In the most recent episode of NetVUE’s podcast Callings, hosts Erin VanLaningham and John Barton speak with Kathleen Fitzpatrick, director of digital humanities and professor of English at Michigan State University. She also serves as the project director of Humanities Commons, an open-access, open-source network serving more than 16,000 scholars and practitioners in the humanities. In addition to her extensive blog, her publications include Generous Thinking: A Radical Approach to Saving the University (2019) and the forthcoming Leading Generously: Tools for Transformation (2024).
In her 2019 book and in this conversation, Kathleen suggests that “when we think with one another rather than against one another, we can create a culture that’s more collaborative rather than competitive; we can understand that knowledge production is always something that’s collective and communal.” She sees potential for this kind of thinking within not only the individual classroom as we invite students to consider why we work in the ways that we do but also across higher education more broadly. More and more, she finds joy in thinking with students about the why and encourages others in this pedagogical approach.
Listen to this episode to hear Kathleen speak about reading practices, the place of virtues such as humility in the classroom, and the benefit of taking risks while also building the connections necessary to sustain us through them. Higher education at its best, she says, “is a form of mutual aid” as we figure out “what it is to live.”
Click here to listen to the episode featuring Kathleen Fitzpatrick titled “Transformation and Generosity.”
Stephanie L. Johnson is the editor of Vocation Matters.