Department of History of Art and Architecture at Pitt receives $500,000 Mellon Grant to center social justice analysis in the discipline.
JANUARY 29, 2025 (PITTSBURGH, PA)—The Department of History of Art and Architecture (HAA) at the University of Pittsburgh receives a $500,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to reshape the discipline of art and architectural history through new research methodologies that foreground social justice analysis. The two-year funding program supports the department’s efforts to map social justice inquiry in the discipline; build research methodologies, new courses, and Open Educational Resources; and develop discourse on social justice in the field.
To map social justice research in the discipline, HAA will host a series of eight faculty-student workshops with researchers and practitioners from across the field. These workshops will take place during the academic year 2025-26 and foreground the perspectives and practice of individuals working on fundamental social justice issues or challenges. From public talks, interviews with students, and discussions with a dedicated cohort of Pitt faculty and students, these conversations will inform the development of two new core courses in the department (one undergraduate and one graduate). Open Educational Resources for each course will be published to share these learnings with scholars and teachers across the field.
In tandem with course development, HAA seeks to foster discourse around program activities through a working group that will draft essays reflecting on the challenges and possibilities involved in reorienting research to center social justice analysis. These essays will be published in the Department’s open-access journal Contemporaneity. This work dovetails with the Department’s ongoing efforts to organize scholarly reflections in the field through their blog Constellations, which has expanded to include the publication group of “Reparation,” alongside existing groups for “Space and Place,” “Identity and Identification,” “Mobility and Circulation,” and “Materialities.”
While the roster of guest speakers is still being developed, the team leading this initiative includes Principal Investigator, Kirk Savage; Co-Principal Investigators, Gretchen Bender, Jennifer Josten, Alison Langmead, and Christopher Nygren; PhD candidate Brooke Wyatt; and a new Post-Doctoral Associate (to be hired in conjunction with this program). The Post-Doctoral Associate will play a critical role as an author of course materials and open educational resources. In addition to a competitive salary and benefits covered by the Collective Bargaining Agreement for full-time faculty, the post-doctoral associate will benefit from mentoring and publishing opportunities that will position them as a significant stakeholder and catalyst for change in the discipline of art and architectural history.