Stanford and partners to expand study of race in the humanities with $4M Mellon Grant
Grant will increase opportunities for research and teaching about race across disciplines
Stanford’s Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity (CCSRE), in collaboration with similar centers at Brown University, the University of Chicago, and Yale University, are the beneficiaries of a $4 million grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to further promote the study of race and affirm its critical importance in the humanities.
“Work in the humanities and arts is essential to creating a more reflective and inclusive society,” said Jennifer DeVere Brody, CCSRE director and professor of Theater and Performance Studies. “This grant from the Mellon Foundation recognizes the significance of comparative race and ethnicity studies at Stanford and beyond.”
As CCSRE approaches its 25th anniversary in 2021, Brody said the grant will help fund “innovative scholarship that engages new publics on these urgent, if long-standing, questions of race, inequality and difference.”
CCSRE and the other centers plan to use the funds to support and retain race studies faculty by providing research grants, encouraging collaborations with scholars at other universities and colleges, and convening interdisciplinary conferences that drive new scholarship.
The centers also plan to develop curricula that create new conversations around undergraduate and graduate teaching about race and ethnicity, and they are exploring ways to engage the public—including public school students, educators, policymakers, journalists, unions, and civil rights organizations—around issues of race.
