team of applicants, receives a working budget of $1,000 and administrative and promotional support from C21, providing grads with the resources and mentorship to actualize their projects.
By working collaboratively with C21 staff and C21 Graduate Fellows to bring their ideas to life, participants gain firsthand experience with the Center’s interdisciplinary approach to designing and producing public-facing humanities programming. In turn, by placing graduate students at the center of this work, C21 cultivates the next generation of publicly engaged scholars, fostering skills in research, creative problem-solving, project development, and public engagement while expanding students’ professional experience.
2026-27 Call for Graduate Public Humanities Programming
- Application deadline for 2026-27: SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 11:59 PM
- Application Information Session & Workshop: FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, TIME TBD.
C21 is seeking proposals that take up the theme of Slow Action – a mode of engagement that purposefully resists the logic of zero-sum efficiency in favor of durable, values-rooted ways of being and doing together. The theme invites graduates to investigate critical questions surrounding forms of action are not rigid or unchangeable but rather are flexible, responsive, and deeply attuned to the world we each move through. While strikes, protests, and other visible forms of collective action capture immediate public attention, they are made possible only by the slower, less visible work of building trust, forming coalitions, and sustaining shared commitments across time. It is this foundational labor – patient, relational, and often unrecognized – that Slow Action seeks to illuminate. All project proposals MUST include a public-facing component or other tangible final deliverable that will be presented or disseminated on C21’s Day of Action, a day of events celebrating the Slow Action theme, slated for April or early May 2027. (Currently, planned offerings for the Day of Action include a panel discussion, an artist-led workshop, a curated story slam, and an afterparty.)
Past Programs
Envision: Toward a Queer Ethics of Slow Care (2026)
C21 selected Isabella Fincher’s Envision: Toward a Queer Ethics of Slow Care for the inaugural graduate-led public humanities program. Envision explored creative practices and embodied experiences of slow care for individuals living with chronic illness and impairments. This initiative hosted an embodied writing workshop, featuring Queer Zine Archive Project (QZAP) co-founder Milo Miller, that blended mindfulness and creative writing to explore themes of slowing down, radical self-care, critical disability studies, and fostering networks of mutual support and caregiving. Workshop participants and the broader campus community were invited to submit artwork and creative writing pieces to a collaborative community zine project on a queer ethics of slow care.
Printed copies of the Envision zine are available for pickup only in the lobby of the 9th floor of Curtin Hall, now though the end of 2026, or while supplies last.
Digital copies of Envision are available for download below.