Center for the Humanities announces 2015-16 grants

The Center for the Humanities has announced more than three dozen new and renewed grants in a variety of categories for faculty members and graduate students during the 2015-16 year.

These include:

Faculty Seminar Grants support seminars on a particular subject or theme. Groups meet at least twice per semester to present and discuss informally their own work as it relates to the theme. “Eighteenth-Century Interdisciplinary Salon” and “Memory and Violence” were each renewed for a second year; “Wastelands” will continue into its second year of a three-year grant.

Reading and Writing Group Grants support reading and writing groups on a particular subject or theme for tenured or tenure-track faculty and humanities graduate students.

 Receiving new grants are the reading groups “Contemporary German Literature,” “Queering the Global/Transnational Conversation,” “St. Louis East Asian Modern (STEAM)” and “Voice and Sexuality Studies Working Group, 2016-2017”; and the writing group “American Religions.”

Receiving renewed grants are the reading groups “Digital Approaches,” “Medical Humanities,” “Placing Space” and “Religion and Literature”; and the writing group “Medieval Colloquium.”

Summer Faculty Research Grants are open to all tenured or tenure-track faculty for funding of projects that advance the field of study in which it is proposed and make an original and significant contribution to knowledge. Grants have been awarded to:

• Martin Jacobs, professor of Rabbinic studies in Arts & Sciences, for a project titled “Constantinople vs. Tenochtitlán: Imperial Expansion through a Cinquecento Sephardic Lens.”

  

•  Hayrettin Yucesoy, associate professor of Arabic and Islamic studies, of international and area studies and of history in Arts & Sciences, for a project titled “Topography of Power: Ibn al-Muqaffa and the Abbasid Revolution (750–809 CE).”
• Ann Marie McManus, assistant professor of modern Arabic literature in Arts & Sciences, for a project titled “Of Other Languages:  Arabic Literature and the Politics of Regionalism (1956–2011).”
• Angela Miller, professor of art history and archeology in Arts & Sciences, for a project titled “Reason and Magic at Mid-Century: The Circle of Lincoln Kirstein.”
• Karen Acton, assistant professor of classics in Arts & Sciences, for a project titled “The Emperor as Patron.”
• Musa Gurnis, assistant professor of English in Arts & Sciences, for a project titled “A Spy in the House of Actors.”
• Kurt Beals, assistant professor and director of undergraduate studies in Germanic languages and literatures in Arts & Sciences, for a project titled “The Birth of Poetry from the Spirit of the Machine: New Media in German Poetry, 1916–68.”
• Sonia Song Ha-Lee, assistant professor of history and director of the honors program for the Department of History in Arts & Sciences, for a project titled “Subverting the Rehabilitative Ideal: Toward an Intellectual History of Liberatory Psychiatric and Black Power.”
• Lori Watt, associate professor of history and of international and area studies and director of East Asian studies in Arts & Sciences, for a project titled “The Japanese-American Transition in Immediate Postcolonial Korea and Micronesia, Autumn 1945.”
• Shefali Chandra, associate professor of history and of women, gender and sexuality studies in Arts & Sciences, for a project titled “Empress of Democracy: Indian Gender Production as Twentieth-Century Revolution.”
• Denise Gill, assistant professor of ethnomusicology in Arts & Sciences, for a project titled “Aurality Beyond the Human: Virtuosic Listeners of Istanbul.”

  

• Joe Schraibman, professor of Spanish in Arts & Sciences, for a project title “History, Language and Deep Structures in Leonardo Padura’s ‘Heretics.’”
• John Doris, professor of philosophy and philosophy-neuroscience-psychology in Arts & Sciences, for a project titled “Addiction, Recovery, and Transformative Experience.”

Summer Research Seed Grants are open to all tenured or tenure-track faculty in the humanities or humanistic social sciences who undertake the preparation of a competitive, peer-reviewed, prestigious grant application during the summer with the goal of submitting an application the following fall or spring. Grants have been awarded to:

• Clarissa Hayward, associate professor of political science, of philosophy and of urban studies in Arts & Sciences for a project titled “Political Disruption and Structural Change.”
• Julia Walker, associate professor of drama and of English in Arts & Sciences for a project titled “Modernity and Performance: Enacting Change on the Modernizing Stage.”
• Henry Schvey, professor of drama and of comparative literature in Arts & Sciences for a project titled “Something Wild! An Intermedial Exploration of the Theatre of Tennessee Williams.”

Roland Grimm Travel Awards are open to all tenured or tenure-track faculty for awards funding research in Asia. Awards have been given to:

• Lori Watt, associate professor of history and of international and area studies and director of East Asian studies in Arts & Sciences, for a project titled “The Japanese-American Transition in Immediate Postcolonial Korea and Micronesia, Autumn 1945.”

  

• Hayrettin Yucesoy, associate professor of Arabic and Islamic studies, of international and area studies and of history in Arts & Sciences, for a project titled “Topography of Power: Ibn al-Muqaffa and the Abbasid Revolution (750–809 CE).”
• Denise Gill, assistant professor of ethnomusicology in Arts & Sciences, for a project titled “Aurality Beyond the Human: Virtuosic Listeners of Istanbul.”

 Maxwell C. Weiner Humanities Research Grants, funded by a bequest from Maxwell C. Weiner, support tenured, full-time faculty in the humanities who do not currently receive an annual research fund in order to facilitate the pursuit of new research directions. Grants have been awarded to:

• Eric Brown, associate professor and director of graduate studies in philosophy in Arts & Sciences.
• Stephanie Kirk, associate professor of Spanish, of comparative literature and of women, gender and sexuality studies in Arts & Sciences.
• Vivian Pollak, professor of English in Arts & Sciences.
• Michael Sherberg, chair of Romance languages & literatures and professor of Italian in Arts & Sciences.
• William Acree, associate professor of Spanish in Arts & Sciences.

  

• Harriet Stone, professor of French and of comparative literature in Arts & Sciences.
• Guinn Batten, associate professor and director of the honors program in English in Arts & Sciences.
• Stamos Metzidakis, professor of French and of comparative literature in Arts & Sciences.

Collaborative Research Seed Grants are open to all tenured and tenure-track faculty in the humanities and humanistic social sciences. It encourages the establishment of research partnerships and funds preliminary work that lays the foundation for original, expanded collaborative research projects capable of attracting external funding or the publication of new co-authored research. Grants have been awarded to:

Nancy Reynolds, associate professor of history, of women, gender and sexuality studies and of Jewish, Islamic and Near Eastern languages and cultures; and Anne-Marie McManus, assistant professor of modern Arabic literature in Arts & Sciences, for a project titled “Wasteland Literacies: Towards New Readings of Place and Waste in the Middle East.”