Hofstra’s Institute for Public Humanities and the Arts presents
How to “Public Humanities”:
A Panel Discussion With Professors Ruth Ben-Ghiat and Jim Downs Join us to hear two leading historians discuss how they have expanded their scholarship to audiences well beyond academia — including writing for the mainstream press, becoming media commentators, advising for film and television, consulting with high levels of government, and publishing trade books. An open dialogue will follow the panel presentation. Ruth Ben-Ghiat is professor of history at New York University, specializing in authoritarianism, propaganda, and resistance to tyranny, and a senior fellow at the Charles F. Kettering Foundation. She is the author of the New York Times bestseller Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present and several books on Italian Fascism, and is the publisher of the Substack newsletter, Lucid, on threats to democracy. Ben-Ghiat is a consultant on television and film productions, including Guillermo del Toro’s Academy Award-winning 2022 movie, Pinocchio, and the 2024 Netflix docuseries Hitler and the Nazis: Evil on Trial. Jim Downs is the Gilder Lehrman-NEH Professor of Civil War Era Studies and History at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania. He is the author of three monographs: Maladies of Empire: How Colonialism, Slavery, and War Transformed Medicine; Sick from Freedom: African American Sickness and Suffering during the Civil War and Reconstruction; and Stand by Me: The Forgotten History of Gay Liberation. Downs has edited seven anthologies and written for The New York Times, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, The Lancet, and LA Times. He is the editor of Civil War History, a partner at History Studio, co-editor of History in the Headlines, and director of the Program in African American History at the Library Company of Philadelphia. In 2022-23, Downs was elected to the Society for American Historians, the Royal Historical Society in the UK, and the executive board of the Southern Historical Association. In 2015-16, he was a Mellon New Directions Fellow, which allowed him to return to graduate school, after tenure, and gain training in medical anthropology and epidemiology at Harvard. Downs is a 2025 Guggenheim Fellow. Rhonda Garelick (moderator) is the founding director of the Institute for Public Humanities and the Arts and the John Cranford Adams Distinguished Professor of Literature at Hofstra University. Garelick writes about the intersection of aesthetics and politics. She is the author of four books, including the forthcoming Why Fashion Matters, and writes the “Face Forward” column for The New York Times. She is a former columnist for New York Magazine and has written also for Vanity Fair, The Washington Post, LA Times, The Wall Street Journal, and other venues. Garelick has consulted for and appeared in documentary films and on television. She is a Guggenheim Fellow and a fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities.
Tuesday, April 21, 2026 4:30-6 p.m.
Room 246 East Library Wing Joan and Donald E. Axinn Library, South Campus Refreshments will be available. The event is FREE and open to the public, but advance registration is requested.
Visit events.hofstra.edu or scan the QR code to RSVP. 19685:3/26