el taller 2026 presents The Public Scholar

Dear friends and colleagues,

Please join us on Monday, February 16 for an in person workshop and public lecture with historian and public scholar David M. Perry:

Monday, February 16: 9:30am-12pm (Great Room, 1st Floor, 19 University Place, NYU):

“The Public Scholar Workshop. How to Get Started. How to Get Better”

A workshop that will help you reframe your expertise in ways that are compelling for both readers and, critically, the editors who decide whether or not to commission and publish your work, while remaining true to your work and your goals. As a medieval history professor at Dominican University, a small teaching-oriented school in the Chicago area, David began publishing opinion essays and commentary in 2013. Now with over 500 published pieces in dozens of outlets (including The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, and so many more) on both historical topics and personal ones like mental health and parenting, David will offer his templates for both essays and the pitches to editors that sell the essays both as a practical tool for you to use and as exercises to rethink how to apply your skills as an academic to new genres, media, and communities.

This is an active learning workshop. Bring one or more ideas for a public-facing writing project that you might like to try. It doesn’t have to be directly connected to your academic discipline or field. David will present for about half the time and try to answer all your questions --including about counting this work for tenure and promotion, dealing with the good and bad of social media, and how to fit this kind of work into an academic career – and then you’ll do some writing of your own.

Registration is required by February 13 for all non-NYU affiliates who wish to attend. The registration form is available at this link.

Monday, February 16: 5pm (Auditorium, Espacio de Culturas, 53 Washington Square South):

“But Does it Count? Public Scholarship in the 21st Century”

A public lecture in which David Perry will draw from his own experiences to talk about the role of the scholar and expert in this fraught moment, not just arguing that more of us should try to work as public scholars, but that we largely already possess the skills we need to do so and that our institutions and disciplines have already developed ways to count that work for advanced graduate degrees, tenure, and promotion.

Registration is required by February 13 for all attendees (since February 16 is a holiday and NYU is closed we will need everyone interested in attending to register). The registration form is available at this link.

We look forward to seeing you there!

David M. Perry is an author, journalist, and historian. He is the author of The Public Scholar (John Hopkins University Press) and the co-author of Oathbreakers and The Bright Ages: A New History of Medieval Europe, both from HarperCollins. Publishers Weekly called Oathbreakers “An enlightening portrait of the medieval mindset” while The Boston Globe said The Bright Ages was “incandescent and ultimately intoxicating.”

We look forward to seeing you there!

For more information, we invite you to visit wp.nyu.edu/eltaller. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us at [email protected] .

Sandra Baena-Velázquez

On behalf of the coordinating committee

Abigail Balbale
Jordana Mendelson
Sarah Pearce
Víctor Sierra Matute
Ameya Tripathi

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