Funded Courses

In Fall 2016, William & Mary received a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support the cultivation of civic leadership, rooted in the humanities. As part of the grant, W&M professors were invited to establish courses on civic leadership as it relates to liberal democracy, diversity, civic engagement and/or social issues. Courses explore and cultivate qualities inherent in civic leadership: intellectual openness, public-mindedness, self-awareness, compassion and integrity. They are distinguished by their grounding in the humanities and by collaboration across disciplines and schools. Course design is conducted by interdisciplinary teams and consists of 2-3 faculty members per course, with at least one of the team members from the humanities, arts or humanistic social sciences.

The first courses developed as part of the civic leadership initiative were offered in Spring 2018. One example of a successful course, described below, illustrates the collaboration among engaged faculty.

The “Civic Life of Transgender Studies” course was developed by Drs. Meyer, Putzi and McKinney, and was co-taught by the last two professors. The course introduced 16 students from a range of majors (i.e., Sociology; Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies; Theater; Africana Studies; English; Anthropology; Hispanic Studies; Psychology; Government; International Relations) to the civic concerns of transgender people. Students enrolled in the course engaged with numerous guest speakers, including Brynn Tannehill, a public advocate for transgender rights; Gavin Grimm, the plaintiff in the first case to challenge the constitutionality of school bathroom policy; and Cameron Awkward Rich, a poet and academic. The class exercised civic engagement in two ways. First, students wrote civic engagement proposals that challenged them to put course material into action in their own communities. Student proposals ranged from setting up a theater camp for gender non-conforming kids to transforming resident housing at W&M to working with city governments to create better tools for enumerating gender-nonconforming residents. Second, the course culminated with an “artvism” public event. Students created pieces of visual art that engaged in some form of activism around transgender lives and/or politics and were accompanied by an artist’s statement. Students’ projects included videos, paintings, pieces of jewelry, a newspaper on trans life at W&M, as well as interactive activities (e.g., a “gender reveal” box, a poetry activity).