The Center for the Humanities in Arts & Sciences has announced its first grant recipients for two newly established programs: the Faculty Seminar Grants and the Reading Group Grants for Faculty and Graduate Students.
The Faculty Seminar Grants are offered to tenured or tenure-track Washington University faculty as both one- and three-year grants in the amount of $3,000 per year to support seminars on particular subjects or themes.
Though there is no set formula for the seminars, they must meet at least twice per semester and participants and guests must use the forum as a way to present and discuss their own work as it relates to the theme. Seminars can be associated with or structured around an existing graduate seminar course, although it is not necessary for the course to be maintained for the entire term of the grant award.
Reading Group grants are offered to tenured or tenure-track faculty as well as to WUSTL humanities graduate students. The grants are in the amount of $1,200 per year, renewable annually, to support reading groups on a particular subject or theme.
Both programs will begin fiscal year 2011. Funds are to be used to defray the costs of speakers, supply materials or other operating expenses. The next round of funding will be announced this fall. For more information or to apply, call (314) 935-5576.
Faculty Seminar One-Year Grant
Receiving a Faculty Seminar One-Year Grant will be Jean Allman, PhD, the J. H. Hexter Professor in the Humanities and chair of the Department of History in Arts & Sciences, and Andrea Friedman, PhD, associate professor of history and of women, gender and sexuality studies, both in Arts & Sciences.
Allman and Friedman will serve as faculty co-conveners for “Intimate Histories of the Cold War and Decolonization.” The seminar will bring to the study of the Cold War and decolonization the exploration of the “geographies of intimacy” that has marked a critical and important scholarship heretofore focused on colonialism and the colonial state. It is organized around four broad themes: nationalism, the new nation-states, and modernization; displaced people and the politics of migration; citizenship; and security and the arms race.
Faculty Seminar Three-Year Grants
Receiving a Faculty Seminar Three-Year Grant will be Korina Jocson, PhD, assistant professor of education in Arts & Sciences.
Jocson will serve as faculty convener for “Cultural Transformations and Youth in the Age of New Media.” The seminar will focus on cultural transformations taking place in various communities and will provide an interdisciplinary forum for understanding how individuals and groups shape and are shaped by cultural forms in the age of new media. It specifically will draw on the work of academics, writers, artists and media producers whose cutting-edge perspectives have shaped existing and emerging scholarship in both the humanities and social sciences.
Also receiving a three-year grant will be Joseph Loewenstein, PhD, professor of English and director of the Interdisciplinary Project in the Humanities, both in Arts & Sciences; and C. Lynne Tatlock, PhD, the Hortense & Tobias Lewin Distinguished Professor in Arts & Sciences and professor of German in Arts & Sciences.
Loewenstein and Tatlock will serve as faculty co-conveners for “New Approaches to Book History, Emphasizing History of Publishing and Quantitative Approaches.” This seminar will address the historicity of textual transmission and the effects of the textual market on the intellectual and emotional lives of writers and readers. It will give special attention to quantitative approaches to the history of publishing with an eye to enabling humanities scholars to generalize securely about book-historical developments.
Reading Group Grants
Five reading group proposals have received funding.
They are:
- Medieval Courtly Culture. Conveners are William Layher, PhD, assistant professor of German; Jessica Rosenfeld, PhD, assistant professor of English; Julie Singer, PhD, assistant professor of French in Arts & Sciences; and Alicia Walker, PhD, assistant professor of art history and archaeology in Arts & Sciences.
- The Meta-Ethics Reading Group. Convener is Martin Turner, a graduate student in philosophy in Arts & Sciences.
- Transatlantic Crossings Reading Group. Conveners are Ignacio Infante, PhD, assistant professor of Spanish and of comparative literature, both in Arts & Sciences; Jessica Hutchins, a graduate student in comparative literature; and Nicholas Tamarkin, a university fellow in comparative literature.
- Interdisciplinary film Studies Reading Group. Conveners are Antoine Krieger, a graduate student in Romance languages & literatures in Arts & Sciences, and Anne Fritz, a graduate student in German and comparative literature.
- Monday Book and Discussion Group of the Department of Economics. Convener is Nicholas Papageorge, a graduate student in economics in Arts & Sciences.