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Outreach Activities

The College of Humanities and Fine Arts has a number of outreach programs that enrich the lives of our students, the University of Massachusetts Community and impact the greater Pioneer Valley region.  In addition the College and our departments sponsor hundreds of symposiums, lectures, events and workshops that are open to the community each year. The following are several examples of our ongoing outreach programs:

Crate: www.umass.edu/english/eng/mfa/crate

Crate, an online literary magazine, was created in 2001 to showcase the creative work of graduate poets and fiction writers at UMass. Entirely student-run, Crate aims to foster a community of support rooted in familiarity and engagement with the work of MFA students.

DEFA Film Library: www.umass.edu/defa

The DEFA Film Library at the University of Massachusetts Amherst is the only archive and study center outside Europe devoted to the study of a broad spectrum of filmmaking by East German filmmakers or related to East Germany from 1946 to the present.

It was founded in the early 90s by Barton Byg, professor of film and German studies within the Germanic and Scandinavian Languages program, who hoped to make East German cinema more available and better known in the US. DEFA stands for Deutsche Film Aktiengesellschaft – the state-run East German film studios, where films were made from 1946 to 1990.

The Film Library’s collection grew bit by bit, as the post-unification fate of East Germany’s film heritage was being decided across the Atlantic. In 1997, a groundbreaking agreement brought the largest collection of 16 and 35mm DEFA prints outside of Germany to the UMass Amherst campus, and the DEFA Film Library also hosted the first international conference on East German cinema in North America – thanks to collaborations with PROGRESS Film-Verleih and the DEFA Foundation in Berlin. In 1998, ICESTORM International brought East German titles on video to North America. Since then, the DEFA Film Library has continued to grow; to date we have hosted 2 international conferences, 3 Summer Film Institutes and 4 touring film series, and our holdings now include over 400 prints, over 1,000 research videos and DVDs and over 400 articles, books and periodicals.

Herter Art Gallery: www.umass.edu/art/facilities /herter_gallery

The Herter Art Gallery is located at the north end of Herter Hall west of the Fine Arts Center.  The gallery is overseen by the art department.  Shows are open to the public and feature work of students, faculty and other artists.

Public parking is available at all times behind the Robsham Visitors Center and at meters along Haigis Mall. Nights and weekends parking is also available in Lot #71 west of the Whitmore Administration Building.

History Institute: www.umass.edu/history/institute.htm l

The History Institute is the outreach arm of the UMass Amherst History Department. The Institute arranges in-service training for K-12 teachers in Western Massachusetts through its weekday Conversations Series, day-long workshops, and summer seminars.  Each summer the institute offers a two week institute that teachers from across Western Massachusetts participate at no charge – and even receive professional development points and $1,000 stipends – thanks to a three-year Teaching American History grant to HEC from the U.S. Department of Education.

Interdepartmental Program in Film Studies: www.umass.edu/film

Since its inception in 1991, Film Studies has become a dynamic center of interdepartmental and interdisciplinary activity at the University of Massachusetts. With active participation from a solid core of more than twenty faculty members, representing fifteen departments from the College of Humanities and Fine Arts, the School of Behavioral and Social Sciences, and the School of Education, the Program offers an undergraduate Certificate Program in Film Studies which enrolls approximately 200 students from twenty-eight different majors; 800 additional students have successfully completed the program since the fall of 1991. The Program has received national recognition from independent sources such as the Eastman-Kodak Corporation (1993, 1995, and 1999) for "academic excellence in support of the future generation of filmmakers."

The program is home to the Multicultural Film Festival which is free and open to the public.

Interdisciplinary Seminar in the Humanities and Fine Arts: www.umass.edu/hfa/isha

The Interdisciplinary Seminar in the Humanities and Fine Arts is a forum for faculty at the University of Massachusetts to engage with one another in a spirit of intellectual and creative adventure in a range of settings and environments. At the core of our activities is the ISHA Seminar, organized around a specific theme; each semester we choose a new topic.  The ethos of the seminar is free and democratic, cutting across lines of discipline and rank. Participants take turns leading discussion, based on their own interests and projects. Our other events include an annual ISHA lecture, as well as working groups and colloquia. It is our hope that ISHA, its seminar and related activities, will provide a vigorous resource for intellectual and creative energy on the UMass campus. Its range and connective potential should link faculty not only within the College of Humanities and Fine Arts but also in other disciplines and colleges as well.

Juniper Initiative for Literary Arts and Action: www.umass.edu/english/eng/mfa/ events.html

The Juniper Initiative for Literary Arts & Action houses the many and vibrant literary programs associated with the MFA Program for Poets & Writers. It was founded in 2003 by an MFA in English alumna and is dedicated to sustaining and encouraging projects that enrich our literary communities and diversify the opportunities open to students, writers, and readers. Juniper Initiative programming includes the:

-Visiting Writers Series

-Juniper Literary Festival

-Writers in the Schools

-Hilltown Community Reading Series

-Writers Work

-Jubilat

-The Jones Library/Jubilat Reading Series & Poetry Book Group

-Arts Administration Internship Program

-Juniper Prize in Poetry

-Juniper Prize in Fiction

-Juniper Fellowships

-Juniper Summer Writing Institute

Live Lit

Since 1985, students have sponsored Live Lit, a reading series in which poets and fiction writers in the program have an opportunity to hear each other's work. Housed at Amherst Books in downtown Amherst, Live Lit offers camaraderie, literature, and beers for a buck.

