Humanities and Work

Humanities and Changing Conceptions of Work (HCCW) is a three-year (2011–14), Mellon-funded initiative that explored and assessed the critical historical and contemporary transformations in the meaning and experience of work. Administered by UCHRI and the UC Humanities Network and funded by an $800,000 grant, HCCW sought to comprehend and illuminate the changing conceptions and experience of work in the face of recent global economic, technological, and social developments, and to address the implications for the humanities. It also explored how humanities practitioners can prepare students for the work that awaits them in 21st-century global society, with an eye to how advanced training in the humanities moves in spheres outside the academy.

Drawing on and promoting the networking and research strengths of faculty and graduate students in the humanities and humanistic social sciences across the UC system, the initiative supported an ambitious array of research activities, including competitively selected multi-campus working groups, graduate seminars, webinars and conferences, a summer institute, a residential research group at UCHRI, and a culminating conference that resulted in another Mellon-supported initiative, Humanists@Work. The resulting products of these research engagements include websites, films, graduate course syllabi, conferences, peer-reviewed publications, and policy white papers.