Dr. Heather Hewett is Associate Professor and Chair of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at SUNY New Platz. She is a former Program Officer at the American Council of Learned Societies, where she worked to communicate the value of humanistic training and education.

Dr. Hewett has been a leader in advancing the public humanities, having written for various public venues, including Boston Review, CNN.com, Inside Higher Ed, LIBER: A Feminist Review, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Women’s Review of Books. She is also the editor of #MeToo and Literary Studies: Reading, Writing, and Teaching about Sexual Violence and Rape Culture. She has also published creative nonfiction in numerous journals and multiple collections, including The Good Mother Myth and A Slant of Light: Contemporary Women Writers of the Hudson Valley.

In the videos below, Dr. Hewett discusses hackneyed narratives surrounding supposed “crises” of the humanities, the success of the public humanities, and the need for more effective messaging surrounding the value of the humanities.

You can also access Dr. Hewett’s YouTube playlist directly.

Dr. Heather Hewett discusses the misleading rhetoric surrounding proclamations of a “crisis of the humanities”

Dr. Heather Hewett points to a self-fulfilling narrative that perpetuates a supposed crisis of the humanities

Dr. Heather Hewett points to important need to improve our messaging about the humanities, including how we communicating the skills we develop in humanities courses

Dr. Heather Hewett recalls the tremendously innovative work of new colleagues in the humanities

Dr. Heather Hewett emphasizes the need to integrate the humanities across disciplines on campus, including STEM disciplines