UCHRI Awards approximately $750,000 in Grant Funding to Faculty and Graduate Students
The University of California Humanities Research Institute recently announced grant awards totaling approximately $750,000 for interdisciplinary humanities projects, including conferences, working groups, research residencies, junior faculty manuscript workshops, and digital and public humanities work. The awards, to be administered in the 2016-2017 academic year, were determined in conjunction with UCHRI’s 10-member Advisory Committee, which comprises faculty from all 10 University of California campuses. A separate advisory committee selected the eight faculty recipients of the UC President’s Faculty Research Fellowship, a grant that supports compelling humanities research throughout the UC system.
According to UCHRI Director David Theo Goldberg, “Since its founding, UCHRI has served as the primary facilitator of multi-campus, interdisciplinary humanities research for the University of California. The diverse projects we have chosen to fund this cycle have the potential to expand humanistic research on a variety of contemporary issues.” Funded research topics range from the present-day legacy of Moroccan feminist Fatema Mernissi to the history of madness in early twentieth-century Beijing to the implications of globalized popular culture. The Advisory Committee also selected members for the first of two quarter-long queer studies residential research groups—one focused on the Americas and one on Europe—for the upcoming year. “Residential research groups are a cornerstone of our grantmaking activities,” Goldberg maintains, adding, “Next year, we are excited to host two research groups that will focus on expanding regional queer studies across a variety of disciplines.”
Increased Opportunities for Graduate Students
Particularly notable about this year’s awards is the increase in opportunities for graduate students to participate in interdisciplinary research. “UCHRI has long had a commitment to supporting graduate student research, but the most recent Office of the President funding has allowed us to support additional research projects for graduate students,” states UCHRI Assistant Director Kelly Brown. Brown, who also oversees UCHRI’s Humanists@Work initiative, notes that UCHRI’s graduate student intern was integral to expanding funding for graduate student working groups. As she describes, “Our summer intern argued that, like faculty, graduate students need support to connect their work in innovative and collaborative ways. So far, our Advisory Committee has been awed by the quality and scope of graduate student working group applications.”
Next year, UCHRI will fund a variety of graduate student working groups, including those engaging with the question “What are the keywords of Black Studies?,” evaluating the role of translation and exchange in Middle Eastern and South Asian Literary Culture, and working to build an inclusive pedagogy within the field of philosophy. UCHRI has also offered supplemental graduate student funding for substantive, research-oriented graduate student participation in faculty-curated projects such as conferences and faculty working groups. As Goldberg explains, “Many of the questions that are facing humanities today, particularly with relation to the future and role of humanities within the university, can only be properly addressed with significant input from our newest scholars. UCHRI will continue to support graduate students as an integral part of our mission to foster innovative humanities research throughout the UC system.”
Conferences
The Philippines and the Filipinos: Convergences and Divergences of Filipino/a Studies Scholarship
John Blanco, Literature, UC San Diego
Sarita Echavez See, Media and Cultural Studies, UC Riverside
Critical Conversations in Critical Cultural Heritage
Jon Daehnke, Anthropology, UC Santa Cruz
Amy Lonetree, History, UC Santa Cruz
You May Add or Subtract from the Work
Simon Leung, Art, UC Irvine
Rei Terada, Comparative Literature, UC Irvine
Fatema Mernissi for Our Times
Minoo Moallem, Gender and Women’s Studies, UC Berkeley
Paola Bacchetta, Gender and Women’s Studies, UC Berkeley
Easter 1916: Revolution in Ireland and its Afterlives
Laura O’Connor, English, UC Irvine
David C. Lloyd, English, UC Riverside
The Global-Popular
Bhaskar Sarkar, Film and Media Studies, UC Santa Barbara
Bishnupriya Ghosh, English, UC Santa Barbara
Short-term Collaborative Residency
Ethnographic Fictions: Immigration, Adoption and Sociolegal Knowledge
