What Is the Institute for the Humanities?

Our mission is to serve as a national and international centerpiece for scholarly research in the humanities and creative work in the arts at the University of Michigan. We exist to deepen synergies among the humanities, the arts and other regions of the University, to carry forward the heritage of the humanities, and to bring the voices of the humanities to public life.
At the core of the Institute is our fellowship program, which currently funds seven Michigan faculty and six graduate students to work in the Institute for one year. The Institute also hosts five to seven visiting fellows each year. Together this group forms a community of Fellows, a special working environment that differs significantly from departments or from solitary scholarship. The resulting cross-fertilization breeds new ideas, new approaches, new avenues to explore.
Our public outreach program includes the Fall and Spring Seminars, art exhibitions, lectures and brown bag series, all of which are open to the public.

A highlight of the Institute's structure is the integration of graduate students and faculty in a collegial setting. Graduate students leave the Institute seasoned by the experience, better able to assume roles as productive faculty in new jobs. Faculty, in turn, find themselves exposed to some of the newest ideas, to the forward reach that young colleagues bring to the table. The fellows' selection makes a point of integrating young faculty ("new voices") with seasoned scholars.

What Makes Our Institute Unique?

• The University of Michigan itself has a longstanding tradition of interdisciplinarity. Over fifty percent of faculty in the humanities and social sciences have multiple appointments among disciplines and programs. The Institute fosters cross-disciplinary connections that are already present in the University.
• "No humanities center in the country has done more thinking and work in bringing art and traditional humanities together than Michigan's," wrote our External Reviewers in their 2003 Report. Since our very beginnings we have included practitioners with theorists, artists and performers and writers with critics.
• Breadth of purpose is central to our mandate. We seek to preserve and continue the heritage of the humanities yet also to generate new and often controversial scholarship in the humanities.

How Do We Envision Growth over the Next Five Years?

We will pursue an array of new programs, we will expand our fellowships, and we will bring the humanities to new publics. Some examples:

• Crossing the Diag: Humanities in Dialogue, a new series placing the humanities, music and the arts in new forms of conversation with law, science, medicine, social science, business and public policy on issues crucial to our time
• Global Fellowship Program, to bring a scholar to Michigan from abroad to teach for a semester, contribute to the internationalization of the University, and develop a conference or seminar series in conjunction with a short-term visit by a fellow with complementary interests
• Arts and Knowledge Fellowship Program, to bring an artist, curator, impresario or scholar for a term. Besides teaching, this fellow will develop an arts event with another presenting organization (University Museum of Art, University Musical Society) featuring a related lecture series and book publication
• Collaborative or "cluster" fellowships in the arts and humanities, short-term support for faculty and graduate students to encourage innovation and collaboration
• Careers in the Making, a fellowship to provide a recent MFA graduate in creative writing, musical composition, theater, art or architecture time to complete or refashion a body of work for entry into the professional arts world
• Seminars in the Cities, taking the best of the University of Michigan to nationwide audiences: a partnership with the Chicago Humanities Festival, seminars in Detroit, New York, Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Sarasota

What Does the Current Economic Climate Mean to the Institute?

Michigan's Institute has proven the wisdom of our early advisors, who challenged us to raise our own endowment to support fellowships and programs. As federal, state and corporate funding has diminished, universities - including Michigan - have turned to individuals and foundations for resources. Over our seventeen years of existence we have become largely self-supporting through challenge grants, the exemplary generosity of Michigan's alumni and friends, and our focus on raising endowment. As universities experience severe cuts in funding from nearly all quarters, and the gap between funding for research in the humanities and funding for the natural and social sciences continues to widen, we are ever more aware of the importance of continuing to raise endowment funds.

What If our Funding Declined? What If Universities Stopped Supporting Humanities and Arts?

In twenty-five years' time there would be no new scholarship on Shakespeare, Beethoven, the Ramayana, Goethe, Thomas Jefferson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, ancient Rome, contemporary cinema and media. Since scholarship is fundamental to what makes good teaching, one would have to imagine an undergraduate curriculum at Michigan (as elsewhere) with little of what makes the College of Literature, Science and the Arts an outstanding exemplar of the liberal arts education. The humanities are a fundamental civilizing agent. They provide what Matthew Arnold called the "best that has been thought in the world," teaching future generations the values of cultivation, ethics and respect for human diversity.