We seek, in particular, to amplify perspectives and contributions that have been marginalized within the conventional scholarly record, and that promote the realization of a more socially just world.

Mellon’s published grant making strategies in higher education

The Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship (MMUF) Program is the centerpiece of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation’s strategic initiative to create more complete and accurate narratives of the human experience.

The University of Southern California’s MMUF program is a partnership between the Dornsife College of Letters, Arts & Sciences and the Office of the Provost. For more information on other Mellon Mays Programs click here.

We aim to identify qualified undergraduate students who might choose to pursue an academic path to Ph.D. programs in the humanities or humanistic social sciences in one of the following areas of exploration, or similar fields:

  • historical and contemporary treatments of race/racialization and racial formation;
  • intersectional experience and analysis;
  • gender and sexuality;
  • Indigenous history and culture;
  • questions about diaspora;
  • coloniality and decolonization;
  • the carceral state;
  • migration and immigration;
  • urban inequalities and ethnographies;
  • social movements and mass mobilizations;
  • the transatlantic slave trade;
  • settler colonial societies;
  • racial disparities and outcomes;
  • and literary and philosophical accounts of agency, subjectivity, and community, among other areas.

Fifty-seven colleges and universities, and the member institutions of the United Negro College Fund (UNCF) participate in MMUF. According to the Mellon website: Thus far the program has produced more than 1,100 PhDs, almost 800 of whom are currently college professors and 300 of whom have taken their humanities training into venues ranging from museums and nonprofit organizations to publishing houses and government positions. At any given time, about 800 MMUF fellows are enrolled in PhD programs, while the fellowship supports approximately 500 undergraduate students each year.

For more information about the national program, please visit the national website: http://www.mmuf.org/