The UC Davis Humanities Institute is an interdisciplinary research center that supports UC Davis faculty in the humanities and humanistically-oriented social sciences through Intellectual Collaborations, Grant Assistance, and Event Support. It also brings the campus and larger community together to address pressing issues in the Public Intellectuals Forum, a collaboration with the Center for History, Society, and Culture. Current DHI priorities include scholarship on California and its surrounding regions and digital innovation. These are supported through the California Cultures Initiative and the Digital Humanities Initiative. The DHI also offers office space for meetings and visiting scholars.
The DHI advocates broadly for the humanities through membership in national organizations as well as the UC Humanities Consortium, a system-wide network of humanities centers that, along with the UC Humanities Research Institute and the UC Institute for Research in the Arts, provides a wide range of financial and intellectual resources for scholars in the arts and humanities throughout the state of California. The DHI is funded by the Office of the President through the Humanities Consortium Multi Campus Research Initiative, the Dean of Humanities, Arts, and Cultural Studies, the Vice Chancellor of Research, and the Dean of Social Sciences.
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View our 2008-2009 Annual Report
Introducing POV@DHI
This new blogsite - povatdhi.wordpress.com - provides an open forum for UC Davis faculty and graduate students in the humanities to discuss issues related to research in our field, its place within the University, and its value to our students and the public. Readers are invited to comment on POV pieces via the blog and to submit pieces for future columns to ctdelapena@ucdavis.edu.
The third essay, “The Humanities and the Crisis of Everything” by David Simpson, a Professor of English, is excerpted here:
Those who were at Andrew Delbanco’s talk on the ‘crisis in the humanities’ may recall him modeling a classroom exercise in which the ‘big questions’ about life, death and moral responsibility were addressed by way of a passage in Herman Melville’s novel White Jacket. It was a fine example of some of the best of what goes on in humanities classrooms, and when you see it you know what it is and why it is valuable. But how do you describe this experience to those who want a short answer to the question about why the humanities matter? Somehow it always sounds banal: “we teach critical engagement with the difficult but compulsive questions about what it means to be human, about how to think about one’s life while one is living it, how to participate fully in a public sphere where citizens are empowered with decision-making responsibilities (everything from jury service to raising children)”, and so on. It seems so much easier to say, as some scientists might say: “I am working toward a vaccine for swine flu”, or “I am on a team hoping to eliminate structural failures from the Bay Bridge”. No one doubts the value of these; everyone knows what is at stake. Commuters coming down with the flu have a double stake! …
Announcing the UC Humanities Network
The UC Office of Research has awarded major funding over five years to the UC Humanities Network. This network will link three related elements: the new UC Society of Fellows in the Humanities, a multi-tiered program of research fellowships for ladder-track faculty and graduate students; the new UC Consortium of Humanities Centers, a system-wide network of campus humanities centers and multi-campus research groups; and the nationally-renowned UC Humanities Research Initiative, which has a central networking role and itself continues to offer an ambitious portfolio of programs. Funds for these programs will begin flowing throughout the UC system this month.
DHI Faculty Research Seminars 2010-11:
Call for General Topic Proposals
The UC Davis Humanities Institute invites general TOPIC proposals for next year’s faculty research seminar. In this first phase of the proposal process, faculty members are invited to convene a research seminar around a broad topic of interdisciplinary inquiry.
UCHRI invites proposals for Residential Research Groups
Academic Year 2010-11
UC faculty, visiting scholars (including UC postdoctoral fellows), and UC graduate students are invited to apply for residential fellowships in the residential group:
Group residency quarter: Fall 2010
Convener: Catherine Kudlick, Department of History, UC Davis
Deadline: December 15, 2009
Academic Year 2011-12
The UC Humanities Research Institute (UCHRI) invites topical proposals for research groups to be in residence at the Institute for one or two quarters during the 2011-12 academic year (July 1 to June 30).
Deadline: December 15, 2009
Awards are contingent upon available funding.