Research in the humanities is often an independent endeavor. A new initiative originating at the University of Illinois, however, is designed to expand scholarship in the liberal arts by inspiring cross-university collaboration.
“Humanities Without Walls” brings together the scholarship of liberal arts academics across the Midwest. The Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities at the U of I has received a $100,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to plan the consortium, which includes 13 other institutions, including the University of Notre Dame, University of Michigan, University of Chicago, and others.
“I am very excited about the new funding from the Mellon Foundation,” says U of I Chancellor Phyllis Wise. Moreover, she points out that “the current planning grant focuses on demonstrating the benefits of synergies amongst collaborations in the humanities across multiple respected universities.”
The recently established organization already has pilot programs underway. They come from the U of I’s Department of English, where Professor Ted Underwood will be the head of a collaborative project entitled “The Uses of Scale in Literary Studies,” and Professor Charles Wright will lead “Performing the Middle Ages.” Each project involves several other institutions.
Funding for these two projects comes mainly from the grant and is supplemented by support from the U of I.
Ruth Watkins, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, says the project is “creative and ambitious, with excellent potential to expand the visibility and impact of humanistic scholarship across the great research universities of the Midwest, and well beyond to the national and international scholarly scene.”
