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Christina Geisse

The Asian Studies Program was incredible because most professors were undertaking their own research, passionate about their subject of study, and enthusiastic about sharing their knowledge with students. It felt fresh and profound at the same time. Inspiring! 

Christina Geisse
Kim Sluchansky

I was able to delve deep and focus on the areas of Asian Studies that truly interested me, and therefore gained a much more thorough and developed understanding of my fields of interest, which are applicable to my current career path. Also, the professors are extremely helpful and want their students to succeed. They were very supportive both while I was at UH and after I graduated.

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University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa awarded $1.25 million from the Mellon Foundation

Mellon Foundation Awards More Than $18 Million to Public Colleges and Universities for Race, Ethnic, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Newly Created ‘Affirming Multivocal Humanities’ Initiative Will Support 95 Curricular Programs Across the Nation

Learn about the UH initiative in depth at the Mellon Foundation feature, “On the Syllabus: New Solutions to the Climate Crisis”

March 26, 2024, NEW YORK, NY – The Mellon Foundation announced today that as part of an ongoing commitment to supporting humanities-based learning, the foundation has awarded more than $18 million to 95 public college and university programs—across 66 institutions—that boldly advance the study of race, ethnicity, gender or sexuality through its new ‘Affirming Multivocal Humanities’ initiative. Funding will support both established and novel curricular programs and co-curricular activities ranging from undergraduate research projects and guest speaker series, microgrants for community organizations and external programs to promote clear understandings of the fields to the public. 

As the nation’s largest funder of the arts, culture, and humanities, Mellon has long supported the exploration of multivocality within the academic space. Through the Affirming Multivocal Humanities initiative, the foundation further addresses the continuing need for nuanced scholarship on the breadth of the human experience through race, ethnic, gender, and sexuality studies. In this pivotal moment in the history of the United States, research and teaching in these fields epitomize the essential exercise of academic freedom within the US higher education system.

“The study of race, gender, and sexuality has become ever more central to work in the humanities over the last thirty years or so,” said Mellon Foundation Director of Higher Learning Phillip Brian Harper, “and it is important that inquiry in these areas—which is of perennial interest to students—continues to enjoy robust support.”

“Affirming Multivocal Humanities is an initiative that champions the insightful scholarship and teaching taking place in these disciplines – those that are too often undervalued and even undermined in American society today,” said Mellon Foundation President Elizabeth Alexander. “We are proud to support colleges and universities in the United States that are advancing deep research and curricular engagement with the stories and histories of our country’s vast diversity and the modes of inquiry that race, gender, and ethnic studies explore and expand.”

As part of Affirming Multivocal Humanities, Mellon offered grants of $100,000 to public colleges and universities that awarded at least ten bachelor’s degrees in women’s/gender and sexuality studies or in any individual US ethnic studies field in 2021. An additional set of larger grants was made to support special initiatives at five public universities. Those five grantee institutions are named below. For more information about this initiative and for a complete listing of institutions and their curricular projects, please click here. 

University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa (Honolulu, HI) – $1,250,000: This three-year initiative will launch an interdisciplinary thematic cluster on Asian-American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) environmental humanities and environmental justice, focused on the role of the humanities in addressing critical questions about environmental justice for AAPI communities in Hawai’i, at UHM, and across the US, Asia, and Oceania. The primary goal of the grant is to advance environmental humanities towards environmental justice and educational equity for AAPI students with long-term local, regional, and national impact.

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About The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is the nation’s largest supporter of the arts and humanities.  Since 1969, the Foundation has been guided by its core belief that the humanities and arts are essential to human understanding. The Foundation believes that the arts and humanities are where we express our complex humanity, and that everyone deserves the beauty, transcendence, and freedom that can be found there.  Through our grants, we seek to build just communities enriched by meaning and empowered by critical thinking, where ideas and imagination can thrive. Learn more at mellon.org.

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