Newswise — The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded NYU’s Center for the Humanities a $400,000 grant to support both existing and new programming.
“We are extremely grateful to the Mellon Foundation for its generosity, which will allow us to bring new and innovative humanities scholars into the field while enhancing our existing endeavors,” says Ulrich Baer, NYU’s vice provost for faculty, arts, humanities, and diversity and a professor of German and Comparative Literature.
The four-year award will support a new seminar for freshmen, “On Being Human,” which will offer an interdisciplinary focus on how the humanities shaped global concerns and values related to human rights, public health, and the right to privacy.
It will also fund a public events series of the same name, four faculty fellows from underrepresented backgrounds, who will be appointed annually for one-year terms, and NYU’s Prison Education Initiative, which brings college education to incarcerated individuals at New York State’s Wallkill Correctional Facility.
“This grant will help the Center continue its commitment to a strong humanities curriculum and fulfill its core mission to diversify the humanities and its faculty,” notes Jane Tylus, faculty director of the Center for the Humanities and a professor of Italian Studies at NYU. “It will also aid us in introducing students to how knowledge about the human condition is produced and how they can contribute to its evolving conception.”
Editor’s Note:Created in 2007, the New York University Center for the Humanities explores the role of the humanities within the university and in the global community by supporting graduate and faculty fellows, clusters of faculty engaged in team-teaching, working research groups, and outreach programs to schools and cultural communities in New York City. The Center sponsors humanities events on campus and at NYU’s global sites and it backs cutting-edge research across the discipline. For more, please visit www.nyuhumanities.org.
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