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About the Mellon Graduate Workshops
The Mellon Graduate Workshops support graduate students in the humanities and humanistically oriented social sciences who are in the process of shaping and writing their dissertations by providing opportunities for formal collaboration and intellectual exchange. Workshops organized by at least one faculty member and one graduate student run throughout the academic year and are administered by the Graduate School. Workshops focus on an intellectual problem or topic, provide a forum for discussions of dissertation work by students, and offer resources for at least three visiting scholars to attend and present their work. Young scholars who are developing their methods and focusing their objects of inquiry can benefit from a wider conversation with scholars both at Brown and elsewhere who are engaging similar issues or problems, sometimes from different disciplinary perspectives. Workshops enrich the scholarship of graduate students as they present their work beyond their departments, as they form valuable connections with faculty and peers from other disciplines, and as they engage with the research and perspectives of visiting scholars. Graduate workshops energize graduate students in writing their dissertations and help them to sustain the intellectual connections they have made in earlier coursework. Further, they foster the exploration of common research agendas in the humanities and social sciences at Brown. The Graduate School organizes and administer five Mellon Graduate Workshops each year. Advanced graduate students and faculty members in each workshop will meet at least twelve times each academic year to present work in progress and explore areas of common intellectual interest. The workshop’s goal is to encourage advanced graduate students by providing an audience and interlocutors for their work and to encourage interdisciplinary inquiry as they write their dissertations. The Graduate School will assemble a selection committee composed of the Dean and two faculty members to evaluate workshop proposals. Criteria for successful proposals will include:
Workshops are eligible for renewal in succeeding years on the basis of a review of written evaluations and of their ability to continue to draw participants, to elicit dissertation progress, and where appropriate, to stimulate multidisciplinary research. Workshop Sponsors and Coordinators Each workshop is sponsored by one faculty member and coordinated by one graduate student. The student coordinator organizes meetings, hosts speakers, and sees to the overall administration of the workshop. The student coordinator receives a $2,000 stipend supplement. Each faculty sponsor receives a $2,000 research stipend; a second faculty member can participate in the workshop and receive a research supplement from the Graduate School in cases where multidisciplinary exchange is particularly appropriate and useful. Brown conceives of the workshops not only as a way to augment graduate training, but also as part of the academic enrichment initiatives to enhance graduate education and faculty research. The workshop program will be administered and staffed by the Graduate School, which will handle the submission and selection of proposals and financial administration, and will assist when necessary with space and other logistics. Goals The Graduate School expects that Mellon Graduate Workshops will have a positive impact on graduate education generally and on the later years of graduate training specifically.
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