This proposal is initiated by the Humanities and World Cultures Bylaw Group, the World Cultures (soon Interdisciplinary Humanities) Graduate Group, and the Center for the Humanities:  three units representing 30 faculty, 30 graduate students, and the students majoring and minoring in four undergraduate majors and seven minors and programs.

Refinements to the 2009 Strategic Academic Vision:  The 2009 Strategic Academic Vision offers three points of orientation to our Strategic Academic Focusing Initiative:

• The “World at Home” reflects the capacity of the AHA fields to approach questions at scales ranging from the global to the local and to move with facility among such frames.  It also reflects our commitment to socially engaged research.
• The “Culture, Community and Identity” theme gestures towards the scope and aims of the humanities at UC Merced.  However, our work crosses over and beyond all five of the themes developed in the 2009 plan.  
• The AHA faculty remain committed to interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary scholarship balanced with disciplinary excellence.  As the largest and most diverse faculty group in SSHA, we are beacons for this UC Merced vision.
• Important research problems or questions in your field(s):  Interdisciplinarity is the hallmark of the AHA approach at UC Merced.  All of our faculty and graduate students read work from every one of our disciplines, and all of us utilize each other’s frames of understanding. The interdisciplinary stance of AHA fields is well expressed in the current issue of  thejournal of the interdisciplinary humanities Occasion(arcade.stanford.edu/occasion_issue/volume-6).  An interdisciplinary orientation in the AHA fields helps to illuminate grand challenges, since the task of humanists, artists and anthropologists is to explain and express cultural complexity and contingency.  Our brief is the human condition as it has existed at all times and at all places, and our insights apply to problems also addressed by scientists and engineers. 

Grand Challenges in the Arts, Humanities and Anthropology 

• How do social power, exploitation and hegemony function, from intimate to social scales, and how do individuals and groups resist and restructure power?
• What are individual and collective identity?  What kinds of communication across identities create new and hybrid identities, while other kinds of interactions reify difference?
• How do states and other entities control territory, what are the limits of state power, and how do people, goods and ideas cross borders?
• What are creativity and transcendence?  What do people find valuable, meaningful, sacred or beautiful, and what do they find ugly, worthless, profane, or distasteful?
• How does the human experience vary over time and across space, shaped by various structures of power and hierarchy, and how are slow processes of change disrupted by contingent events?
• How do humans interact with other life forms and the inanimate world in ways that are exploitative, sustainable, or resilient?

Scholars of the arts, humanities and anthropology address these challenges using methods that include fieldwork, description, narrative, hermeneutics, qualitative and quantitative analysis, curation, and an orientation toward ethics and politics.  In addition, the work of making art – writing, painting, music, drama, and dance – connects theory to practice.

Needed Resources: 

In 2020, with 75 to 90 faculty members in the AHA fields, we will be positioned to maintain research excellence, support a graduate program of international repute, and educate undergraduates in core disciplines of the liberal arts.  At build out, in addition to robust disciplines, AHA will have thematic interdisciplinary clusters in:

• • Regions, eras, and languages: Global Asian Studies/Asian Languages and Literatures, Global Early Modern Studies, Latin American Studies/Spanish and Portuguese Languages and Literatures, and World Languages and Literatures
  • Methods:  Ethnography, Archaeology, Digital Humanities,  Geography and Spatial Analysis, Museum/Heritage Management, Performance Studies, Community Engaged Research, Public Humanities, and Sociolinguistics
  • Analytical frameworks:  Empires/Borders/Transnationalism,  Environment/Food/Agriculture, Human Rights, Medicine/Health, and Religious Studies
  • Social identities: Ethnic Studies, Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and Working-Class Studies.

