Through the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation’s new Affirming Multivocal Humanities initiative, 95 grants totaling more than $18 million were awarded to public college and university programs in the humanities. The departments of African, African American and diaspora studies and women’s and gender studies in the College of Arts and Sciences received awards.
The departments of African, African American and diaspora studies and women’s and gender studies in the College of Arts and Sciences at UNC-Chapel Hill have been awarded grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation’s Affirming Multivocal Humanities initiative.
As the nation’s largest funder of the arts, culture and humanities, the Mellon Foundation has long supported the exploration of multivocality within the academic space. Since 1969, the foundation has been guided by its core belief that the humanities and arts are essential to human understanding.
The Affirming Multivocal Humanities initiative provides support for innovative new approaches to scholarship in the humanities focused on the breadth of human experience, specifically programs that advance the study of race, ethnicity, gender or sexuality studies. Projects range from curricular programs to undergraduate research projects to guest speaker series to external programs that promote understanding of these fields to the public.
The UNC principal investigators are Claude Clegg, Lyle V. Jones Distinguished Professor and chair of the department of African, African American and diaspora studies, and Ariana Vigil, Druscilla French Distinguished Professor and chair of the department of women’s and gender studies.
The department of African, African American and diaspora studies is working to expand the scope of Africana studies in the Southeast. AAAD will launch a graduate program, offering both a master’s and a Ph.D. in Africana studies, in fall 2025. This will make UNC-Chapel Hill the only public institution in the Southeast offering a Ph.D. in this discipline. In addition, AAAD recently founded the Africana Studies Alliance of North Carolina, a statewide organization designed to enhance the future of Africana and Black studies programs across the region. The department will also use the grant to support undergraduate honors students’ thesis projects and faculty research projects.
The department of women’s and gender studies will undertake several projects related to social justice issues under the Mellon grant, including an April 12 event, “Black Queerness and the Everyday,” at the Hayti Heritage Center in Durham. The department will also host a retreat for women’s and gender studies faculty leaders across the state to discuss and brainstorm ways to collaborate with one another. Course development funds will support a new undergraduate course on feminist food politics and justice, and the department plans a keynote lecture highlighting a major feminist scholar-activist.
“We are proud to support colleges and universities in the United States that are advancing deep research and curricular engagement with the stories and histories of our country’s vast diversity and the modes of inquiry that race, gender and ethnic studies explore and expand,” said Mellon Foundation President Elizabeth Alexander.
Learn more about the recent grantees.