An initiative in the College of LAS to strengthen the study of humanities is gaining steam, thanks to a $3 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation aimed at cross-campus collaboration.
The grant, announced in January, will support the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities (IPRH), which has been working to create new avenues for research and teaching through joint efforts across several campuses. Some 15 universities across the Midwest have joined the “Humanities Without Walls” program since it launched at the University of Illinois in 2012.
Dianne Harris, director of IPRH, expressed gratitude to the Mellon Foundation, in addition to the College of LAS and the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research at Illinois, which have also supported the program.
“This is an enormously exciting opportunity that will increase the impact and visibility of the humanities and arts at the University of Illinois and throughout the Midwest,” Harris says. “I have outstanding partners in this consortium. Working together, we developed a set of initiatives that will allow us to experiment at a very large scale, and to stimulate new research practices and the creation of new knowledge across some of the world’s most esteemed research universities.”
The Mellon grant will support the development of summer workshops to help students in the humanities pursue careers after college. It will also support a second initiative, called “Global Midwest,” intended to stimulate collaborative research across campuses that reveals the role of the Midwest in shaping global economies and cultures.
“The initiative offers the chance to redefine the model for scholarship in the humanities for this century,” says Illinois Chancellor Phyllis Wise. “When you assemble 15 great universities into a collaborative network where traditional disciplinary barriers and institutional differences are dissolved, you open up vast opportunities for debate, discovery, and world-changing ideas.”
The members of the “Humanities Without Walls” consortium includes the current Big Ten schools—Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Michigan State, Minnesota, Nebraska, Northwestern, Ohio State, Penn State, Purdue, and Wisconsin—as well as the University of Chicago, Notre Dame, and the University of Illinois at Chicago. The Chicago Humanities Festival and the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at Illinois have also teamed with the project as intellectual and infrastructural partners.
“The Humanities Without Walls consortium will highlight the University of Illinois’ strengths in the humanities, and it positions us as leaders in humanities research innovation,” says Brian Ross, interim dean of the College of LAS. “The college is excited to support the IPRH in this ambitious new project.”
