In a major boost to literature, history, language and cultural studies at UC Davis , the campus has been selected as one of two finalists to establish a Pacific Regional Humanities Center. The National Endowment for the Humanities announced last week that it was giving UC Davis a $50,000 planning grant to develop a proposal for the center.
If successful, the university will receive a $5 million grant from the NEH as a lead grant for the $20 million center and its programs.
Elizabeth Langland, dean of the Division of Humanities, Arts, and Cultural Studies, said the grant is a milestone for the division. "It really brings recognition to the humanities, to what we’re doing that’s innovative," Langland said.
Langland said the center would help propel the humanities at UC Davis to the same prominence currently enjoyed by agriculture, sciences and engineering programs.
"It’s not exactly a renaissance for the humanities because they’ve never completed their full ‘naissance’ here…. I see us entering an era in which we have new strength and prominence in the humanities and the arts. The centers will be dedicated to enriching understanding of each region’s landscape, people, history and cultures. A sense of place will be the focal point for the work of the center," Langland said.
Jay Mechling, an American studies professor and principal investigator for the grant, said the UC Davis proposal put strong emphasis on the campus’s land-grant tradition of public service.
"We also emphasized the uniqueness of our ‘Nature and Culture’ program and the opportunity to show how humanists, social scientists, and natural scientists can come together for the study of ‘place,’ " Mechling said.
The proposal includes four areas of focus, Langland said:
• Native American and other indigenous peoples, overseen by Native American Studies associate professor Inés Hernández-Ávila;
• Environment and the bioregion, led by English professor David Robertson, whose specialties include wilderness literature and bioregion studies;
• Immigration and migration in the Pacific Rim, led by Michelle Yeh, professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures; and
• High-tech industry and entertainment, overseen by Jack Hicks, an English senior lecturer and founding director of the Art of the Wild summer writing program.
Other scholars contributing to the project include historians Louis Warren and Alan Taylor; Patricia Turner, vice provost for undergraduate studies and an African American studies professor; and UC Davis Humanities Institute director Georges Van Den Abbeele and associate director Ron Saufley.
Mechling said the center will be a clearinghouse for collaborative projects in the region.
"There will be a research component to the center (sponsoring conferences, fellowships, publications, maybe a regrant program), but it will be so much more than that," he said.
"We plan to have a component that will serve K-12 education in the Pacific region. We will help create traveling museum exhibits, create programs (in partnership with state humanities councils) bringing the humanities to the general public, and so on."
Taking partnerships seriously
"Part of the planning year will be the initial design of this constellation of programs. We won’t do everything here–we take seriously the partnerships–so we might be the coordinating umbrella organization for some specific projects in other states. And we want to develop the international component, thinking of the entire Pacific Rim and its cultural interactions as our ‘topic,’ " said Mechling.
Mechling added that the campus is collaborating with members from several other institutions in the region, such as universities, museums, and the state humanities councils.
The National Endowment for the Humanities seeks to create a nationwide network of 10 regional centers and, to that end, has awarded a total of 20 planning grants–two institutions in each region.
UC Davis is competing with San Francisco State University for the $5 million Pacific region implementation grant. The winning institution would be expected to match the grant three to one to create a $20 million center.
The Pacific region includes California, Oregon, Washington, Hawaii, Alaska, American Samoa, Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands. The other nine regions are the Southwest, Rocky Mountains, Plains, Upper Mississippi Valley, Central, Deep South, South Atlantic, Mid-Atlantic and New England.
According to the federal agency, grants were awarded on the basis of each institution’s existing resources, capacity for original research and documentation of regional heritage, plans for educational outreach to schools, communities and tourists, and commitment to creating region-wide partnerships.
San Francisco State University received its $50,000 grant last December, giving it a six-month edge over UC Davis in planning and development.
Langland said UC Davis developed its proposal in about a two-month period after the National Endowment for the Humanities rejected other West Coast submissions and reopened the grant competition in January.
Extraordinary effort
"It was just an extraordinary effort by this campus, a brilliant effort, I must say," she said. "Everything came together."
Langland said the division has the backing of Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Robert Grey as well as help from the UC Office of the President in raising the matching
$15 million for the center. She added that the campus will seek contributions from corporations and foundations.
Langland said a driving force behind the proposal was Van Den Abbeele of the campus Humanities Institute. "He set the process in motion and saw it through to completion."
UC Davis will have until Aug. 1, 2001, to develop a plan for the center.
Possible locations being considered for the center are near the Buehler Alumni and Visitors Center, a future hotel-conference center, and the Center for the Arts that is now under construction, Langland said.