Transforming Stories, Spaces, Lives (TSSL) is a three-year project at Wellesley College funded by a Mellon Foundation Humanities for All Times grant. This project is dedicated to fostering humanities-based critical thinking, reflective scholarship, and civic engagement among students and faculty at Wellesley and beyond.

To achieve this end, TSSL utilizes a cross-disciplinary, three-pronged approach:

1) Transformation of the Humanities Curriculum. We examine, share, and teach a range of humanistic methodologies through new and revised courses. This curricular transformation broadens the reach and appeal of humanities courses to students across campus and will demonstrate how humanities-based tools can address essential questions and shared dilemmas.

2) Launching a Humanities Hub for student research projects. We’ve created a student-facing Humanities Hub to be located in the newly-renovated Clapp Library in August 2025 (currently housed in Founders Hall). In this multipurpose space, students can pursue individual research projects and engage in faculty-designed projects, including TSSL’s own Narrative Lab.  

3) Incorporating students in Public Humanities Work. Public Humanities projects help to bridge the gap between theory and practice by giving students the opportunity to work with community partners. Our Faculty Working Groups facilitate the thoughtful incorporation of the Public Humanities into new and ongoing classes and faculty research projects. Likewise, we provide paid opportunities each semester for students to participate in humanities research. 

See our projects page for more information.

TSSL is invested in the value and transformative power of the humanities both in and out of the academy. By providing funding and other forms of support for humanities research, and especially Public Humanities projects, we hope to make a lasting impact on the humanities at Wellesley and in our local community.

In 2027, we will produce a project toolkit which will document the learnings, challenges, and successes of the work, and include actionable recommendations for liberal arts leaderships and faculty looking to incorporate humanistic methodologies into their own courses or programs.