Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities / ncastro@illinois.edu
The Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has awarded its inaugural 2016-18 IPRH-Andrew W. Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellowships in Bio-Humanities and its 2016–17 IPRH-Andrew W. Mellon Pre-Doctoral Fellowships in Bio-Humanities. Led by Samantha Frost, the IPRH-Mellon Faculty Fellow in Bio-Humanities and is a professor of gender and women’s studies and of political science, these fellows will pursue their own biohumanities-related research projects and participate in all activities of the Mellon Bio-Humanities Research Group. In addition, IPRH has selected three undergraduate IPRH-Mellon biohumanities interns who will participate in the research group’s work, pursue their own research projects and organize a showcase of undergraduate research to coincide with Undergraduate Research Week in April 2017. The fellows, interns and research group are funded by a seven-year grant of $2.05 million from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to IPRH to support the development of emerging areas in the humanities.
The IPRH-Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellows in Bio-Humanities and their research projects are: Daniel Liu (history of science, medicine, and technology; University of Wisconsin, Madison; Ph.D. expected May 2016), “Visions and calculation of living matter”; and Rosine Kelz (Ph.D., politics and international relations, University of Oxford, 2014), “‘Beyond the human?’: Concepts of Humanity, Responsibility and Agency in Political Theory and Biotechnology.”
The fellows will spend their two-year terms in residence at Illinois, where they will conduct research on their proposed projects, participate in the work of the research group including a methods seminar and related events, and teach one course in biohumanities, as developed by the research group.
The IPRH-Mellon Pre-Doctoral Fellows in Bio-Humanities and their projects are: Lydia Crafts (history), “Empire’s Laboratory: Race, Ethic and Medical Experimentation in Guatemala during the Cold War”; and Rebecah Pulsifer (English), “Signifying Nothing: Intelligence and Intellectual Disability in British Modernism.” The pre-doctoral fellows pursue their own research and participate in the working of the research group and related events, including a weekly methods seminar.
The IPRH-Mellon Interns in Bio-Humanities are Sneha Adusimulli, majoring in molecular and cellular biology; Miranda Dawson, majoring in bioengineering; and Sana Khadri, majoring in English and integrative biology. The interns will work with the Bio-Humanities Research Group on their seminars, workshops and programs. Interns also will work with Frost, the research group director, to develop their own research projects as well as a research symposium for undergraduates at the end of the spring 2017 semester.
Biohumanities is an emerging field distinguished by its critical and creative appropriation of findings in the biological sciences for the purpose of reimagining and reconfiguring our sense of human being and of the meaning and significance of human undertakings. The Bio-Humanities Research Group seminar aims to develop methodologies for biohumanities research.
The Bio-Humanities Research Group is the first group to launch of the three groups supported by IPRH’s “Emerging Areas in the Humanities” grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The grant supports fellowships and research groups in three areas: biohumanities, environmental humanities and legal humanities. These complex areas of inquiry require applications of historical, literary and visual thinking to advance knowledge across cultures and time. These three research groups will permit both artists and humanists to engage in research that more firmly links them to studies of the biological-medical world, in-depth intellectual involvement with ecological and environmental issues and the intersection of the humanities with law.
“As we embrace the challenges facing our world at all scales, we must have our eye on emerging arenas of scholarly investigation and new ways of knowing and doing,” said Antoinette Burton, IPRH director. “Thanks to the support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, faculty and students at the University of Illinois will be at the forefront of these endeavors as they relate to the bio humanities, a field that is arguably emblematic of the best, most vibrant kinds of interdisciplinary research and teaching today.”
More information about the IPRH fellowship programs can be found online.
