As a postdoctoral research center, the Center for 21st Century Studies has several initiatives that foster interdisciplinary research in the humanities.

Fellowships
Through a yearly competition, the Center constitutes a group of six to eight UWM faculty, plus two external faculty, whose research relates to the Center’s biannual research theme. Fellowships are awarded to support research projects in the humanities, which include, but are not limited to, philosophy, history, literature, religious studies, and art history.

Transdisciplinary Challenges for 21st Century Studies
For 2011-13, C21 is sponsoring a multidisciplinary research initiative that addresses one or more of the transdisciplinary challenges of 21st century studies. A single, two-year award, up to $300,000 for the two years, will be made to a promising collaborative research project which brings together UWM researchers from the Center’s traditional constituencies in the humanities, arts, and humanistic social sciences with researchers from natural, physical, and quantitative social sciences. This new initiative is designed to prompt researchers from any disciplinary background to think in unexpected and untried ways about working with researchers in disciplines whose methodology, content, and institutional practices are unfamiliar to them. Although this is not the kind of research with which most academics have experience, we are convinced that this kind of research will become increasingly prevalent and necessary in the 21st century.

The Request for Proposal provides further information on the initiative, including eligibility and evaluation criteria. Here is a tentative timeline for the initiative:

Letter of Intent/CV: December 17, 2010
C21 Meetings: January/February 2011
Proposals Due: March 11, 2011
Award Announced: May 16, 2011
Project Kickoff: July 1, 2011
Project Completion: July 1, 2013
Final Report Due: September 1, 2013

Publications
The Center's broad range of publications confirms its leadership in the academic community in the U.S. and abroad. The books in the Center's series 21st Century Studies (formerly Theories of Contemporary Culture) with Indiana University Press are site specific; they are authored by scholars affiliated with the Center or originate from conferences sponsored by the Center. The Center also publishes a series on online Working Papers for faculty and an online Occasional Papers series for graduate students.

In the electronic media, undergraduate students write about Center events through our blog, we post videos of select speakers on our YouTube channel, Center events and other bits of information are posted on our Facebook page, and we are known to condense difficult concepts into 140-character transmissions via our Twitter account, @center21.

Workshops
Research Workshops bring together faculty, staff, and independent scholars from UWM and other local institutions to discuss common interests across disciplinary lines. Workshops are open to UWM faculty and academic staff, and to researchers in the field from outside UWM.

Themes
Every two years the Center designates a theme that lends itself to multidisciplinary study as the subject for its research. Around this theme we present a full program of public lectures, seminars, symposia, and conferences.

Curricular Projects
The Center for 21st Century Studies seeks to promote graduate student involvement with its activities, promote faculty-student interaction, and help graduate students in their careers through its curricular projects. With the help of department liaisons for our Curricular Project, we seek to identify graduate students interested in meeting Center visitors for a formal conversation/interview in the context of the visit. The student will then use his/her notes, combine these with other materials (e.g., his/her familiarity with the speaker's work), and write a short paper that the Center may, at its discretion, publish on its website.