Alexis Boylan, associate director of NEHC, has written a summary of NEHC’s first semester as an organization:
It has been an amazing first few months for NEHC. The Mellon Foundation allowed us to come out of the gate running with their generous award of $100,000. This funding supported two crucial pilot programs that kicked-off this fall. The first, is a program for schools to share visiting scholars. Our first speaker was Professor Kate Manne, who travelled from Amherst College to UConn, and finally Wellesley College for a week in early October. Her talks and presentations lit a fire across the three schools and proved the value of this kind of progressive intellectual exchange. Our next speaker will be Professor Mark Rifkin, coming the first week in March 2019. We are already working on plans to expand his voice beyond the three schools while he visits New England.
The second pilot program that kicked off this term is the Faculty of Color Working Group. This group will create outreach, mentoring, and support for the diverse faculty at NEHC schools. Organized and coordinated by Professor Melina Pappademos and Cathy Schlund-Vials the executive committee has met and a large conference is being planned for the Spring 2019. Stay-tuned for more on that event.
Finally, NEHC is planning to announce a call for proposals for its first round of seed-funded support grants for cross-NEHC collaborative projects. This is truly exciting for all of us as it marks another tangible move to creating strong and sustainable networks of scholarships across the region.
It has been a big year, and we are just getting started. Stayed tuned to our webpage, twitter, and facebook, for opportunities, news, and general humanities information. We are excited about the strength and voice we have together to promote humanities scholarship and activism.