studies funding. Through a grant to Spelman College, Beverly Guy-Sheftall, director of the college's Women's Resource and Research Center, traced the development of women's studies in the United States since the mid-1980s. Her report, "The Status of Women's Studies," pays special attention to recent research on women of color and its incorporation into women's studies courses and undergraduate curricula.

In Latin America and the Caribbean, the Foundation supports research and training in women's studies and African-Brazilian studies. In 1992 the Foundation began supporting gender studies and analysis of gender-related issues in South Africa.

Increasingly, creativity and vitality in the performing arts are flowing from artists and organizations from diverse minority communities. To further that vitality, the Foundation continued to support two nationally recognized arts organizations—the Brooklyn Academy of Music and its New Wave Festival, and Meet the Composer and its composer/choreographer commissioning program. Both are noted not only for their creativity but also for tapping a variety of cultural traditions and forms. In 1992 grants were made to four regional theaters to initiate programs for the creation of dramas and musical theater that emphasize American multicultural themes. The grants went to the American Music Theater Festival, the McCarter Theatre Company, the Vivian Beaumont Theater, and the Washington Drama Society (Arena Stage).

In the developing world, many theater groups dynamically express the contrasts between regional and national perspectives, and between the traditional and the modern. Building on past efforts to strengthen conditions necessary for creativity in the theater, the Foundation currently supports 12 theater laboratories in India, as well as the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy, the country's leading performing arts school.