Jamie Middleton
As a product of a military family, Jamie Middleton moved around the country every three or four years, but she found a home in Arkansas after her family landed in Cabot in 2010. Middleton graduated as Valedictorian from Cabot High School and then went on to earn her B.A. double majoring in archaeology and American studies from the University of Arkansas. She has all but earned an M.A. in Public History from UA Little Rock – her forthcoming thesis discusses the roles Madison County women played in the tomato canning industry during the first half of the 20th century.
Trained as an archaeologist, archivist, and digital humanist, Middleton has dabbled in various aspects of historical research topics, but she has a vested interest in women’s history; labor history; crafts, homestead, and folklore studies; and the intersection of the humanities and our everyday lives.
Middleton began working part-time at HumanitiesAR in the Fall of 2021 assisting with the We the People lecture series. In the spring of 2022, she came on board full-time as the Program Officer for Grants and Public Programs where she has become the lead grant administrator for most grant initiatives, the facilitator for the Next Generation Advisory Committee, creator and editor of the monthly E-Newsletter, ‘A Manatee Minute,’ and co-chair of the Next Gen(eration) Humanities Conference.
Since taking on this role, she was awarded funding through the “Democracy and the Informed Citizen” initiative, a grant administered by the Federation of State Humanities Councils and funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, for a series of virtual panels through the fall of 2022 seeking to encourage civic engagement, interest in local journalism, and provide resources to create a more informed democracy, all parts now available on YouTube.
Middleton is currently working to make grant processes less daunting from the public perspective through new step-by-step manuals and forthcoming tutorial videos. In addition, she is working to create new and engaging ways to connect with Arkansans – humanities bingo and ‘Cards Against the Humanities’ are but a couple of ideas on the workshop table.