The Whitney Humanities Center (WHC) invites applications from graduate students to program the Films at the Whitney series in the 2026–27 academic year.
Over the past few years, the collaboration between the Whitney Humanities Center and graduate students has led to four original series that share a cross-cultural and socially engaged vision for film today. Recent series have presented new voices in world documentary filmmaking, told Palestinian history through film, explored cinematic sites of labor, and shared migration stories across geopolitical and conceptual boundaries. The WHC is committed to furthering a collaborative programming approach, embracing new perspectives, and offering graduate students valuable curatorial experience.
Proposals for the upcoming year may be submitted by individual graduate students or by a team of two (and no more than two). Applicants should plan a coherent series of six to eight films, of which four will be shown in the final program. The series should have a distinct thread that unites the films and aligns them with the comparative and worldwide orientation of the WHC. It might be organized around a theme, motif, technique, or political, social, and/or cultural formation. The proposal will be strengthened by combining approaches, genres, or styles that explore your central topic from diverse perspectives.
We discourage historically chronological or strictly regional perspectives. Although it is important and maybe necessary to ground your topic within a historical context, the overall concept of the series should hold particular relevance for aesthetic and political issues of our current moment. However, region-focused series are possible if they address questions of global relevance.
Proposals should include the following:
- A program description explaining the topic or through line, its significance for broader Yale audiences from different disciplines, and its contribution to the Yale community’s goals of research and teaching.
- A list of six to eight films with synopsis, year, runtime, distributor, country, and format (print or DCP [Digital Cinema Package—the most common format for contemporary films]). If identifying the format or distributor is difficult, try checking where the film was recently screened; you may find the information available there. You can add links to recent screenings to your application. Examples of film descriptions can be found at the Film at Yale site: https://film.yale.edu/events/2026-02-12-film-foragers
- A brief list of Yale faculty, postdoctoral fellows, graduate students, or staff who would be suitable to introduce or discuss films in the series, accompanied by a brief description of their areas of expertise.
- A short applicant bio that includes email, department, status in the Ph.D. program, and relevant programming or curatorial experience. (Applicants must be enrolled in a Ph.D. program in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.)
The graduate student programmers will work closely with FAS manager of film programming, Marc Francis, in consultation with WHC deputy director, Diane Berrett Brown, and with logistical support from the WHC staff. Student curators will be paid a stipend in two installments.
Please send proposals to Marc Francis (marc.francis@yale.edu) by Friday, April 4, 2026. The selected proposals will be announced via email to all applicants in early May.