PCL Partners with Brown University on Five-Year Community Project

Brown University and PCL will be collaborating on a range of community partnership projects over the next five years, thanks to a grant from the American Studies Association (ASA).

The Brown University American Studies Department and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage have been awarded a $3,000 Community Partnership Grant from the ASA for the project The Interdisciplinary Public Library: A Collaborative Project. This grant will seed a collaboration between the Department of American Studies, the Center for Public Humanities and PCL. 

The partnership will allow Brown students and faculty staff to work directly with Providence residents through a variety of course offerings, workshops and programs at PCL. ESL classes will be a primary focus for the first year of this partnership, along with reading groups and exhibits. The project partners are very excited about the Project and look forward to thinking through the future of engaged interdisciplinary scholarship at Brown and a succesful ongoing partnership with the Library. 

The grant will be overseen by Susan Smulyan, Professor of American Studies and Director of the John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage, and Kristen Iemma, a current PhD student in American Studies and MA student in Public Humanities who holds an MSLIS from Pratt Institute. Michelle Novello, PCL's Program Development and Community Relations Coordinator, will represent the Library during this project.

For more information, contact Kristen Iemma at .