The logo designed for the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship program at the University of Chicago was inspired by the quilts of Gee’s Bend, Alabama—a small, rural African American community that has a deep history of artistic production. The Gee’s Bend Quilters and their work is symbolic of both the power of creative expression and the importance of understanding the historical relations among people that give rise to that expression. Similar to the women of Gee’s Bend, the MMUF program is dedicated to establishing a creative community of scholars, writer and thinkers. As we build cohorts who meet in seminars, with faculty mentors, and other scholars on our campus, our goal is to foster the scholarly production of our students so that they may grow and learn from each other.
