Building a Public Humanities Website: The 18th-Century Common

How can we communicate our scholarly work to a broader public?  In 2012 I co-founded a public humanities website — with the support of the Wake Forest Humanities Institute — that aims to do just that.  What are the payoffs and the pitfalls of this kind of public, digital project?  In this “Talk” session I will outline the history of The 18th-Century Common, “a public humanities website for enthusiasts of 18th-century studies.”  I’ll describe how the project dovetails with — and sometimes diverges from — institutional goals and priorities.  I’ll discuss challenges in generating public-oriented scholarly contributions.  In particular, I’ll focus on our recent addition of the WordPress tool “Press Forward,” which we hope will facilitate additional contributions from scholars to the site.  This THATCamp session will generate conversation beyond The 18th-Century Common to the topics of public engagement with scholarly work, institutional support for public humanities, and the use of Press Forward.