Dear colleagues, students, and friends of the Center,
Welcome back to campus! I am excited to announce that, along with my co-PIs Christina Lux, Robin DeLugan (current interim director of the Center for this fall) and Hrant P. Hratchian, we received a $750,000 grant for our proposal “Our Interwoven Futures: The Public Humanities Design Studio as a Community-Engaged Hub for Dialogue on Social Justice” from the Mellon Foundation, which started Aug. 1. Thanks to this grant, our public humanities design studio will become an interdisciplinary hub for research, public humanities, and community engagement with a focus on social justice, and we will be able to fund summer faculty fellows, graduate fellows, and community fellows. Among other activities, there will be a “Common Read,” community lunches, and a speaker series, as well as mass media coaching and trainings for faculty. This builds on other recent fundraising success, since last year, along with our librarian colleagues Haipeng Li and Emily Lin, we received a $750,000 NEH Challenge Grant in funding for archives and special collections at UCM’s library, which Chancellor Muñoz generously matched.
Otherwise, we have continued to support research on campus and local community engagement, and have been involved in supporting scholars at risk, in collaboration with other faculty and administrators in the UC system. We invite you all to participate in the many events and talks we have planned for this academic year, including auditions for La vida es sueño/Life is a Dream, the Local Author Fair and the Merced LitFest, several digital tools workshop, the Alma, Corazón y Vida Exhibit on Chicanx art, and the Weekly Dissertation Writing Group for Graduate Students.
Fiat Lux,
