2026 Mellon Grant

The Willson Center has received a $1 million grant from the Mellon Foundation for a second phase of its public humanities partnership with the historic Penn Center on St. Helena Island, South Carolina. The grant-funded project, Culture and Community at the Penn Center National Historic Landmark District, launched in 2021 with an initial $1 million award from Mellon to build and implement programs in collaboration with the Penn Center and surrounding Sea Islands communities in the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor.

“As Kendrick Lamar and SZA say, ‘All the stars are closer,’” said Barbara McCaskill, Distinguished Research Professor of English and associate academic director of the Willson Center. “This collaboration has enabled students to learn how the history and culture of Gullah Geechee communities, which trace to West Africa, can inform how we may collectively resolve national concerns from climate change to land preservation.”

Program activities for the Culture and Community partnership began in 2022 with annual artists-in-residence and community fellows, twice-yearly community conversations, and summer student research residencies that bring scholars and faculty from academic institutions including UGA, Georgia Tech, Emory University, Howard University, Spelman College, Morehouse College, the University of Michigan, and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

“This funding will take the Willson Center past a decade of continuous funding from the Mellon Foundation,” said Nicholas Allen, Baldwin Professor in Humanities and director of the Willson Center. “We’re all proud of that recognition and recognize the responsibility we have to work through the humanities and arts to build curiosity, inclusivity, and opportunity.”

The project’s next phase will continue to deepen and evolve its programs, with a view toward building greater collective capacity and bolstering its future sustainability. Angela Dore, who has coordinated the project’s activities at Penn Center since the partnership’s inception, will continue and expand upon her role. The grant’s principal investigators are Allen and McCaskill, in collaboration with Valerie Babb, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Humanities at Emory University.

“Especially in difficult times, programs like this remind us that our histories are shared. When we remember this, we remember our humanity,” Babb said.

“Our partnership will continue to catalyze creative synergies among participants from the U.S., Caribbean, and African Diaspora, and to work with Penn Center alongside Mellon-funded ‘sister projects’ on Gullah foodways, cemeteries, history, memory, and music,” said McCaskill. “We are excited about the learning experiences which will continue to unfold over the coming years.”

Dr. Robert L. Adams, the Penn Center’s executive director, serves on the project’s steering committee and personally supervises the Penn Center’s contributions to the partnership.

“We are delighted that the Mellon Foundation’s support for the Penn Center’s collaboration with UGA’s Willson Center highlights the importance of our shared efforts,” Adams said. “This grant affirms the value of our work and encourages us to continue translating our overlapping histories into a brighter future for the region. Our partnership offers an excellent opportunity for students, faculty, and community members to experience the diversity of the humanities through the lens of Gullah Geechee culture and history.”

“Humanities research is a core pillar of the university’s research mission, and I’m grateful to Nicholas Allen for providing steady, wise leadership of the Willson Center in service of our humanities faculty,” added Chris King, UGA’s interim vice president for research. “Research into the humanities provides context, ethical grounding, and public meaning to discovery across all disciplines, ensuring that innovation is responsible, impactful, and trusted. This ongoing partnership with the Penn Center is a wonderful resource to explore that context.”

2021 Mellon Grant

In 2021, the University of Georgia Willson Center for Humanities and Arts received a $1 million grant from the Mellon Foundation to partner with Penn Center, one of the nation’s most important institutions of African American culture. The partnership will support education and sharing among communities in the Sea Islands region of the Southeastern United States and students from UGA and its partner institutions.

Located on St. Helena Island, one of the South Carolina Sea Islands, Penn Center is a nonprofit organization committed to African American education, community development and social justice. It also serves as a gathering place for meetings, educational institutions and planning activities within the Sea Island Gullah Geechee communities.

Penn Center is situated within the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor, a National Heritage Area established by the U.S. Congress to recognize the unique culture of the Gullah Geechee people — descendants of formerly enslaved West and Central Africans who have traditionally resided in the coastal areas of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida.

Barbara McCaskill, professor of English and associate academic director of the Willson Center, and Nicholas Allen, who holds an endowed chair in humanities and directs the Willson Center, will lead the project, “Culture and Community at the Penn Center National Historic Landmark District.” Its range of programs will include community-based artist residencies, in-place studies for students at UGA and partner institutions, and a series of public conversations.

“This significant new grant will allow our students to engage with and learn from communities along the Southeastern coast,” said UGA President Jere W. Morehead. “The Willson Center is recognized nationally as a hub of excellence in the humanities and arts, and I look forward to watching the growth of this collaboration with Penn Center and the communities it serves.”

Penn Center sits on the historic campus of Penn School, founded in 1862 to provide education to formerly enslaved West Africans. Following the school’s closure in 1948, the site served as a sanctuary for civil rights organizers in the 1960s, including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other members of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

“Penn Center’s history encompasses every stage of the African American freedom struggle, from slavery, the Reconstruction and segregation to the present civil rights moment,” said McCaskill, who also serves as director of the Civil Rights Digital Library, as a member of the Penn Center board of trustees and an advisory board member of Penn’s multidisciplinary journal, Watch Night. “This new partnership will allow UGA’s humanities and arts students to interact creatively throughout the year with this coastal region’s historic and storied Black communities. Research projects will engage students and communities in conversations about climate change, cultural preservation, and social justice and equity issues in education, law, employment and housing.”

Marion Burns, Penn Center’s board chair and interim executive director, sees great potential in the partnership. “The project promotes two-way interactions between communities in the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor and academic institutions,” he said. “This is an opportunity for a new kind of approach for the arts and humanities that emphasizes community along with history, culture and heritage.” [Note: Marion Burns passed away in late 2021.]

The Mellon Foundation grant is the third in recent years for the Willson Center. A 2018 grant expanded the Willson Center’s Global Georgia Initiative to support humanities and arts research projects, and another in 2019 piloted a regional consortium of state flagship universities and public partners for the study of environmental humanities in coastal contexts.

“This opportunity to seed new learning experiences allows the Willson Center to grow the branches of inspiration and innovation that connect students across the region,” Allen said. “The continuing support of the Mellon Foundation, as well as that of the UGA Office of Research, helps us expand the meaning of inclusive and visionary programming, and to root our efforts in community alliance.”

Grant-funded activities, which will run through June 2025, will begin in early 2021 with calls for proposals for artists in residence, research residencies and place-based study classes.

“This partnership between Penn Center and the Willson Center will affirm UGA’s role as an innovative leader among public universities in place-based learning,” McCaskill said. “It builds upon and highlights the strengths of humanities and arts students as communicators, collaborators and engaged citizens of the state and region.”