For Faculty
The Hurford Humanities Center places at the heart of its mission an array of programs intended to strengthen the humanities and the arts at the College. Through its Faculty Seminar, Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellowships, Working Groups, Reading Groups, and opportunities for collaborative research between faculty and students and other programs, the Center champions scholarship as a core element of the College's vital intellectual life.
Two of the Center's major initiatives for faculty each year, the Faculty Humanities Seminar and the Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellowship, are integrally connected in order to maximize their enhancement of Haverford's academic program. The seminar is a treasured source of faculty renewal, refreshment, and innovation. Each fall, faculty across disciplines are invited to apply to join the next year's seminar if they feel that it might enhance their own research and teaching interests, and afford them rewarding collaborative or interdisciplinary interactions. Haverford's Mellon Fellows are recent humanities Ph.D.s who are brought to Haverford—to work with faculty (in their first year, the Faculty Humanities Seminar), with students (with two courses each year), and with the wider community (in a public symposium mounted during each Fellow's second year. The Faculty Seminar topic inspires the criteria of the annual Mellon Post-Doc search in the hopes of identifying young academics who might bring an expertise or field of interest that will enhance not only the seminar, but Haverford's overall curriculum as well.
Other initiatives designed specifically for faculty include:
- Grants (Access/Enrichment Grants, Course Renovation/Innovation Grants, Course Enhancement Grants, Tuttle Fund for Development of Visual Culture Across the Curriculum, Mellon Residency Planning Grant);
- Funding for sponsored groups (Working Groups, Reading Groups);
- Funding for forums: symposia (such as the annual Mellon Fellow Symposium, or a Faculty and/or Department proposed symposium); or film or speaker series;
- Funding for summer opportunities: for faculty to hire Student Research Assistants (SRAs) and for a curricular institute;
- Funding arts experiences: "Dialogues on Arts"; for residencies of artists, scholars, and performers; or art exhibits or performance events.