A 75 to 90-member AHA faculty is adequate for critical mass in our current programs, and in addition will permit us to support:

• New Undergraduate Programs:  GASP will submit an application for major status within the year.   Additional new undergraduate programs will develop organically from existing programs and faculty.  Organized as a single group, AHA faculty and teaching assistants can easily serve multiple degree programs, with many courses cross listed between programs.  Some of the thematic strengths referenced above may become undergraduate minors or majors.  We will also develop an Interdisciplinary Humanities undergraduate major parallel to the Interdisciplinary Humanities Graduate Group and similar to the Stanford Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities major.
• New Graduate Programs:  We will sustain growth in the Interdisciplinary Humanities Graduate Group to a total size of approximately 135-180 students (1.5:1 to 2:1 student to faculty ratio).   As part of that process, we will develop a self-paying fifth year coursework-based MA program geared to UCM undergraduates. The fifth year program will enable our brightest undergraduates to develop their intellectual skills and prepare them to apply to top ranked Ph.D. programs or jobs that require M.A. degrees.   UC Merced will thereby become known as a pipeline for outstanding first generation and diverse college students to enter professions and graduate education in AHA fields.  We estimate admitting a class of approximately 10 students per year to the MA program.  In addition, the Merritt Writing Program will propose a self-paying MFA degree.

To support these aims, in addition to the additional faculty detailed above, we also need specialized staff:  (1) one Digital Humanities Developer, (2) one gallery/museum curator, one gallery/museum manager, one LPSOE faculty member to manage the video/music production labs and teach classes, (3) three additional Center for the Humanities staff members, (4) administrative staff dedicated to student advising and faculty support for the AHA group, (5) one LPSOE faculty member for every 200 students or fraction thereof enrolled in each foreign language that we offer, (6) one language lab coordinator, (7) one fine and performing arts LPSOE faculty member for every 200 students or fraction thereof enrolled in each art form that we offer, (8) one arts program and facilities coordinator.  A robust AHA group also requires synergistic development of: (1) an adequately staffed and funded library, a library collection that includes a core print collection of books to support undergraduate and graduate research, sufficient bandwidth for data-intensive research, and a library staff with the specialist knowledge to support undergraduate and graduate research in the arts, humanities and anthropology;  and (2) an adequately staffed and funded UCM Presents performing arts organization that supports performances from high visibility touring performing artists.

The AHA group requires a building or a complex of adjacent and physically integrated buildings that supports the interdisciplinary, and community-facing aims and needs of our large and diverse group while supporting our continued collaboration.  Crucially, we want to be able to perform our many functions in spaces that are efficiently designed and optimized to our needs and that allow for serendipitous and casual meetings in lounges, hallways, and cafes.   While we are not proposing any large-scale concert halls or theater spaces on the campus, we need basic performance spaces for teaching and rehearsal.  Beyond these, we will seek to reinforce town-and-gown connections by using downtown spaces for student and guest performances. This vision requires an excellent transit link, as well as clear, explicit and adequately funded agreements for collaboration between UC Merced and community-based arts presenting entities.  Specifically our needs include:

