About HIC

In late 2021, DARE Fellows Brooke Durham (History PhD 2022) and Chiara Giovanni (Comparative Literature PhD 2023) first discussed the idea of using the DARE Project Funds to pilot a racial affinity space for humanities graduate students. Inspired by the success of the Black Engineering Graduate Student Association (BEGSA), which also originated as a DARE Project, Durham and Giovanni conceived of this space as a means of creating community beyond the research-focused seminars, reading groups, and writing workshops that proliferate in Stanford humanities departments. Where their STEM counterparts easily connected over shared identities and experiences, Durham and Giovanni noticed humanities students of color were forced to find one another through areas of study like ethnic or postcolonial studies, which precluded both the participation of scholars of color outside these subfields and a more informal mode of connection.

After naming the new group “Humanities in Color” to reflect the vibrancy of the community, Durham and Giovanni secured funding from DARE, along with supplementary support from the School of Humanities and Sciences Graduate Diversity Office, and held a launch in January 2022. Since then, HIC has grown into a regular fixture in the humanities social landscape and looks forward to serving the graduate student community as it begins its second full year of programming in 2023-24 under the leadership of Chanhee Heo and Seyi Osundeko. 

HIC Leadership

• 2021-22 Brooke Durham (History) and Chiara Giovanni (Comparative Literature)
• 2022-23 Chiara Giovanni (Comparative Literature) and Chanhee Heo (Religious Studies)
• 2023-24 Chanhee Heo (Religious Studies) and Seyi Osundeko (English) 

Co-Sponsors/Supporters

• The Vice Provost of Graduate Education (DARE, DIF)
• Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages
• Department of English
• H&S Graduate Diversity Recruitment
• Stanford Office of Inclusion, Community and Integrative Learning
• The Black Community Services Center
• The Asian American Activities Center
• The Changing Human Experience Initiative
• Stanford Humanities Center