EVENT DETAILS

ACLS, 100 Years and Beyond: A Conversation and Funding Information Session with James Shulman, Vice President and CEO of the ACLS

The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) supports scholars in the humanities and related social sciences at the doctoral and postdoctoral levels. Fellows and grantees in all programs are selected by committees of scholars appointed for this purpose.  In the 2017-18 competition year, ACLS funded about 350 fellows and scholars through over 15 grant programs, supporting humanistic work at over 100 US institutions of higher education and scores more outside the United States. More than $24 million was awarded across all programs.Programs include ACLS faculty fellowships, dissertation completion fellowships, and the Public Fellows program.

James Shulman, VIce President and CEO of the ACLS, will lead a discussion about ACLS’s programs and our work in the middle of various flows of information in and around humanistic scholarship, including issues around PhD career diversity, the humanities and public engagement, and changes in faculty diversification and graduate curricula.

James Shulman became vice president and chief operating officer of the American Council of Learned Societies in July 2018.  Prior to joining ACLS, Shulman was a Senior Fellow at The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. From its founding in 2001 to 2016 he was president of Artstor. Recent publications include “The Data we Need for Holistic Admissions” (in Change Magazine), "Sustainable Free: Lessons Learned from the Launch of a Free Service Supporting Publishing in Art History" (in LIBER Quarterly); "Collaborative Change: Bringing Innovation to Hard-to-change Institutions" (in the Stanford Social Innovation Review); "The Funder as Founder: Ethical Considerations of the Philanthropic Creation of Nonprofit Organizations," in The Ethics of Philanthropy (Oxford UP).

During his nine years at the Mellon foundation, he worked in a range of research, administrative, and investment capacities. At the foundation, he collaborated with William G. Bowen and Derek Bok on The Shape of the River: Long-term Consequences of Considering Race in College and University Admissions (Princeton UP, 1998). He also wrote (with William G. Bowen), The Game of Life: College Sports and Educational Values (Princeton UP, 2001). Shulman received his BA and PhD from Yale in Renaissance Studies. His dissertation, which examined how heroes made decisions in the complex world of renaissance epic poetry forms the basis of The Pale Cast of Thought: Hesitation and Decision in the Renaissance Epic (U of Delaware P, 1998).

Lunch will be served; please RSVP to Julia Lupton (jrlupton@uci.edu).