College of Charleston Receives Mellon Foundation Award

The College of Charleston School of Humanities and Social Sciences’ Women’s and Gender Studies Program is one of 95 public college and university programs selected for the Mellon Foundation’s Affirming Multivocal Humanities initiative, which boldly advances the study of race, ethnicity, gender and sexuality. As part of a cohort of leading programs in the United States, the WGS Program was invited to apply for funding through the initiative and was awarded $100,000.

“Being selected by the Mellon Foundation affirms the importance of what we are doing to create a new generation of critical thinkers to engage in civil discourse,” says Lauren Ravalico, director of the WGS Program and associate professor of French and Francophone studies, who wrote the grant application and is serving as the director and grant primary investigator of the award. “The funds will allow us to amplify our voice and expand feminist methodologies into teaching across disciplines at the College.”

The College’s WGS Program plays a pivotal role in shaping feminist knowledge. The program follows the belief that critical reflection about gender and sexuality leads to important conceptual outcomes and prioritizes learning outside the classroom, with students required to participate in internships, original research and other hands-on projects to fulfill degree requirements.

“Affirming Multivocal Humanities is an initiative that champions the scholarship and teaching taking place in these disciplines – those that are too often undervalued and even undermined in American society today,” says Mellon Foundation President Elizabeth Alexander. “We are proud to support colleges and universities in the United States that are advancing deep research and curricular engagement with the stories and histories of our country’s vastly diverse racial, ethnic and gender identities.”

The WGS team is using the funding to turn up the volume on underrepresented voices. The grant will pave the way to enriched collaboration through the WGS Community Leader-in-Residence, which connects students to community members with expertise in applying feminist principles to their justice work. 

The grant has already helped launch the new interdisciplinary programming series, “Land, Body and History,” which explores these vectors of knowledge from global Black feminist and Indigenous perspectives. WGS student researchers and interns will develop resulting insights into a digital public history project that will document aspects of social justice in the Lowcountry.

WGS has built out the program’s annual expo, “Feminism in Motion,” from a half-day event to a multi-tiered initiative, as well. The initiative will enhance paid internship programs, support the student-run podcast, award impact grants for experimental student and faculty projects, and organize a “Teaching with Intent” faculty seminar to incubate new WGS courses. The enhanced initiative will be showcased on April 15, 2024, from 1 to 4:30 p.m. in Stern Center Ballroom.

Thanks to the hard work and the collaborative spirit of the WGS team, the College will have more tools to embrace the cultural diversity of the campus.