FALL 2020 RESEARCH GRANTS
The Center for Excellence in the Arts and Humanities is pleased to announce the following awards for Fall 2020 Research Grants. Thank you for the many applications we received this semester. Special thanks to the CEAH Advisory Board for their thoughtful input and reviews.
Grant Arndt (World Languages and Cultures), Against Termination: Cosmopolitan Indians, Action Anthropologists, and the Emergence of Indigeneity With a CEAH-supported course release in Spring 2021, Dr. Arndt will complete the first full draft of his next book manuscript, “Against Termination: Cosmopolitan Indians, Action Anthropologists, and the Emergence of Indigeneity.” This book focuses on the pioneering work of two anthropologists, Sol Tax and Nancy Lurie, who worked closely with indigenous peoples in the 1950s and 1960s in the latter’s fight against the Federal policy of Termination that sought to break up Indian communities. This close collaboration, however, was rare among anthropologists at the time and largely forgotten since. The story told in this book thus recovers an important chapter in the history of anthropology, one that challenges current historical understandings of the discipline, which tends to assume a dark past of colonial complicity that has been largely overcome today. This presentist assumption ignores the important work of anthropologists like Tax and Lurie and the insights they developed together with Indian activists. Moreover, it ignores the impact and importance of indigenous activists on anthropologists and their theories. Having completed drafts of three of the book’s four substantive chapters, Dr. Arndt will spend the CEAH award period finishing the fourth (and final) chapter of the book.
William Carter (World Languages and Cultures), Devilish Details: Goethe and the Art of Administration William Carter will receive a course release from CEAH to work on his book manuscript, “Devilish Details: Goethe and the Art of Administration.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) is Germany’s most famous author. His dramas, essays, novels, poetry, and prose count among the greatest examples of world literature. He also composed works of criticism, scientific treatises, and countless official documents in his capacity as a senior government administrator. While Goethe’s literary masterpieces continue to enjoy much scholarly attention, researchers have not adequately addressed how Goethe’s administrative experience and keen understanding of economic theories contributed to his literary corpus. His book manuscript seeks to remedy that shortcoming by breaking new ground regarding key figures and concepts in Goethe’s Faust and his other major works, which he examines in light of Goethe’s administrative writings and contemporaneous political economic discourse. With a CEAH Research Grant he will complete the final chapter of his book manuscript and prepare a book proposal.
Kate Padgett Walsh (Philosophy and Religious Studies), Kate Padgett Walsh will receive a course release from CEAH to help facilitate her work on organizing a conference and co-editing a volume of new papers by scholars of G.W.F. Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, which was his last systematic work and the most complete statement of his mature views on ethical and political philosophy. Following a conference organized at Johns Hopkins University, the published volume will feature contributions from prominent philosophers and take stock of the ongoing relevance of Hegel’s work for contemporary debates about the future of the modern political project. This project will also support original research for a new paper to be included in the volume, entitled “Debt and Power: Undermining Reciprocity Within Ethical Life” which will explore the limits of Hegel’s strongly positive account of modern ethical life, one that was famously critiqued by Nietzsche in his work on the ethics of debt.
Jonathan Sharp (Music), Percussion Forward “Percussion Forward” is solo electroacoustic percussion recital and lecture presented by Jonathan Sharp and features a hybrid acoustic-electronic synthesizer marimba. The CEAH grant funds will assist in the purchase of a professional rosewood marimba modified with a custom piezo pickup amplification, creating a hybrid instrument that blends acoustic marimba sounds with electronic midi synthesizer sounds during live performance. This hybrid mallet synthesizer instrument is the highlight of the project. The “Percussion Forward” recital repertoire will be presented to public schools and universities throughout the United States, and at the National Conference on Percussion Pedagogy in Lubbock, TX, and the West Kentucky Percussion Festival in Greensville, KY. Dr. Sharp will also compose a contemporary work for solo snare drum that will be premiered and performed throughout all of the project’s performances. Dr. Sharp’s performance of the recital repertoire music will be recorded at professional audio/video quality and made available to musicians and scholars around the world via digital platforms.
Lucía M. Suárez (World Languages and Cultures), Belonging: Latina Memoirs in Times of Displacement Lucía M. Suárez will receive a course release from CEAH to enable her to work on a book project in the field of the Humanities that centers on ideas of democracy in the United States and the role of Latina life writings to shape human rights activism and critical spaces of civic solidarity. In it, she examines how the genre of the American memoir, furnishes Latina women (writers, academics, and witnesses) a prime legitimating place from which to belong. Through close socio-cultural/textual readings, this book exposes how Latina authors situate their private lives (rooted in Latin American and Caribbean traditions) and their public works (grounded in the US) into a uniquely foundational American literary canon of personal writings that highlight women’s contributions to gain rights and visibility through education, care work, and writing. This is the first book on the market to engage such a sustained, historically anchored literary study of Latina Memoirs, thus providing a significant intellectual contribution to Latinx and Memoir Studies.