• "The Institute for the Humanities is a centerpiece for research and public outreach in the humanities at the University of Michigan."        Mary Sue Coleman
• The Institute for the Humanities offers year long fellowships to Michigan faculty and graduate students. We bring visiting scholars and artists to the university, and we mount a broad array of seminars, lectures, conferences, exhibitions, and public events. We are “at or near the top” of humanities institutes in North America, and more engaged in the arts than any other according to our most recent external review. We are the only humanities institute to have a museum quality gallery which allows visual work to be part of our projects and programs.

• OUR MISSION

• • To raise the outstanding scholarship of Michigan faculty to new levels of excellence.
  We offer full year fellowships for scholars and artists across the arts and humanities to think, write, create away from their routines, and through joint conversation. The results of time and cross-pollination are innovation and/or deepening of the longstanding traditions of the humanities.
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  • To expand the domain of the humanities by placing the humanities in ongoing partnership with the arts, social sciences, law, public policy and the university as a whole.
  Our programs and exhibits bring the humanities to the pressing issues of our time through dialogue across university and universe on HIV/AIDS, impoverishment, the Media, cities in ruin, etc….
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  • To globalize the humanities by forming effective partnerships with universities, institutes and scholars around the world.
  We bring the humanities in Ghana, South Africa, China, France, and former Soviet Republics into conversation with UM in ways that enhance graduate education, research, and university affiliation.
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  • To bring about new modes of research in the humanities.
  We pioneer collaborative, digital, multi-year and other forms of research across the College of Literature, Science and the Arts to insure that Michigan remains on the cusp of world excellence.
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  • To deepen the place of the humanities in public life.
  Our public seminars and partnerships with the University Musical Society, the Chicago Humanities Festival, the Royal Shakespeare Festival bring the best of Michigan to alumni, friends and to the wider public at large. Our use of the web carries public outreach to a new dimension.

• OUR AIMS

• • To become the premier institute in the world integrating the humanities with the arts.
  • To stand at the forefront of public outreach in the humanities.
  • To maximize our contributions to the humanities by maximizing the number of unique graduate and faculty fellowships we can offer.
  • To lead the way to new research in the humanities.

• WAYS TO HELP US ACHIEVE OUR AIMS

• • Endow a Graduate Student Fellowship ($750,000)
  Offer a brilliant young scholar the best fellowship in the humanities, in which the fellow may gain confidence and wide range, and quite likely go on to one of the best jobs in academia. Two more graduate student fellowships and we reach our target of eight!

  • Name our gallery ($1,000,000)
  Allow us to include exhibition in everything we do by giving us the funds to secure top quality work and mount more shows. Our gallery already gains notice in the Chronicle of Higher Education and many other publications.

  • Endow our Emerging Scholars Prize ($750,000)
  Lend your stamp of approval to the best new scholarship the humanities has to offer, thus dignifying the new generation of humanists. Our enterprise stands or falls on young people.

  • Enhance our web technology (any amount)
  Give us the means to communicate with you and with our scholarly colleagues worldwide. In five years time we shall, with your help, live as much on the web as on “dry land.”

  • Underwrite a public outreach event ($7,000)
  Allow us to bring the best of the humanities to the public. Check out our track record of Spring and Fall Seminars, as well as our collaborations with the University Musical Society, the Royal Shakespeare Company, and the Chicago Humanities Festival.

  • Underwrite an exhibition ($10,000)
  Stamp an exhibition with your name on it and watch how we build unique intellectual activity around it.

  • Build the Director's Discretionary Fund
  Give the director the flexibility he or she needs to make the Institute more excellent.

  • Contribute to our general fund
  Allow our outstanding staff to grow to keep up with our vision.

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Institute for the Humanities
202 S. Thayer Street, Suite 111
Ann Arbor, MI 48104-1608 USA