Global Arts + Humanities Discovery Theme | 2021-22 Year in Review

GLOBAL ARTS + HUMANITIES DISCOVERY THEME

YEAR IN REVIEW

2021 -2022

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About Letter From the Faculty Director Cross-Disciplinarity Mission and Core Goals

Who We Are

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Leadership, Staff and Advisory Committee Cluster Hiring Post-MFA / Postdoctoral Researchers

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Faculty Graduate Team Fellows Graduate Research Grant Recipients Undergraduate Research Apprentices

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Society of Fellows

Diversifying Impact

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Current Project Catalog

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Fostering Multidisciplinary Education Transforming Educational Access Reimagining Institutional Practices Diversifying Representation Archiving Diversity: Diversifying Knowledge

Prepared by Wendy S. Hesford and Puja Batra-Wells Designed and edited by Breanne LeJeune

CAPTIONS (Left) Assistant Professor Crystal Perkins (Dance) performs an excerpt from her piece, In Lieu of Flowers. (Right) Associate Professor Ryan Skinner (Music) plays the Kora, a West African stringed instrument.

Both performances were part of GAHDT’s 2021 showcase event.

2021-2022 Year in Review Theme

Diversifying Impact Diversity, inclusion and equity drive every program at GAHDT, including how we think about impact assessments for social change. Arts and humanities processes of engagement foreground deep observation, listening, empathy, diverse viewpoints and imaginative possibilities. As knowledgemaking processes, these modes are essential to ethical decision-making, civic engagement and democracy.

If we are to capture the value of humanistic inquiry and engagement in advancing social change, we must diversify our understanding of impact. Diversifying impact calls for a dual vision. First, it requires a commitment to advancing diversity and expanding representation, access and equity.

Second, it calls for broadening recognition of what qualifies as impact — including attention to processes of engagement.

Letter from the

Faculty Director WENDY S. HESFORD is a professor of English and an Ohio Eminent Scholar in Rhetoric, Composition and Literacy Studies.

She is committed to enhancing Ohio State’s capacity for crossdisciplinary collaborations that foreground the impact of the arts an humanities in advancing social justice, diversity and crosscultural understanding. of inquiry are informed not only by disciplinary frames but also by material histories and embodiments. Solutions to complex societal problems can only be transformative if they attend to these histories, material contexts, and embodiments.

Critical societal challenges — multi-causal, multidimensional and resistant to singular solutions — push the boundaries of disciplinary understanding and call for crossdisciplinary collaborations, the integration of diverse perspectives and multifaceted solutions. The construct of solutions is but one framework for understanding impact, especially the impact of humanistic research and creative practices. The critical in “critical societal challenges” can mean urgent, pressing or necessary, but it also points to a methodological orientation. This includes the recognition that methods

Cross-disciplinary collaborations call for the critical engagement of Frame Diversity — that is, the examination of the methodological and conceptual frameworks that team members bring to the collaboration and ask: What issues and questions do certain frames render legible and to whom?

Whose experiences do certain frames render illegible and to whom are these experiences illegible?

Shifting from discipline-specific calculations of value to crossdisciplinary constituted rubrics prompts a multidimensional view of impact as a process of engagement attuned to collaborative knowledge-making and critical reflexivity about disciplinary assumptions and norms.

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How best to gauge the social impact of cross-disciplinary collaborations?

First, we need to understand performance metrics and the process of measuring impact as an interpretative act that draws attention to and therefore values certain goals and outcomes and not others. Within international politics, for example, the concept “spheres of influence” refers to a sovereign nation’s power and control over a foreign territory.

Assessing the impact of cross-disciplinary inquiry requires a shift in institutional orientation.

It requires that we break down the “sphere of influence” paradigm and its disciplinary emphasis on a metric of sovereign control by demystifying disciplinary protocols and evaluation systems.

To gauge the social impact of cross-disciplinary collaborations we must also attend to context-dependent factors and challenges. Moreover, if social change is viewed as a process and not simply a destination, then how we gauge impact must attend to these processes.

This 2021-22 Year in Review highlights the Global Arts + Humanities impact on the advancement of diversity, equity, and inclusion through its support for humanistic cross-disciplinary research and creative practices that transform educational access; foster equity through community building; archive diversity and diversify knowledge; reimagine institutional practices; and diversify political representation.

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Crossdisciplinarity The Global Arts + Humanities provides meaningful structural and material support for cross-disciplinary research and communities of practice.

As our guiding principle, cross-disciplinarity is an umbrella term that encompasses the following approaches: MULTIDISCIPLINARITY incorporates different disciplinary perspectives and methods, which are brought together to address a common problem or issue.

INTERDISCIPLINARITY integrates theoretical frameworks, methods and skills from the involved disciplines throughout the research process.

TRANSDISCIPLINARITY creates new conceptual, theoretical, methodological and translational innovations that move beyond discipline-specific approaches to address a common problem or issue.

