Mellon Foundation grant will create Tocqueville Seminars series on America as seen at home and abroad at University of Richmond
April 2, 2009
The University of Richmond has received a three-year, $968,000 grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to develop a series of Tocqueville Seminars that explore the American experience in a transnational context.
The seminars are named for and inspired by the French historian Alexis de Tocqueville, whose insights as an early 19th century visitor to America helped shape the country's cultural identity. Working with visiting scholars and international partners, the university's faculty will create a series of seminars analyzing the evolution of the United States using a cross-cultural perspective.
In the seminars, faculty and students will use a variety of approaches—including examining other societies' perspectives of America, drawing parallels to the experience of other countries and tracing the web of mutual international influence—to consider America's social, political and cultural development. In the process, the seminars will bring together many current developments from the humanities.
Faculty colleagues from other Virginia private liberal arts colleges, the Commonwealth's historically black colleges and universities, and The College of William and Mary will be invited to join the project, encouraging them to create Tocqueville seminars on their own campuses.
Like many other liberal arts colleges, the University of Richmond has devoted substantial effort to expanding its international education program. Those efforts have produced multi-national diversity of faculty and students on campus, as well as across the curriculum. At a time when Americans are becoming more aware of their interdependence with other countries, Richmond has the opportunity to expand students' understanding of the United States in an international context.
University of Richmond President Edward L. Ayers noted how well the Tocqueville Seminars project fit with the University's new strategic plan, The Richmond Promise. "We are creating an interdisciplinary and cross-school educational experience unlike any other in American higher education," he said, "and these seminars will help build on our extraordinary record of innovation. I am deeply grateful to the Mellon Foundation for their support of our work at the University of Richmond."
The grant will fund three course-development seminars for twelve faculty, starting next spring. Prominent American and international scholars who have published on relevant topics will contribute information and give public lectures. The new courses will be offered in the fall 2010 semester.
Some faculty will travel abroad to launch or further their collaborations by meeting with their counterparts in other countries. In some courses, there will be simultaneous teaching in two countries, with students communicating in real-time over the web. Twelve to eighteen new courses should be added to Richmond's curriculum by the end of the three-year grant period.
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation of New York currently makes grants in six core program areas: higher education and scholarship, scholarly communications, research in information technology, museums and art conservation, performing arts, and conservation and the environment. Institutions and programs receiving support are often leaders in fields of Foundation activity.