The National Endowment for the Humanities announced Monday it is giving UC Davis $379,000 in seed money and the opportunity to create one of 10 regional humanities centers.
"It's great news," said Jay Mechling, professor of American studies and center project director. "UC Davis is going to have a high-visibility, high-impact center for the humanities for the study of the Pacific United States."
Dedicated to the cultures in the region, the new Pacific Regional Humanities Center will have many institutional partners in the five Pacific states and three territories, Mechling said. The goal is to give the public an ownership of the humanities outside of an academic setting.
Proposals include education for public school teachers and students, radio and television documentaries, graduate student outreach to book clubs and historical societies, public programs at community centers, traveling art exhibitions, and Web sites.
The center will also help sponsor student and faculty research on the region's cultures. The region includes California, Oregon, Washington, Alaska, Hawaii, Guam, American Samoa and the Northern Marianas.
The grant represents a sea change in perspective for the humanities at UC Davis, said Elizabeth Langland, dean of the Division of Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies.
"It's been an empowering process for the faculty members to see they can compete for and win substantial grants," Langland said. "They were awarded one of the largest grants ever for the humanities at UC Davis. I am proud of their significant accomplishment."
Each of the 10 centers will receive up to $379,000 from the national endowment over the next three years to be matched with another $1.13 million in other funding, such as other grants and private gifts.
Originally, each center was to receive from the National Endowment for the Humanities $5 million over five years to be matched with another $15 million. The change in presidential administrations and shift in priorities resulted in the grant reduction, Mechling said.
"We have the blue print for a $20 million center with lots of ideas," Mechling said. "We will have to build more slowly, figuring out where to start and where the money is coming from. But we also have many talented people working to solve those issues."
Both Langland and Mechling say the plan, developed with a $50,000 planning grant from the national endowment, has enlarged the vision for the UC Davis humanities' land-grant responsibilities.
"One of the reasons we won the competition is that we take very seriously the land-grant mission of bringing university research to the public," Mechling said. "This center will be a catalyst for doing that in the humanities."
The bulk of the center work will be in providing coordination and other kinds of services between UC Davis partners who will create public humanities programs, he added.
Those partners include the eight state and territorial humanities councils and the many academic humanities institutes and departments within the University of California and at California State University, Stanford University, the University of Washington and other universities. The partnership also includes museums - ranging in size and focus from the Yakama Nation Museum in Toppenish, Wash., to the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles; historical societies; school districts; and Native American tribal councils.
Mechling also hopes to collaborate with UC Davis' competitor for the grant, San Francisco State University, to take advantage of its many strengths in the humanities for the region.
A number of themes are planned for the center, including the issue of citizenship.
"We want to explore the issues of inclusivity and intercultural perspectives through public forums coordinated throughout the region," said project participant Inés Hernández-Avila, associate professor of Native American studies.
The center will also emphasize indigenous cultures. Scholars from Native American studies and Asian American studies will create more links with indigenous peoples throughout the region, including Hawaii and the Pacific territories.
One plan is to leverage the UC Davis Gorman Museum's expertise with Native American arts and crafts with the Smithsonian's new National Museum of American Indians to promote regional exhibitions.
The humanities center also will emphasize the sense of place within the Pacific region by creating a network of writers, thinkers, readers and teachers who will be discussing the concept, said Louis Warren, UC Davis associate professor of history and a project participant. Warren envisions graduate students venturing into California towns to meet with local book clubs on humanities topics.
"Graduate students will get the chance to talk to people about the humanities and to understand what the humanities are doing in the lives of everyday people," Warren said. "Humanities are absolutely vital because they are about stories; you cannot live your life without stories, nobody does."
To learn more about the project, visit the center Web site at http://prhc.ucdavis.edu/.