This Month’s Theme
Growing Sideways: The Queer Child
This cycle focuses on queer childhoods, drawing from Katherine Bond Stockton’s theory of “growing sideways” (growth or development in ways that resist normative timelines and expectations). We’ll reflect on early experiences of difference and self-recognition: moments of confusion or clarity, the environments we moved through, and the ways we expressed ourselves (or learned not to). Rather than treating childhood as a linear path toward adulthood, we’ll consider what it might mean to grow sideways, and how this idea might relate to our creative practice.
About the Create with the Moon series
Create with the Moon is a monthly, two-part creative series hosted virtually by the Public Humanities Institute. Each cycle follows the rhythm of the moon: the new moon offers a moment to begin, the full moon a time to return and reflect, and the time in between an opportunity to create. The series is open to creatives of all kinds and is grounded in humanities-based inquiry, collective discussion, and independent practice.
Thursday, April 16th @ 6pm EST
New Moon: Begin
We gather to “plant the seed” for the cycle. Each session centers on a theme drawn from humanities scholarship (usually engaging with politics, identity, history, memory, or ecology), which we will explore together through discussion and reflection. This is a space to generate ideas with others and set intentions for what you might make.
The new moon marks both an ending and a beginning—the point at which one cycle closes and another starts, when the moon is not yet visible in the sky. It offers a useful model for creative practice: a moment to begin, even when the shape of the work is not yet clear.
Between the Moons: Make
Over the following two weeks, you create something in response to the conversation. There is no required format or outcome.
Ideas: Poetry, music, essays (written, photo, etc.), short stories, film, a scrapbook, visual art, photography, gardening, movement, something undefined.
Friday, May 1 @ 6pm EST
Full Moon: Return
We come back together to share work (if you choose) and to reflect on the process of making.
The full moon marks the point at which what has taken shape over the course of the lunar cycle becomes visible. In our practice, the full moon offers a chance to witness others’ creative process and reflect on our own.
The Public Humanities Institute is an intimate intellectual boutique dedicated to learning as a relational and ethical practice. We offer carefully curated workshops and seminars that bring together small cohorts of participants for close reading, conversation, and reflection on some of the most urgent questions of our time about belonging, love, identity, ethics, and the futures we are making together. We also offer fully customized one-on-one learning experiences, allowing participants to engage deeply with ideas and texts in a way that is tailored to their own curiosities and intellectual journey.