Texas Tech University

Call For Proposals: Annual Theme

Call for Proposals:

Annual Theme 2023-2024 

The Humanities Center at Texas Tech 

The Humanities Center at Texas Tech University invites proposals from small groups of faculty for its 2023-2024 annual theme. The proposed theme should engage issues and topics central to the humanities in the twenty-first century.  Committed to promoting integrated learning, cross-disciplinary collaboration, and innovative research at the university and beyond, the Center looks for proposals that will explore different dimensions of what it means to be human, and that will engage current research debates in the humanities. The successful team should advance the Center's mission by initiating conversations among disciplines, fostering cutting edge research, as well as facilitating exchanges between the university and other institutions, and making use of campus and community resources in the service of outreach to a broad audience.

For examples of the contemporary scholarly discussions and models of the interdisciplinary collaborations the Center encourages, our advisory board suggests as background reading the Stanford Humanities Center's archived Colloquies (https://shc.stanford.edu/arcade/colloquies) and the Mellon-funded Global Humanities Institutes projects from the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes (https://chcinetwork.org/programs/ghi). 

In order to foster broad collaboration, proposals must come from a team of faculty members from more than one department.  Team members may come from traditional humanities disciplines or from other departments, as long as their research falls within the humanities, broadly defined.  The successful team will have a budget of $25,000 for the realization of their theme over the 2023-2024 academic year, with additional administrative support from the Humanities Center.  Members of the selected programming team should expect to be actively involved in the planning and delivery of programming through the 2023-2024 academic year.  The Center will also invite the winning team to collaborate on applications for external funding to supplement the budget for their theme.  

In order to ensure full consideration, applications must be received by 10 February 2023.  Each application should include the following components:

1.     An abstract summarizing the project, of no more than 250 words.

2.     A proposal describing the project and its intended impact, of no more than 1,000 words, including the names of the faculty members involved.

3.     An annotated list of 6-10 potential visiting speakers who would fit the theme.  Ideally, proposing teams will have researched standard speaking fees for the scholars they list.

4.     A 500-word explanation of outreach activities related to theme (e.g. a museum exhibition, a film series, etc.)

5.     A budget of $25,000 for the year.

6.     Brief CVs for each team member (no more than two pages each).  

Please email applications with all supporting documents in one PDF to Dr. Michael Borshuk, Director at humanitiescenter@ttu.edu.