Mellon Foundation Awards 14M+ for Humanities-Grounded Research and Curricular Projects

Announced in 2023, the open call, spearheaded by Mellon’s Higher Learning program area, is part of the Foundation’s ongoing efforts to further democratize access to humanities funding among a broader range of higher education institutions, including regional public universities, minority-serving institutions, and first-time Mellon grantees. The call invited proposals from higher education institutions from across the country to submit proposals for research and curricular projects focused on any of three distinct categories: Cultures of U.S. Democracy, Environmental Justice Studies, and Social Justice and Disciplinary Knowledge.

“We at Mellon know that the significance of the humanities is not merely academic. We also know that humanities scholars at institutions across the country are doing phenomenal work that is making a real impact in the areas targeted by our call” said Phillip Brian Harper, program director for Higher Learning at the Mellon Foundation. “Our objective with this call was to identify and support some of the strongest instances of that work, and the incredibly high quality of the selected grantees shows that we succeeded spectacularly.”

The call was open to all accredited, non-profit, four-year liberal arts degree-granting institutions in the US with over 1,000 full-time degree-seeking undergraduates and multiple humanities degree programs. It generated more than 470 submissions from 260 institutions.

Cultures of U.S. Democracy

Hobart and William Smith Colleges – Matters of Memory - Confronting Conflicting Narratives in a Small American City – to create team-taught, bi-disciplinary seminars exploring cultural heritage within Geneva, New York, engaging students in local histories and teaching practical ethics of speaking, listening, and acting across diverse identities.

Morningside University – At Home in Siouxland - A Humanities Collaboratory for Displacement and Belonging – to establish a humanities collaboratory to develop courses, foster community-driven public humanities projects, and conduct pedagogical workshops focused on belonging in local Indigenous and immigrant communities.

Northeastern University – Data Theatre for Civic Deliberation – to translate quantitative data into embodied storytelling through data theatre workshops and participatory performance events, enabling community stakeholders to engage in decision-making about local issues like gentrification and urban green space development.

University at Buffalo – Inclusive Immigration and Democratic Revival in a Rust Belt City – to explore how welcoming cultures create foundations for democratic innovation through communal spaces - the bazaar, museum, and civic organization - facilitating new pedagogical learning through workshops about democracy, diversity, and inclusion.

Susquehanna University – Engaging Democratic Ethos: Innovative Rhetorical Education for a Participatory Society – to develop rhetoric-based first-year seminars on central curriculum classes exploring democratic culture, an undergraduate major in professional and civic writing, and a certificate program for community members.

University of Michigan at Flint – Cracks in the Pavement - Cultures of Democracy in Post-Democratic Flint – to develop a living oral history website to revive democratic participation in Flint, fostering co-education opportunities and empowering community members to narrate their experiences outside traditional governance structures.

University of Montana – Democratizing the Humanities – to launch a civic education and democracy studies program to revitalize humanities and emphasize democratic values, implementing research initiatives to become a regional center for studying US democracy.

University of Portland – Building a Civic Humanities Incubator – to develop civic humanities courses and programs that create lasting campus and community connections, fostering practices for engaging difference through collaboration among faculty, undergraduates, and regional partners.

University of Tulsa – Sovereignty and Democracy in Indian Country – to engage with democratic cultures at the intersection of state and tribal sovereignties through community-engaged research, curriculum development, and public programming, including annual seminars and exhibitions.

Environmental Justice Studies

Boston University – Transforming Narratives for Environmental Justice – to collaborate with interdisciplinary teams to develop tools for local climate adaptation, engaging Boston-area organizations and students in media production and humanities to create critical narrative interventions.

City College of New York – SUSTAIN-NYC: Storytelling for Urban Sustainability and Transformation in New York City – to capture ongoing environmental justice struggles in New York City, co-creating public scholarship and providing undergraduate fellowships to strengthen the environmental humanities pathway.

Franklin & Marshall College – The Agricultural Futures Archive: Rural and Urban Growers in the Shadow of the Solar Panel – to collect and create a web archive from 500 oral testimonies of regional small-scale growers that will be available as primary source material for humanities educators, researchers and policymakers.

Juniata College – A Humanities Approach to Learning about Environmental Challenges in Appalachian Pennsylvania – to develop a curriculum infused with the citizen experience to empower students, foster community trust, and deepen connections to natural resources.

