SPRING 2020 RESEARCH GRANTS
The Center for Excellence in the Arts and Humanities is pleased to announce the following awards for 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.
Sarah Dees (Philosophy and Religious Studies), The Materialization of Native American Religions Sarah Dees will complete necessary research and revisions for her first book, The Materialization of Native American Religions: The Smithsonian Institution, Settler Colonialism, and the Study of Indigenous Lifeways. This CEAH award will allow Dees to devote her summer to archival research, analysis of new primary sources, writing, and revisions for her manuscript.
April Eisman (Art and Visual Culture), Angela Hampel: A Retrospective Exhibition April Eisman will receive a course release from CEAH to enable her to spend ten months in Germany working as the co-curator of a major retrospective exhibition on Angela Hampel, one of socialist East Germany’s most important artists. The exhibition, which will open at the Städtische Galerie in Dresden in June 2021, and its accompanying scholarly catalog offer a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Eisman to engage physically with Hampel’s artwork and to help shape her public reception in Germany, where she is best known for neoexpressive paintings of strong women from the Bible and mythology and her strong defense of gender equality in art.
Firat Erdim (Architecture), The Kite Choir The Kite Choir is a practice that builds on traditions of singing kites from China, Japan, Vietnam, and Bermuda. In these traditions, a sound-making instrument is carried aloft by a kite, as the ‘voice-box’ of an assemblage animated by the wind. Support from CEAH will help Firat Erdim continue his Kite Choir research, build four new instruments and create sound and video recordings of collaborative performances from multiple locations.
Christopher Hopkins (Music and Theatre), Labyrinthine Dream-Fugues: a composition for microtonal pipe organ Dr. Christopher Hopkins will create a large-scale musical composition for the Fokker Organ to be premiered in the Amsterdam Muziekgebouw. Dr. Hopkins will model the organ’s unique capabilities in software, assisting both the conceptualization and aesthetic decision processes in composing, and then use the same model to finalize the composition on-site with the organ in its real acoustical environment with the collaborating organist.
Raluca Iancu (Art and Visual Culture), Mokuhanga in Japan Raluca Iancu will research and develop Japanese non-toxic printmaking techniques. She will conduct research in Tokyo, within the archives of the Printing Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Tolman Collection and participate in two highly selective juried invitational artist residencies: the Mokuhanga Innovation Lab (Mi-Lab) Lake Kawaguchi Artist-in-Residence Program and the Studio Kura Artist in Residence Program.
Kimberly Moss (Art and Visual Culture), Kimberly Moss endeavors to draw the public into a unique visual story of a little-known snow-colored butterfly as a bioindicator of climate change—a butterfly that is obscure, but also found worldwide and is connected to diverse peoples and locations, reflecting the very nature and character of experiencing climate change. She will create artwork for an installation and solo exhibition to be held next August at The Foundry Art Centre in St. Charles MO.
Amy Rutenberg (History), A State Approaching Collapse: U.S. Army Responses to Draft and Military Counseling during the Vietnam War Amy Rutenberg’s research examines the link between citizenship and military service in the United States, especially in the years since World War II. This project will investigate how the military, especially the Army, reacted to a wave of resistance to military service that crested during the second half of the Vietnam War.