History professor Deepasri Baul and art and design professor Mania Taher have been selected by the Humanities Research Institute's Interseminars initiative to develop the graduate seminar Living Between Worlds: Gender, Migration, and the City.
Their project is part of the fourth phase of the Mellon Foundation funded Interseminars initiative that has supported collaborative, interdisciplinary graduate education at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign since 2019. Through three successive thematic cohorts of faculty and students over the course of six years, Interseminars has generated opportunities for experimental inquiry across the humanities and arts and has showcased the results of this work on campus and beyond.
Building on that foundation, the fourth iteration of Interseminars is focused on developing long-term sustainability for experiments in collaborative graduate teaching. Rather than the extended research fellowship model of earlier rounds, this phase supports faculty pairs in the co-design and co-teaching of graduate seminars to be offered in the 2026–27 academic year. Participating instructors will receive administrative support and programming funds to enrich their courses with guest speakers, public events, and pedagogical exploration.
Baul and Taher's course will be a critical examination of gendered mobility and urban life in South Asia and its diasporas, foregrounding women’s everyday negotiations of space, power, and freedom.
Over the coming semesters, they and the other faculty co-instructors with courses selected will participate in planning meetings and individual consultations to refine their syllabi and pedagogical approaches, with courses offered in spring 2027.
Editor's Note: This story was adapted from the announcement on the Humanities Research Institute website.