Lawrence University – Environmental Justice in the Watershed of the Menominee Nation – to collaborate with College of the Menominee Nation through elder-in-residence programs, community-engaged courses, and faculty exchange to address watershed environmental injustices.

Trinity College – Urban Environmental Justice in Hartford – to address Hartford residents' environmental remediation priorities following the closure of a local trash-burning plant, training students in humanistic methods while providing research support and community teaching stipends. Partners include the Center for Leadership and Justice and the Stowe Center for Literary Activism.

University of Illinois Chicago – Black Midwest Justice Hub – to create a digital platform serving as public pedagogy tool through the Black Midwest Initiative, bringing together humanist faculty, students, organizers, and creatives working toward environmental and social justice on behalf of Black people and communities in the greater Midwest.

University of Miami – Miami as Ground Zero: Tracing the Magic City’s Environmental History and Future – to address concerns over climate change, environmental sustainability, and community equity by grounding these issues in Miami’s history, and producing an online Miami environmental history timeline, climate resilience exhibit, and course cluster in environmental humanities.

University of Minnesota of Duluth – UMD Community Engaged Food and Environmental Justice Studies Hub – to create a humanities-based curriculum that provides environmentally sound food justice solutions through qualitative methods, engaging community scholarship across multiple disciplines.

Wagner College – Cultivating Justice: Food, Environment, and Human Stories – to explore issues impacting Staten Island foodways, addressing ecological devastation, immigration, education disparity, waste management, and healthcare inequality through courses and workshops.

Social Justice and Disciplinary Knowledge

Connecticut College – A Right to Housing: Case Study Connecticut – to build a platform for public research and dialogue around housing access and security that focuses a regional lens on the national housing crisis, including a traveling exhibition, a digital publication, and curricular initiatives.

Georgia State University – Gullah/Geechee Sacred Land Project – to document and develop effective protocols to preserve Gullah/Geechee sacred sites under development threat, building on work at Maryfield Cemetery and expanding the Gullah/Geechee Field School.

Grambling State University – Voices of Grambling: Scaling Digital Equity Projects – to expand virtual-reality reconstruction of a 1967 campus protest, providing access to place-based historical knowledge on African American history and digital equity.

Gustavus Adolphus College – Object Lessons: Repatriation, Provenance, and Access in Art History – to utilize art history methods to redress institutional archival material injustices, developing faculty training and course checklists for conducting research.

Loyola Marymount University – Habitable Worlds: A Disability, Ethics, and AI Think Tank – to bridge AI practitioners and disability justice scholars and activists to create a more equitable AI through faculty fellowships, community-based learning courses, and annual symposia.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Music and Theater Arts Section) – Engaging with Music and Musicking through Engagement: Equity and Disciplinary Reimagining in the 21st-Century Music Theory Classroom – to develop open-access undergraduate music theory curriculum addressing Western European biases through pedagogical innovation conferences and curricular development.

Salem State University – The Humanities Brigade – to unite diverse first-year student cohorts in yearlong humanities-based academic learning communities and paid civic humanities internships addressing community-identified social justice issues explored in the classroom.

State University of New York College at Geneseo – Social Justice and the Humanities - Disciplinary Knowledge and Practice – to create an integrated, first-year general education pathway focused on humanities-centered social justice inquiry in place-based contexts that can serve as a model for other institutions.

University of Minnesota of Twin Cities – Transforming the Face of Philosophy to Effect Global Change Through the Center for Canon Expansion and Change – to expand the Center for Canon Expansion and Change's summer program to accelerate disciplinary transformation in philosophy.

University of Nebraska at Omaha – Religious Thought and Migrant Justice – to improve understanding of religious communities' responses to immigration through theological thought and qualitative research, integrating findings into service-learning courses.

University of Pittsburgh – Reparative Histories of Art and Architecture – to center social justice analysis in the structural redesign of the History of Art and Architecture Department through faculty-student workshops and open-access curriculum development.

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The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is the nation’s largest supporter of the arts and humanities. Since 1969, the Foundation has been guided by its core belief that the humanities and arts are essential to human understanding. The Foundation believes that the arts and humanities are where we express our complex humanity, and that everyone deserves the beauty, transcendence, and freedom that can be found there. Through our grants, we seek to build just communities enriched by meaning and empowered by critical thinking, where ideas and imagination can thrive.