Mellon Summer Seminar

Welcome to the 2020 Summer Mellon Seminar. This course is designed to be the entry point for your experience as a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow. The Mellon Seminar will address:

  • Research: We will do regular check-ins about your research project. The Seminar will provide a support structure around your research and work with your mentor.
  • Research, Academia, and Meaning-Making: What is meaningful to you about your engagement with research? We will do reflections on what matters to you about your work.
  • Research and Teaching: We will think about relationships between scholarship and pedagogies. What excites you about engaging others with ideas?
  • Contexts of the MMUF and Academia: What are purposes of this program? Why is it needed? What does this mean for you as a Mellon fellow?
  • Research, Academia, and Community: The Seminar will provide opportunities to meet and talk with faculty members who are former Mellon Felllows. What are other ways of building communities of support and solidarity?

Your roles

  • Student: prepare readings before seminar sessions
  • Scholar: meet with your Mellon research mentor at least once a week during the Seminar, either in person or virtually. Your 10-15-page research paper is due to your mentor and to me by 5 p.m. on Friday, August 14.
  • Other?

Note: In this summer of rage, pain, love, and building, in addition to remote learning, I will adapt the Mellon Summer Seminar to fit the needs of the Mellon fellow cohorts. We will use check-ins and regular feed-back processes to make adjustments as necessary.