December 2015
THE DIVIDED CITY
A Mellon-Funded Urban Humanities Initiative
Center for the Humanities in Arts & Sciences and
College of Architecture and Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Design
FACULTY COLLABORATIVE GRANTS
Call for Proposals,
Third Round
Due Date: Monday, February 15, 2016
Notification of Awards: March 21, 2016
Disbursement of Funds: April 1, 2016
The Center for the Humanities, in partnership with the College and Graduate School of
Architecture and Urban Design, is pleased to announce an ongoing funding opportunity for
tenure-track and tenured faculty, as part of our interdisciplinary initiative on The Divided
City. We are awarding multiple grants of up to $20,000 each in support of collaborative
research, community engagement, and/or curriculum development on urban segregation
broadly conceived.
The Divided City in Brief
Generously supported by the Mellon Foundation, our four-year initiative is aimed at
bringing humanities scholars into productive dialogue with architects, urban designers,
landscape architects, legal scholars, sociologists, geographers, GIS cartographers, and
others around one of the most persistent and vexing issues in urban studies: segregation.
By segregation we mean not only once-legal racial separation in the United States or South
Africa, but also persistent and widespread issues related to cities divided along racial,
cultural, and economic lines through the spatial divisions found in so many parts of the
world. These issues include social isolation and fragmentation, loneliness, environmental
risks, and lack of access to basic services such as food, transit, health care, and public
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education. The Divided City Initiative focuses on how segregation in this broad sense has
and often continues to play out as a set of spatial practices in cities, neighborhoods, and
public spaces, including schools, health facilities, and entertainment venues. Using the St.
Louis metropolitan area as one of our research sites, we intend to explore the intersecting
social and spatial practices of urban separation locally and globally.
Eligibility/Grant Details
In order to support faculty interest in The Divided City and to forge sustainable
interdisciplinary and international networks, we are offering competitive grants to
Washington University faculty in support of collaborative work with colleagues locally
and/or globally. The collaboration must involve a humanities scholar1 and at least one
other discipline, including, for example, Architecture, Urban Design, Landscape
Architecture, Anthropology, Urban Studies, Economics, Psychology, Social Work, Public
Health, Business, or Law. We are especially interested in projects that bring the Humanities
into productive dialogue with Architecture and Urban Design. Faculty members may also
partner with Washington University Libraries and with institutions (universities, museum,
libraries) in the St. Louis area. As part of their collaborative work, faculty members are
required either to produce a community-based public humanities project or to contribute
material to our Divided City Online project (which can be a tool to implement your project
plan or to publicize your project after its completion). Grants may be used to support the
following:
I.
Collaborative Research. Faculty may apply for grants to support collaborative
research related to urban segregation/separation. Each funded project should
include among its activities bringing a distinguished scholar to campus who has
expertise in the relevant field of research. (Documentation should be included with
the proposal that indicates the speaker has agreed to visit.) The visitor will deliver
1
The Humanities at Washington University include the discipline-based departments of Art History and
Archaeology; Classics; East Asian Languages and Cultures; English; Germanic Languages and Literatures;
History; Jewish, Islamic, and Near Eastern Languages and Cultures; Music; Performing Arts; Philosophy; and
Romance Languages and Literatures, as well as humanistic research and teaching in a range of
interdisciplinary programs: African and African American Studies, American Culture Studies, Comparative
Literature; Film and Media Studies, International and Area Studies, Religious Studies, Urban Studies, and
Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.
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at least one public lecture that contributes to the broader Divided City initiative.
Videotapes of presentations will be archived for public use on the Divided City
Online website.) Collaborative research teams are strongly encouraged to include an
international dimension to their project.
II.
Interdisciplinary Curriculum Development. Building on existing efforts at
Washington University to encourage cross-school teaching, we will provide start-up
funds for teaching replacement, summer salary,2 and work-study support in order
for faculty to have the time and the resources to develop a cross-school and/or
interdisciplinary course in the Urban Humanities. Our goal is for new classes to be
developed that blend the humanities and another discipline and can be integrated
into existing department curricula, or for existing courses to be retooled as part of
new cross-school curricular initiatives being spearheaded by the provost’s office.
We are especially interested in the development of larger interdisciplinary and
cross-school undergraduate courses that are team-taught and organized around
broad themes such as segregation, housing, or urban poverty.
III.
Community Engagement. In order to build more ties between faculty research on St.
Louis and the actual community of St. Louis, we will support Urban Humanities
projects that forge sustainable connections with local K-12 schools, with St. Louis
institutions such as the Saint Louis Art Museum, the Missouri History Museum, and
the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, with neighboring institutions of higher
learning, as well as with community-based non-profit organizations like Great
Rivers Greenway and Habitat for Humanity.
Proposal Requirements
A proposal should contain the following information in one document:
1. A narrative description of the project, not to exceed 1000 words, that details its
disciplinary and intellectual underpinnings, its content and form, and what the
2
Please note summer salaries are subject to tax.
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applicants intend to accomplish during the term of the grant. Please be sure to
describe the project’s specific outcomes and what criteria will be used to evaluate
its success.
2. A statement, not to exceed 250 words, that explains the project’s relevance to the
broader Divided City Initiative.
3. Abbreviated CVs (2 pp.) for all participants, including invited scholars.
4. Budget and timeline for the project. Grants cannot exceed $20,000. All funds should
be expended by the end of the 12-month grant period. Exceptions require written
approval from the director of the Center for the Humanities.
5. One letter of recommendation in support of the application. Proposals for
collaborative research should include one letter from an external scholar with
expertise in the area of research; curriculum development proposals should include
a letter of support from the appropriate chair or dean; community engagement
proposals require a letter in support of the project from any external institutional
partners (library, museum, etc.). Letters can be sent by email to
humapp@artsci.wustl.edu.
Faculty members can apply for support in multiple years or in the same year, under
different categories: research, curriculum, community engagement.
The entire application can be submitted via email. Please send to artscidivcityapp@email.wustl.edu.
Proposals will be evaluated using the following criteria:
1. How does the project strengthen faculty interdisciplinary expertise?
2. How does the project enhance the resources (online and archival) available for
studying segregation locally and/or globally?
3. Will the project help build stronger and more sustainable ties with other institutions
or organizations?
4. Does the project expand and deepen the global reach of the Humanities at
Washington University?
5. Where does the project situate the Humanities in its effort to understand, analyze,
and address the ongoing realities of segregation, inequality, and isolation in today’s
cities? Is it informed by work in Architecture, Urban Design, or Landscape
Architecture?
For further information on the Divided City Initiative, please see
http://cenhum.artsci.wustl.edu/Divided-City-Initiative. Questions can be addressed to Tila
Neguse, The Divided City project coordinator at the Center for the Humanities at
tneguse@wustl.edu.