Two UC Davis College of Letters and Science humanities departments have been awarded a total of $1.25 million in grant funding from the Mellon Foundation.
The Department of Asian American Studies was approved for a $750,000 grant for a proposed interdisciplinary program and designated emphasis focused on critical empire and militarism studies. The Department of Gender, Sexuality & Women's Studies was approved for a $500,000 grant to fund a three-year working group focused on building the field of trans studies.
Specialization in critical empire and militarism studies
The interdisciplinary program and designated emphasis is intended to provided undergraduate and graduate students training that foregrounds the ways war, violence, dispossession and extraction are foundational in the systems of imperial expansion, racial capitalism and militarization.
In addition to the interdisciplinary program, the Department of Asian American Studies plans to hire a tenure-track assistant professor whose research is related to the topic with a specific focus on the Pacific, Philippines or Southwest Asian and North African diasporas.
Building the field of trans studies
The Department of Gender, Sexuality & Women's Studies will form a working group called Stem the Tide: Trans Liberation in an Age of Fascism, which will focus on initiatives that contextualize the global surge in anti-trans violence amidst a history of fascism across the last three centuries.
The group will work on three initiatives, including:
- Creating a national conference comprised of trans studies professors and scholars who are reflecting on anti-trans elements of fascist or authoritarian governance.
- Forming a digital hub of trans studies teaching and organizing materials, aimed specifically at creating free and open resources for students in high school and above, including those who are affected by government-mandated bans on race-, gender-, and sexuality-based education.
- Writing a collaborative manuscript based on findings from the first two years of the project.
During the grant period, the group will create a digital hub that includes eight or more teaching modules, lecture materials, and visual resources on trans studies histories for public use.
Staggered over three years, the initiatives aim to foster a robust scholarly community with short- and long-term goals for growth in future years.
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