Congratulations to Judnick for her contribution for next year’s NEH Summer Institute
An overview of this year’s NEH Summer Institute including an SCU alum speaker, discussions relating to Francisco Jimenez’s The Circuit: Stories from the Life of a Migrant Child (1997) as well as other immigration-related texts/art, and Maria Judnick’s contribution.
By Isabel Espinoza ’25
This summer, Maria Judnick will be coordinating and speaking at her 8th NEH (National Endowment for the Humanities) Summer Institute for teachers, the fifth focusing on California immigration stories. Previously, Maria Judnick coordinated three institutes on the writer John Steinbeck. Her book chapter "'The Name of Hitchcock! The Fame of Steinbeck!’: The Legacy of Lifeboat" in 2014's Hitchcock and Adaptation: On the Page and Screen (ed. Mark Osteen, Rowman & Littlefield) was an outgrowth of her work on this institute.
This summer's two week institute “The Immigrant Experience in California through Literature and History,” will once again be hosted by San José State University. Longtime NEH Director and speaker, the award-winning playwright Dr. Matthew Spangler (Chair of the Department of Film, Theatre, and Dance) will serve as project lead and co-director. Twenty-five K-12 teachers will be selected from around the country to meet with different scholars and artists who write about immigration in California. Three National Medal of Arts winners are featured speakers: Ping Chong, Luis Valdez, and Maxine Hong Kingston.
Teachers will engage with transnational immigration to California through literature and history. Maria Judnick will help lead some of the discussions, including on Santa Clara University’s professor Francisco Jimenez and his book, The Circuit: Stories from the Life of a Migrant Child (1997). Another speaker is Khaled Hosseini ‘88, an SCU alum, a New York Times Bestselling Author, and the founder of The Khaled Hosseini Foundation, a nonprofit that provides humanitarian assistance to the people of Afghanistan.
The Summer Institute will also offer field trips around the Bay Area including downtown San Francisco, San Jose, Angel Island, and San Juan Bautista where the visiting teachers will learn these cities’ rich history of immigration. Deepening their understanding about these topics as well as appreciation of the institute texts, teachers will create detailed lesson plans for their classrooms and schools relating to immigration.