History and Mission of the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship (MMUF) National Program

In 1988 the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, under then-Presidents William Bowen and Henry Drewry, launched a program designed to create a legacy of field-transforming scholars whose perspectives would greatly enrich the academy. The goal was to identify academically promising college students and provide them with mentoring, extensive experience with conducting independent research, skills development, and insight into the rewards of an academic career.

In 2003, the Foundation reaffirmed its commitment to and broadened the mission of MMUF. The name of the program was changed to the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship Program in honor of the stellar educational achievements of Dr. Benjamin E. Mays, a life-long champion of civil rights, a distinguished scholar of religion, mentor to Martin Luther King, Jr., and president of Morehouse College from 1940 to 1967. 

The national leadership of the MMUF shares the following objective:

[T]he Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship (MMUF) is committed to supporting demographic transformation in higher education and to promoting the value of multivocality in the humanities and related disciplines. 
...
MMUF is part of the Higher Learning program of the Mellon Foundation and reflects one of its three grantmaking priorities: Elevating the knowledge that informs more complete and accurate narratives of the human experience and lays the foundation for more just and equitable futures.
Higher Learning makes grants with the objective of amplifying perspectives and contributions that have been marginalized within the conventional scholarly record, and that promote the realization of a more socially just world. We call this objective multivocality, and this commitment is at the core of MMUF.

You can read more about the history of the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship, and Dr. Benjamin E. Mays, here: https://www.mellon.org/article/history-of-mellon-mays-undergraduate-fellowship 

You can read more about the goals and spirit of the MMUF program here: https://www.mellon.org/mmuf 

 

MMUF at Wesleyan

Wesleyan’s Mellon Program has been in existence since 1989. Our Mellon Mays Fellows have earned the PhD in Mellon-designated fields, and many have gone on to tenured faculty positions. And we currently have a strong group of recent Wesleyan MMUF grads who are working toward completing the Ph.D.

 

Projects and topics recently pursued by MMUF students include:

Comanche Nationalism within the Militarized Landscape of Southwest Oklahoma

Connections between Human Category, Violence, and Dispossession in the New Netherlands

Critical Life Writing and Mother-Daughter Motifs in Contemporary Black Feminist Theory/Historiography

Cuba’s Trade Union Federation’s 22nd Congress

Degrees of Agency in Stoicism

Exploring the Political Censorship of Vodú Practices among Peasantry

Healthcare and Welfare Access Amongst the Most Vulnerable in South Korea

Interspecies Choreographies and Creative Immersions

The Politics of Immigration: Haitians, Consent, and Contract

Race and Ontology Through the Work of Zora Neal Hurston

The Racialization of India and Global Caste Conversations

Theorizing the Grammars of Liberation in Post-Apartheid South Africa

Transit Development and the American City: Technocrats, Community Members, and the Discourse over a Highway Construction Project in Post-War New Haven

Tropes of Dominicanidad: Rereading Tricksters in the Archive Against the Nationalist Project

Wading Through Madness: Towards an Epistemology of Actin’ a Fool

 

Universities where Wesleyan MMUF students have gone on to pursue a Ph.D. include:

Brown University

Northwestern University

Rutgers University

University of Chicago

University of Michigan

University of Oxford

University of Pittsburgh

Yale University