Programs : Public Humanities Fellows
The Future of the Humanities Starts Here
The Public Humanities Fellows program funds and supports early-career humanists with innovative projects. Each year, a new cohort of Fellows plan and deliver their projects to underserved communities in Washington.
Due to DOGE’s gutting of the NEH, we are unable to accept Fellows applications for 2025-2026. Join our mailing list to receive updates.
Meet Our Current Fellows
Sarah Choi
Reactivating and Reclaiming Asian American Memories through Home Movies
Sarah Choi is a doctoral candidate in Cinema and Media studies at the University of Washington. Her research interests include orphan film archives and found footage filmmaking. Sarah is the recipient of the 2024-2025 AAUW American Dissertation Fellowship, 2021 Barclay Simpson Scholars in Public Fellowship, and the 2022 Simpson Center Digital Humanities Summer Fellowship. As a filmmaker, she creates screendance and documentaries and curates films for the Lights Dance Festival, which she founded in 2016. She served as the managing editor of Feminist Media Histories: An International Journal from 2022-2023.
Recognizing the significance of home movies in remembering and reimagining Asian American histories, this project will implement a grassroots storytelling program that is dedicated to home movie screenings and preservation.
Polly Hana Yorioka
Immigrant History of Edmonds Virtual Exhibit
Polly is a recent graduate of the University of Washington’s Museology MA program, with an MAIS in Comparative Religion and a BA in Classics from the University of Puget Sound. Polly’s professional background is in nonprofit community development, particularly working with international students. In her current role as exhibit curator for the Edmonds Historical Museum, Polly is dedicated to telling the stories of underrepresented communities and building intercultural relationships.
The Immigrant History of Edmonds Virtual Exhibit is designed to showcase the impact of immigrants from the earliest settling of the city all the way to highlighting today’s vibrant “international district” of Edmonds.
Camilo Lund-Montaño
Visualizing the Past and Present of Latinx/e Communities in Walla Walla County
Camilo E. Lund-Montaño is an assistant professor of history at Whitman College. He received his bachelor’s from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, his M.A. in Historical Studies from the New School for Social Research, and his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. His research interests are social movements in the 20th century and transnational networks of solidarity between the U.S., Latin America, and the Caribbean. His article “Undesirable Travelers: U.S. Radicals, Mexican Security, and the Cold War Summer of 1968” appeared in The Global Sixties Journal.
Mariana Ruiz-Gonzalez
Visualizing the Past and Present of Latinx/e Communities in Walla Walla County
Mariana Ruiz-González is an assistant professor in the Hispanic Studies Department at Whitman College. She has a PhD in Spanish and Latin American Cultural Studies from Arizona State University. Her research interests are Latinx/Latin America Cultural and Visual Studies, Popular Culture, and Animal Studies. Her work has been published in the critical volumes of Transgresiones en las letras latinoamericanas: visiones del lenguaje poético (2021), Transnational American Spaces (Vernon Press, 2021), The Selena Reader: “Entre a mi Mundo,” among others.
Mariana and Camilo will work together to collect, preserve and publicize oral histories and photographs from the Latinx/e communities to diversify the region’s visual culture and acknowledge Latinx/e representation and voices within Walla Walla and Southeastern Washington.
About the Public Humanities Fellows program
The public humanities is a vibrant field that shares the humanities outside of academic circles, but there are few opportunities for training and professional development. The Public Humanities Fellows program is changing that by offering a stipend and support to early-career humanists based in Washington. This is the first paid public humanities fellowship of its kind in Washington State, either inside or outside of academia.
To help them gain program management and public humanities skills, Fellows receive a stipend to fund a public humanities project like an event, exhibit, podcast, or digital project. They also get professional development opportunities, technical assistance and mentorship, and regular meetings with a cohort of other Fellows. Humanists from communities who are underrepresented in the humanities are especially encouraged to apply.
