CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – The Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities has announced its annual faculty and graduate student fellowship awards for 2009-2010.
The newly selected fellows will spend the year engaged in research projects that consider the theme: “Representation.”
The IPRH Faculty Fellows, their departments and their research projects:
• Jane Desmond, gender and women’s studies, and anthropology, “When the Artist is an Ape: Visual Arts, the Challenge of Representation and Political Subjectivity.”
• Clarence Lang, African American studies and history, “The Black Working-Class Public and the Urban Midwest: African American Nationality and Cultural Representations in the Late Industrial Period.”
• Esther Kim Lee, theater and Asian American studies, “Performative Representation and Diplomacy During and After Commodore Perry’s Expedition to China and Japan.”
• Lori Humphrey Newcomb, English, “Representing Shakespeare’s Audience: The Vernacular of Performance, 1576-1642.”
• Richard T. Rodriguez, English and Latina/Latino studies, “Subjected to Fantasy: Latino Masculinity, Sexuality and the Politics of Representation.”
• Spencer Schaffner, English and Center for Writing Studies, “[Unintelligible]: The Art of Writing Beyond Meaning.”
• Oscar E. Vázquez, art history, “Graffiti’s Palimpsests: A Brief Moment in the History of Representation (1970-2008).”
Vázquez has been designated the IPRH/FAA Fellow. This year marks the inauguration of IPRH’s collaboration with the College of Fine and Applied Arts and the inception of a fellowship to be given to a distinguished applicant from a department in FAA.
The Graduate Student Fellows, their departments and their projects:
• Jennifer Baldwin, Medical Scholars Program and anthropology, ” ‘Society Saw Me as Expendable’: Representing the Experience of War-Acquired Disability and the Politics of Caring for Wounded Veterans.”
• Leïla Ennaïli, French, “Representation of Foreigners and Immigrants in 20th Century French Literary and Filmic Narratives.”
• Susan N. Johnson-Roehr, architecture, “(Il)legible Landscapes: Representations of Knowledge and Power at the Astronomical Observatories of Sawai Jai Singh II, 1721-1743.”
• Jennifer L. Lieberman, English, “Power Lines: Electric Body Politics in American Literature and Culture, 1889-1953.”
• Sara D. Luttfring, English, “Designing Women: Representing the Female Reproductive Body in Early Modern England, 1600-1660.”
• Melissa Rohde, history, “Working America’s Enchanted Lands: American Indian Tourism Labor, 1900-1950.”
• Martha Althea Webber, English and Center for Writing Studies, “Crafting Citizens: Democratic Action and Transnational Craft Literacy.”
• Chia-rong Wu, comparative and world literature, “Encountering Spectral Traces: Ghost Narratives in Chinese American and Taiwanese Fiction and Film.”
Two of the graduate fellows, Lieberman and Webber, have been designated Nicholson-IPRH Fellows for 2009-2010, with the support of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the Nicholson Endowment Fund.
The Nicholson Endowment is a gift of Grace W. Nicholson (1906-1998), who pursued undergraduate studies in LAS, and John A. Nicholson (1891-1986), a professor emeritus and faculty member in the department of philosophy for 33 years. Established in 1999, the Nicholson Endowment provides support for academic programs in LAS and excellence in the study of the humanities on campus.
Faculty Fellows are released from one semester of teaching, with the approval of their departments, but are asked to teach one course during the award year or the subsequent year on a topic related to their fellowship. Graduate Student Fellows receive a stipend and a tuition and fee waiver from IPRH. All IPRH Fellows are expected to remain in residence on the U. of I. campus during the award year, and to take part in the program’s annual conference and related activities, and to participate in the yearlong interdisciplinary fellows’ seminar.
More information about the IPRH Fellowship Programs is available online or by contacting Christine Catanzarite, senior associate director at IPRH.