The Massachusetts Center for Renaissance Studies: www.umass.edu/renaissance

The Massachusetts Center for Renaissance Studies is an internationally leading center for the interdisciplinary study of the culture and achievements of the Renaissance period (1400-1700). The Center contributes to the field of Renaissance studies through research, teaching, and outreach to the University of Massachusetts Amherst campus, the Amherst community, and beyond.

Home to the scholarly journals English Literary Renaissance and The Sidney Journal, as well as the book series Massachusetts Studies in Early Modern Culture, the Center is a lively scholarly community with a rich program of lectures, seminars, and conferences along with graduate and undergraduate classes and programs for the wider Amherst community. Visiting scholars from four continents have made use of the research opportunities at the Center, and the Center's work reaches across both geographic and disciplinary boundaries.

We welcome all qualified scholars and students to do specialized research using our unique collection of more than 25,000 items, including primary and secondary texts, manuscripts, microfilms, CDs, DVDs, and one of the largest collections of books printed between 1500 and 1700 in the Northeast. This rich library includes, in addition, digitized resources and the papers of the Yale Thomas More edition and the professional papers of many major Renaissance scholars as well as the working library of J.H. Hexter.

Minuteman Marching Band: www.umass.edu//band

The Minuteman Marching Band has long been a source of great pride for the University of Massachusetts and the surrounding region. Under the leadership of George N. Parks, founder of the George N. Parks Drum Major Academy, and assisted by DCI Hall of Famer Thomas Hannum (Cadets of Bergen County, Star of Indiana and Blast!) and musical arranger, Michael Klesch (Cadets, Crossmen and Phantom Regiment), the Minuteman Marching Band has emerged as one of the nation's outstanding band programs. Each week at home football games, the "Power and Class" performs its traditional Post Game show for thousands of enthusiastic, dedicated fans who don't leave the stadium until the last note.

Over 350 students experience the excitement of college marching band at UMass. The Minuteman Band has performed for Presidential Inaugural Ceremonies in 1981, 1985, and 2001. In 1993, 2001 and 2004 the band performed at Bands of America Grand Nationals.

In 1998, the Minuteman Marching Band received the most prestigious honor bestowed upon college bands, the Louis C. Sudler Trophy, which is awarded in recognition of "the highest of musical standards and innovative marching routines and ideas, and which has made important contributions to the advancement of the performance standards of college marching bands over a period of several years."

SANKOFA Dance Project: www.sankofadanceproject.com

The SANKOFA Dance Project celebrates the celebrates African Roots in American Dance through intensive summer study, choreographic residencies at UMass Amherst along with performances and events celebrating dance and the diversity of the world in which we live. With a strong passion for expanding the diversity of arts programming and dance education in the area, The SANKOFA Project is partnering with The UMass Amherst Department of Music and Dance, Springfield Technical Community College and other organizations to generate exciting programs for our communities. By focusing on the African influence on American dance forms, SANKOFA offers an opportunity unique in our region. Each year features a master choreographer and dance educator to influence and over see the summer curriculum. Unique to our program, this master choreographer will return in the fall to choreograph a work for University Dancers, the UMass Amherst's touring dance company. Distinguished dance masters George Faison and Chuck Davis will be in residence in 2008 and 2009, teaching the summer curriculum and choreographing a work for University Dancers. Additional events include performances, speakers, a film series and a dance party. Springfield Technical Community College, SANKOFA's sister home to UMass Amherst, will serve as a primary venue for many of the exciting events to come!

Translation Center: www.umasstranslation.com

The Translation Center at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst is a unique enterprise that combines business services with academics. By keeping up with the latest in training and research, we find that we can offer higher quality translations to our clients.

In sum, the Translation Center blends academics and service in a dynamic fashion that keeps the Center on the cutting edge of the field. Research influences training, which in turn impacts service, and vice versa. All combine to improve the skills of our translators, who then can better serve our clients and meet your communication needs.

The Warring States Project: www.umass.edu/wsp

The Warring States Project is a center and international contact point for research on China's classical period (the 05th through 03rd centuries), the turbulent era which ended in 0221 with the military unification of the Chinese states. The Project's approach is based on the philological researches of Bruce and Taeko Brooks. Their methods are wholly general, and have been successfully applied to Greek and Sanskrit as well as Chinese texts; in these and other languages, they solve some long-standing philological problems in a consistent way. The redated Chinese texts, in turn, yield a historically plausible account of China's formative centuries. They reveal the "Hundred Schools" dialogue actually taking place, and show, in greater detail than was previously available, the intellectual development leading up to the Chinese Empire.

The Western Massachusetts Writing Project: www.umass.edu/wmwp

The Western Massachusetts Writing Project is an established K-13 professional development provider licensed by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. It is a local site of the federally funded National Writing Project and an aspect of the English Department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. WMWP is funded in part by the English Department, the Dean of the College of Humanities and Fine Arts, and the Provost.  The program offers a Certificate in the Teaching of Writing and a Summer Institute where teachers prepare and present professional workshops, read current theory and research in their chosen area, conduct informal action research projects in their classrooms, do their own self-directed writing, and help their colleagues with this writing through writing response groups.