Collaboration in the humanities: Teaching and learning together

Collaboration is not a core practice in humanities teaching and learning, despite convincing arguments that it should be. To encourage collaboration in classrooms and with communities, DePaul University has developed its Experiential Humanities Collaborative. The Collaborative connects faculty, community partners, and students to co-design and implement new community-engaged, project-based humanities courses. This article outlines several rationales for collaboration in the humanities, situates the approaches of the Experiential Humanities Collaborative among those of similar initiatives, and shares outcomes from the project's early years. While teaching and learning the humanities will always involve independent reading, reflection, and writing, the Collaborative demonstrates the value, as well as the challenges, of adding collaboration to these core practices.