• A performing arts and exhibition building that includes a public museum and gallery, a café, and theater,  music, and dance spaces that support teaching and research as well as extra-curricular and social student functions.   The museum/gallery, at 15000 sf, would be used to display artworks and artifacts, but also library exhibitions, science and engineering projects, or almost anything that a course or campus club would want to propose—thus establishing the building as the public face of not only the arts but also the University as a whole. It would also serve as a teaching gallery that makes collections available to faculty and students across campus for courses and to create study exhibitions.  The museum/gallery includes divided exhibition spaces, staff offices, secure storage, exhibition preparation workshop, as well as an interactive education room for the UCM communities and the general public.  This building’s spaces (soundproofed as necessary) would support interdisciplinary approaches to the arts by leveraging pedagogy, research, public performance and student activity together.  This building should include, in addition to the 15000-sf museum/gallery: (1) music practice rooms: 4 individual, 8 keyboard, 2 medium group:  840 sf total, (2) two ensemble practice rooms that can double as seminar rooms, 900 sf total, (3) one dedicated dance rehearsal space, 1200 sf, (4) a combined piano and video/music production lab with individual stations for up to 20 students, 1000 sf, (5) an 80-seat black box theater with requisite backstage areas that could double as a film theater and teaching space for art history, film studies and drama classes, (6) a combined music and dance studio that could allow dancers to collaborate with live musicians, with storage space for musical instruments, (7) a 2500 sf ballroom that could serve for large ensemble rehearsals and for social dancing, (8) two fairly substantial dressing rooms that would serve the black box theater and the ballroom, doubling as changing rooms for dance studios, (9) A shop space for set building, either adjacent to the theater, or in accessible studio space in the adjacent building, (10) classrooms with flexible seating supporting movement-based pedagogy which would double as rehearsal spaces for student groups and as green rooms or dressing rooms when multiple performances are taking place in the building. These classrooms would be equipped with data projectors, sound systems, and motorized black-out shades so that they can serve as useful teaching spaces for courses in music, art, performance, film and other studies in the arts.
• An art, archaeology and biological anthropology building or wing with ventilation, plumbing and safety features appropriate to teaching and research in these fields.  This space should include: (1) Four 1800-sf fine art studios , each with proper ventilation, built-in cabinetry and sinks, and the ability to adequately darken the room for instruction, i.e. slide presentations (2) eight 725-sf anthropology research damp labs with built-in workbenches, sinks, and snorkel hoods; one 900-sf research lab with a HEPA air filter system; and one shared 300-sf wet lab with a fume hood, (3) two 1000-sf anthropology teaching labs to accommodate 20 students each with lay-out and work space, and one adjacent 500-sf shared washing and storage area with built-in cabinetry, a workbench, and sink, (4) one approximately 500-sf of outdoor space adjacent to the anthropology teaching lab and arts studio with retractable sun/weather shade, (5) storage areas for musical instruments, anthropological teaching materials, artworks, and arts supplies
• A digital media cluster that includes: (1) a 6000 sf digital media lab, recording studio, digital heritage lab and digital humanities lab suite with light proofing and sound proofing as appropriate, (2) a 1000 sf language lab, (3) a digital humanities/digital heritage/digital media teaching lab for classes of up to 40 students 
• Offices, study spaces and seminar rooms including: (1) faculty, staff, lecturer, and graduate student offices adequate for the personnel we have specified, (2) a Center for the Humanities suite that includes a suite of 12 offices for a total of 1,560 sq. ft. of office space for: five offices for staff members (610 sf total), one reception / shared student office (130 sf), two offices for visiting faculty fellows (260 sf total), two offices/studios for artists/writers-in-residence (260 sf total), one shared office for two postdocs (150 sf), one shared office for three graduate fellows (150 sf) and also includes an adjacent seminar room of approximately 600 sf, (3) a small auditorium to seat about 90, with a projector, screen, sound, movable chairs, podium, and small storage room for equipment and chairs, (4) 10 seminar rooms, conference rooms and scholarly activity rooms seating 20-60 people for meetings and lectures, (5) an AHA administrative suite with staff space for advising, academic personnel, purchasing, and other needed functions, and (6) quiet shared study space for undergraduates.

National programs that are most closely aligned

• In the UC system:  University of California, San Diego, Literature Department (literature.ucsd.edu), and University of California, Irvine, Ph.D. Program in Culture and Theory (http://www.humanities.uci.edu/cultureandtheory)
• At other public research universities: Binghamton University (State University of New York) graduate program in Philosophy, Interpretation and Culture (pic.binghamton.edu/); Florida State University, Program in the Interdisciplinary Humanities (iph.fsu.edu), and University of Louisville, Humanities Doctoral Program (http://louisville.edu/humanities/ph.d-program-in-humanities )
• At private research universities: Brown University Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage (www.brown.edu/academics/public-humanities); Stanford University Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities (www.stanford.edu/dept/registrar/bulletin0809/5925.htm);  Concordia (Canada), Ph.D. in the Humanities (cissc.concordia.ca/Ph.D.inhumanities/); Johns Hopkins Humanities Center Graduate Program (http://humctr.jhu.edu/graduate), and New York University, Department of Social and Cultural Analysis (http://sca.as.nyu.edu)