Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship

Established in 1988, the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship (MMUF) is committed to expanding academic faculties and leadership in higher education and to promoting the value of the humanities and related disciplines. Its name honors Dr. Benjamin E. Mays, the noted African American educator, statesman, minister, and former president of Morehouse College.

The Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship Program encourages talented students to develop their academic interests to the fullest, obtain PhDs, and pursue careers in higher education. Washington University joins 47 other colleges and universities as well as the 39 member institutions of the United Negro College Fund in this effort.

Each year, new MMUF undergraduate fellows are selected in the spring of their sophomore year. The application process asks students to submit short essays, recommendations from faculty members, and an academic transcript. It also includes an interview with the WashU MMUF Selection Committee. Selected fellows are provided with mentoring, financial support, and cohort-building as they prepare for entry into PhD programs and eventual careers as scholars and faculty members.

MMUF is part of the Higher Learning program of the Mellon Foundation and reflects two of its three grantmaking priorities: broadening access to humanities higher learning opportunities and promoting fuller narratives.

Student applicants to MMUF will be evaluated on the basis of their proposed research project in the humanities or related disciplines, their prior coursework, their plans for a major, and their potential to bring new and fuller perspectives to the academy. The program is open to all students. Race, color, national origin, shared ancestry or ethnic characteristics, sex, or other protected characteristics are not considered as part of admission or any other aspect of participation in the program.

Some research themes and rubrics that may satisfy the goal of promoting fuller narratives include, but are not limited to, the following: historical and contemporary treatments of race, racialization, and racial formation; intersectional experience and analysis; gender and sexuality; Indigenous history and culture; questions about diaspora; coloniality and decolonization; the carceral state; migration and immigration; urban inequalities; social movements and mass mobilizations; the transatlantic slave trade; settler colonial societies; and literary accounts of agency, subjectivity, and community. 

Read more on the national Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship website.

MMUF at a Glance

1,200+ PhDs earned

Though most MMUF PhDs go on to teach at the university level, our fellows are also employed in higher ed administration, nonprofits, museums, libraries, publishing, government, medicine, and law.

850+ college and university faculty and instructors

A critical mass of MMUF PhDs is now transforming teaching and scholarship in the humanities and social sciences.

500+ tenured and tenure-track professors

Over 500 MMUF PhDs now hold positions as tenure-track, tenured, or full professors.

Discover more about being a Mellon Mays Fellow

Learn about the robust student experience and opportunities that await Mellon Mays Fellows and beyond.

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Our Leadership

 

Faculty Director – Professor Jonathan​ Fenderson

Jonathan Fenderson is an Associate Professor in African and African American Studies at Washington University in St. Louis, which he first joined as a postdoctoral fellow in 2011. He earned his PhD in the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts. His research and teaching interests emanate from three themes: intellectual history, social movements, and transnational links between Africa and the Diaspora. 

His writing has appeared in a number of places, including the Journal of African American History, Race & Class, and the Journal of African American Studies. His first book, Building the Black Arts Movement: Hoyt Fuller and the Cultural Politics of the 1960s will be released by University of Illinois Press in April 2019. He teaches several courses in African and African American Studies. The most popular courses include: "Feminist Fire: Radical Black Women in the 20th Century,” “International Dimensions of the Black Power Movement,” and “Black Political Thought." He also serves as the Associate Editor of the Black Scholar.

 

Administrative Director – Dean Wilmetta Diallo

Dean Toliver-Diallo serves the College Office as a Four-year Advisor and a PreHealth Advisor. She manages the Junior year programs, including Fall Forward in the fall and Junior Jumpstart in the spring. She is the Coordinator for the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship Program. In January 2020, she was a participating coordinator in the MMUF January Programme in Cape Town, South Africa.

Her research interests include Francophone Africa, African Cinema, and the relationship between history and popular culture in Senegal. Toliver-Diallo is the founding director of Washington University’s African Film Festival. She also directs the Senegal Summer Program for the university every other summer.

 

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