Susan Carole Bibler, Criminology, Law & Society, UC Irvine
Barbara Yngvesson, Social Sciences, Hampshire College
Faculty Working Groups
The Maghrib Workshop: Law and Movement: Historical Roots and Contexts, Contemporary Questions
Juan Gomez-Rivas, Literature, UC Santa Cruz
The Crisis of Diversity Within the Multiversity: Rethinking African and Africana Studies at the University of California
Rachel Jean-Baptiste, History, UC Davis
Anneeth Kaur Hundle, Anthropology, UC Merced
Indigenous Dance and the Academy
Jacqueline Shea Murphy, Dance, UC Riverside
Julie Burelle, Theater and Dance, UC San Diego
Imperfect Machines: Mind, Body, and Simulation Audiovisual Multi-Campus Working Group
Irene Lusztig, Film + Digital Media Department, UC Santa Cruz
Emily Cohen, Science and Justice Research Center, UC Santa Cruz
Graduate Student Working Groups
Working Groups on Philosophy and Inclusive Pedagogy
Jonathan Caravello, Philosophy, UC Santa Barbara
Sherri Conklin, Philosophy, UC Santa Barbara
Faculty PI: Matthew Hanser, Philosophy, UC Santa Barbara
Translation and Exchange in Middle Eastern/South Asian Literary Culture
Alexander Jabbari, Comparative Literature, UC Irvine
Faculty PI: Jane O. Newman, Comparative Literature, UC Irvine
Theorizing Human and Microbial Relations
Stephanie Maroney, Cultural Studies, UC Davis
Faculty PI: Charlotte Biltekoff, American Studies and Food, Science, and Technology, UC Davis
Black Studies: Vocabularies and Genealogies
SA Smythe, History of Consciousness, UC Santa Cruz
Maisam Alomar, Ethnic Studies, San Diego
Faculty PI: Sara Clarke Kaplan, Ethnic Studies, UC San Diego
Women of Color in Collaboration and Conflict
Claudia Lopez, Sociology, UC Santa Cruz
Faculty PI: Marcia Ochoa, Feminist Studies, UC Santa Cruz
Residential Research Group Members: Queer Hemisphere—América Queer
- Kirstie A. Dorr, Ethnic Studies, UC San Diego
- Deborah R. Vargas, Ethnic Studies, UC Riverside
- Marcia Ochoa, Feminist Studies, UC Santa Cruz
- Shelley Streeby, Ethnic Studies, UC San Diego
- Jennifer Tyburczy, Feminist Studies, UC Santa Barbara
- Christina Leon, Literature and Film, Oregon State University
- Justin Perez , Anthropology, UC Riverside
- Ivan Ramos, Ethnic Studies, UC Riverside
Engaging Humanities
Boyle Heights: Past, Present, and Future
Todd Presner, UCLA, Jewish Studies
No Place Like Home: Voices and Visions of the Housing Crisis in Santa Cruz County
Miriam Greenberg, Sociology, UCSC
Karen Tei Yamashita, Literature, UCSC
Latin American Studies in Motion
Catherine Benamou, Film and Media Studies, UC Irvine
Adriana M. Johnson, Comparative Literature, UC Irvine
Language in Latino Lives on California’s Central Coast
Mary Bucholtz, UCSB, Linguistics
Digital Humanities
Digital Obata
ShiPu Wang, Global Arts Studies Program, UC Merced
Bruce Robertson, History of Art and Architecture, UC Santa Barbara
The 1795 Louisiana Slave Conspiracy: A Digital Edition
Bryan Wagner, English, UC Berkeley
Play the Knave, a Video Game about Shakespeare Performance
Gina Bloom, English, UC Davis (TBC)
Archiving the Interdisciplinary
Liz Kotz, Art History, UC Riverside
Junior Faculty Manuscript Workshops
Vagrant Figures: Imaging Police Power in the early Atlantic World
Sarah Nicolazzo, Literature, UCSD
A New Nile: The 1902 Aswan dam and the remaking of the Nile River
Jennifer Derr, History, UCSC
The Invention of Madness: A Social history of Insanity in Beijing, 1900-1937
Emily Baum, History, UC Irvine
Sound Relations: A History of Music, Media, and Indigenous Self-Determination in Alaska
Jessica Perea, UCD, Native American Studies
Beyond the Vanguard: Grassroots Movements and the Making of Revolutionary Chile
Marian Schlotterbeck, UCD, History
UC President’s Faculty Research Fellowship
Downwardly Global: Women and Work in the Pakistani Diaspora
Lalaie Ameeriar, Asian American Studies, UCSB
Playing in the Shadows: Fictions of Race and Blackness in Postwar Japanese Literature
William Bridges, East Asian Languages and Literatures, UCI
Vagrant Figures: Imagining Police Power in the Early Atlantic World
Sarah Nicolazzo, Literature, UCSD
Sound Relations: A History of Music, Media, and Indigenous Self-Determination in Alaska
Jessica Perea, Native American Studies, UCD
Abundance: Sexuality, Historiography, South Asia
Anjali Arondekar, Feminist Studies, UCSC
The Virus Touch: Living with Epidemics
Bishnupriya Ghosh, English, UCSB
Flight of the Metropolis: Rethinking the San Francisco Bay Area Through SFO
Eric Porter, History/History of Consciousness, UCSC
Immaterial Archives: Lost Pasts, Salvaged Futures
Jenny Sharpe, English, UCLA
