Recent Special Initiatives

Recent initiatives and projects of the International Institute include:

Atlantic Studies Initiative
Now part of the LSA Department of English, ASI focuses on the circum-Atlantic flow of peoples, cultures, goods, and capital. It explores the interaction and interdependencies of Atlantic tultures from Africa to Europe and across the Americas and the Caribbean.

Program in the Comparative Study of Social Transformations
CSST sought to link the study of social transformations with the intellectual transformations that accompany them, and with theoretical shifts in scholarly thought. Discussions generated a wide range of theoretical perspectives on social and intellectual transformations, sharing a common conviction that existing disciplinary boundaries and divisions, especially those separating humanities and social sciences, discourage the kinds of discussions needed to develop new theoretical categories and questions.

Geographic Information Systems in the Humanities and Social Sciences
Funded by the Office of the Vice President for Research, Center for European studies, and the Center for Middle Eastern and North African Studies (in collaboration with the China Data Center/Map Library and the International Institute), over 80 researchers and graduate students were supported in the employment of GIS in the Humanities and Social Sciences. GIS is a label used to cluster the techniques that study space through the collection and analysis of electronically generated data. Employed at first by geographers, urban planners, and demographers, more recently GIS has drawn the attention of humanists, from art critics to historians and literary scholars. By plotting on a virtual map layers of data that are identifiable with spatial coordinates, GIS is allowing scholars to handle vast data sets, and to problematize space and its properties.

Globalization, Technology, and Culture
This initiative brought together an interdisciplinary group interested in researching, cataloging best practices, and developing new concepts on how global companies can create products that succeed in world markets. Participating faculty from Anthropology, Business, Engineering, Economics, Information, Public Policy, Sociology, and Social work met bi-weekly to discuss, debate, and develop a fundamental understanding of this new research area.

Religion, Security and Violence in Global Contexts
The initiative on Religion, Security, and Violence in Global Contexts was dedicated to exploring international perspectives on the events of September 11, 2001 and their aftermath. Through public programs and student and faculty seminars, it promoted reasoned dialogue about differing interpretations and the analyses of the variety of terrorism that the world has experienced.

Ford Foundation Grant for "The Project for Transforming through Performing"
This project proposed to enter the black woman's performing voice into the scholarly discussion surrounding gendered identity as metaphor for all women and oppressed peoples, using "witness" texts. Witness texts are based on the words of real women and serve as places of memory; memory as it relates to the Greek martyr, which connotes witness.

U.S. Department of State Grant for the "Michigan-Algiers Educational Partnership"
Awarded through the Educational Partnerships Program of the Department of State's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, this grant strengthened programs in American Studies at the University of Algiers and in Arabic/Islamic/North African Studies at the University of Michigan in the social sciences and humanities. Through the grant, the two institutions were also able to collaborate on curriculum development and programs of research.

Ford Foundation Grant for "Crossing Borders: Revitalizing Area Studies"
As part of its Crossing Borders: Revitalizing Area Studies Initiative, the University of Michigan was granted funding to revitalize area studies around the development of a new conjunction of competencies. Integrating deep contextual expertise within and across global regions, this project built on the broad reach and long history of area studies at U-M. In the first phase, the project demonstrated the values of bringing specialists from different world areas into focused topical conversations. In the second phase, the International Institute was bale to elaborate a field of learning predicated on the grounding of knowledge, the translation of understanding and the application of professional an disciplinary expertise.

Alcoa Foundation for "Science, the Professions, and a Global Diversity"
The Pittsburgh-based Alcoa Foundation's Alcoa, Inc. awarded two grants to the international Institute to enhance development of global awareness of U-M students in the fields related to business, science, engineering, and technology.