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SALT LAKE CITY — The University of Utah's newest college announced it is one of five in the country to get a $517,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for an intersectional studies collective.
The School for Cultural and Social Transformation, or Transform, is comprised of the divisions of Ethnic Studies and Gender Studies, the Disability Studies program and the Pacific Islands Studies Initiative. It aims to examine how race, gender, sexual orientation and disability, among other critical entities, intersect.
"This recognition by the Mellon Foundation establishes the School for Cultural and Social Transformation and, broadly, the U., as a national leader in intersectional studies," Kathryn Bond Stockton, dean of Transform, said in a statement. "We're beyond excited. We're grateful and ready to step out boldly — to creatively deepen our current work by linking minds with many new partners."
Intersectionality, she explained, describes a field of study that's trying to examine the interlocking dynamics of how race, gender, sexual orientation and disability, and other characteristics are intersecting each other.
Being one of only five universities to receive the grant sets the U. up as not only a state leader in intersectional studies but a national leader, as well.
The U. will be working with New York University, the University of Southern California, Georgia State University and the University of Virginia — with a mandate to build a national network for intersectional studies.
"That really puts the U. and Transform in the top five universities that are doing this work. I think it's that mandate to connect that has us feeling so ecstatic because this gives us money and opportunity (to work with other universities)," Stockton said.
The new Transformative Intersectional Collective will include three years of focus with University of Utah, regional and national partners.
In the first year, the collective invites interested professors to learn how they can incorporate different types of texts or teaching to increase student understanding of intersectionality, Stockton said. The year will also include a series of workshops, where faculty from different universities can work together and develop an understanding of where they can take the intersectional studies program. Stockton said there will be a heavy focus on teaching and developing syllabi.
The second year will work on making money available to faculty and students for intersectional research, which Stockton said "will be exciting to help people bring their scholarly work more in line with intersectional approaches."
Stockton said that she believes the third year of the Transformative Intersectional Collective "might be the most exciting of all."
"We're going to be thinking there about community engagement and making contact with so many of our community partners to think through — across that boundary of the university into the community — how we can deepen each other's practice," Stockton said.
She added that she sees a "sharpening" that occurs when university members and community members get together to share ideas in a two-way flow.
"That's one of the things that we are most enthused about."
A team at Transform collectively devised the U.'s proposal for the grant, including Edmund Fong, chairman of the Division of Ethnic Studies; Wanda Pillow, chairwoman of the Division of Gender Studies; Angela Smith, director of Disability Studies; Claudia Geist, associate dean for research; Estela Hernandez, assistant dean; Daniel Hadley, senior director of Foundations Relations at the U.; and Stockton, who will serve as the grant's principal investigator.
"What was exciting about the process itself was that we collectively devised the proposal, so it was not one person working in a corner night and day. It's amazing what sort of emerges through that collective process of having many minds work on something, so much good work got done," Stockton said.
