Aequitas Fellows Program in Public Humanities and Arts

Aequitas Fellows Program in Public Humanities and Art Program Details

The Aequitas Fellows Program in Public Humanities and Arts is a theologically engaged creative studio. In it, students passionate about literature, art, languages, history, music, theater, theology, and philosophy partner with communities to make public projects in the humanities and arts.

Students selected for this fellowship receive a scholarship to take courses together and learn to design and make public projects together. As fellows, they connect with makers and scholars who engage the public, learning from their projects and techniques. As they advance, fellows pursue an internship in their chosen area of public humanities and arts. Their fellowship culminates in a capstone project that they design and implement.

The Aequitas Fellows Program in Public Humanities and Arts can be fruitfully paired with other college programs like HNGR, Wheaton in Chicago, and study abroad. And students’ work in majors and minors and certificates feeds their fellowship work too, helping them focus on areas of interest and equipping them with specialized disciplinary methods that their fellowship brings into the public sphere.

Work in these fields allows fellows to speak into contemporary public issues, make and share knowledge, draw out communal memory, and advance culture. Ultimately, Aequitas Fellows in the Public Humanities and Arts join with communities to expand the scope and reach of the literature, history, philosophy, arts, and languages they love for Christ and His Kingdom. 

The Aequitas Fellows Program in the Public Humanities and Arts prepares students for lives of transformational creativity, cultural engagement, and community partnership as they practice humanities and arts in public spaces for God’s glory. 

Program Courses and Experiences

Year One

• AQTS 121 Public Humanities and Arts Studio 1 (2, fall semester)
• ENGL 221 Contemporary Literary Conversations (4, LE tag, fall semester)
• HIST 102 Exploring the Global Past, or HIST 103 Exploring the American Past (4, HP tag, spring semester)

Year Two

• AQTS 122 Public Humanities and Arts Studio 2 (2, fall semester)
• PHIL 217 Philosophy of Art (4, PI and VPA-V tags, fall semester)

Requirements that May Be Taken at Any Time

• One 300- or 400-level course in Modern and Classical Languages (4)
• 4 credits from among the following: 
• ART 329 Community Art I (4)
• COMM 479 Theater and Culture (4, VPA tag)
• ENGW 233/333 Writing Chicago, Writing for Social Change (4)
• HIST 205 Historical Tour of Modern Korea (4, HP & GP tags, offered through Wheaton in Korea)
• HIST 354 Race, Justice, and Reconciliation in US History (4)
• BITH 322 Theology and the Arts (4)

• AQTS 321 Internship in Public Humanities (0, approval required, can be for credit in another department/program)
• AQTS 421 Public Humanities and Arts Capstone Project (0, approval required, can be for credit in another department/program)

Public Humanities and the Arts Theme Coordinator

Tiffany Eberle Kriner, Ph.D. serves as Theme Coordinator of the Aequitas Fellows Program in Public Humanities and Arts. She is an associate professor of English at Wheaton College, where she's been on faculty since 2006. She graduated summa cum laude from Messiah College and earned an M.A. and Ph.D. in English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, receiving a post-doctoral fellowship at the Erasmus Institute of the University of Notre Dame. At Wheaton, she teaches courses in American literature and writing and supports the Core Book program. Her research takes a theological approach to literature. She has published scholarly articles and book chapters on theological aspects of works by writers ranging from Marilynne Robinson to Lucille Clifton, Denise Levertov, and Fanny Howe. Her first book, The Future of the Word: An Eschatology of Reading (Fortress Press, 2014) argues that texts have futures in the kingdom of God that readers help cultivate--it considers classics and popular literature in the becoming of the Word and the love of the Trinity. Her most recent book, In Thought, Word, and Seed: Reckonings from a Midwest Farm (Eerdmans, 2023) merges literary criticism with lyric essay and farm memoir as it cultivates literary texts for theological meanings from the setting of her family farm: Root and Sky Farm in Marengo, Illinois.