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Mission

The Global Arts + Humanities Discovery Theme is the gateway to the integrated arts and humanities at Ohio State. Our mission is to invest in cross-disciplinary collaborations that amplify the transformative power of the arts and humanities to respond to critical societal challenges to drive social change.

Core Goals RESEARCH Build intellectual community and capacity across the university through cross-disciplinary research and creative practices that respond to critical societal challenges.

STUDENT ENGAGEMENT Deepen student engagement in the arts and humanities through cross-disciplinary research, experiential learning and professional development.

SOCIAL CHANGE Strengthen the university’s capacity for transformative, community-engaged partnerships through arts and humanities methods, orientations and interventions.

NATIONAL RECOGNITION Increase Ohio State’s national recognition as a leading land-grant institution and its distinction for excellence in integrated arts and humanities through crossdisciplinary collaborations.

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Leadership DANA RENGA | Division of Arts and Humanities GAHDT Lead Dean WENDY S. HESFORD | English Faculty Director HASAN KWAME JEFFRIES | History Director of Difficult Subjects: K-12 Teaching Institute

Staff Members PUJA BATRA-WELLS Program Manager

BREANNE LEJEUNE Communications Coordinator

Faculty Fellows DANIELLE FOSLER-LUSSIER | Music 2021-22 Faculty Fellow for the Arts ILA NAGAR | Near Eastern Languages and Cultures Faculty Fellow for the Humanities

2021-22

AMY SHUMAN | English 2020-21 Faculty Fellow for Methods and Practices (Humanities) SUSAN VAN PELT PETRY | Dance 2020-21 Faculty Fellow for Methods and Practices (Arts) SUSAN WILLIAMS | English AU’2020 Faculty Fellow for Strategic Advancement

Advisory Committee JESSICA DELGADO | History & Women’s, Gender 2020-22 and Sexuality Studies VÍCTOR ESPINOSA | Sociology-Newark 2020-21 PHILIP GLEISSNER | Slavic and East European 2020-22 Languages and Cultures BRIAN JOSEPH | Linguistics 2020-21 ANN HAMILTON | Art SP’2021 HANNAH KOSSTRIN | Dance 2020-21 TRISTRAM McPHERSON | Philosophy 2021-22 SUSAN MELSOP | Design 2019-21 TIYI MORRIS | African and African American Studies-Newark 2020-21 MOMAR NDIAYE | Dance 2021-22 JULIA NELSON HAWKINS | Classics 2019-20 SÉBASTIEN PROULX | Design 2021-22 ELAINE RICHARDSON | Teaching and Learning 2021-22 CARMEN WINANT | Art AU’2020

Who We Are “

Intellectually rich, disciplinarily diverse, and outward looking — the arts and humanities provide a welcoming and rich intellectual home to thousands of students across the university. The Global Arts + Humanities Discovery Theme bolsters our strengths in eminence in scholarship, pedagogical distinction, and sustained and innovative engagement programs at Ohio State and beyond.

DANA RENGA GAHDT Lead Dean 6

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JESSICA DELGADO Associate professor, Departments of History and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies

VÍCTOR ESPINOSA Assistant professor, Department of Sociology (Newark)

Delgado specializes in the history of women, gender, sexuality, religion and race in Latin America; colonial Catholicism; the materiality of devotion; and the intersection between social and spiritual status. She is the author of Troubling Devotion; Laywomen and the Church in Colonial Mexico 1630-1770.

Espinosa is a sociologist, ethnographer and curator who studies the intersection of art and transnational migration. He is the author of several books; his current book project is Staging Migrant Suffering: Melodrama in Latin American and Latino Activism.

PHILIP GLEISSNER Assistant professor, Department of Slavic and Eastern European Languages and Cultures

Gleissner specializes in the cultures and literatures of socialist Eastern Europe, with an emphasis on print media in the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and the GDR. He has authored several books, most recently Lockdown in the Kitchen: American Immigrant Foodways in Times of Crisis, with Harry Kashdan.

Cluster In 2017-2018, the Global Arts + Humanities Discovery Theme launched a cluster-hire program to enhance current faculty strengths in the area of global migration and mobility. GAHDT has completed six tenure-track hires. The new faculty joined the Departments of Dance; History; Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures; Sociology (Newark campus); and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies.

These faculty members bring expertise in inclusive dance pedagogy; dance as a tool for

community building, as seen in African communities; racial justice and community engagement; the circulation of cultural forms in socialist Eastern Europe; gender, race, caste and religion in Latin America; art and transnational migration; and transnational private law, gender inequality and global justice.

These new colleagues — the majority of whom are from under-represented groups — build on the scholarly community already in place and advance our commitment to diversity.

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Hiring LYN TJON SOEI LEN Assistant professor, Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies

Tjon Soei Len’s scholarly interests include contract theory and feminist legal theory as they relate to gender inequality and global justice. This research is presented in her book, Minimum Contract Justice: A Capabilities Perspective on Sweatshops and Consumer Contracts.

MOMAR NDIAYE Assistant professor, Department of Dance

Ndiaye has worked with choreographers from Africa, Europe, Asia and America.

Since 2010, he has danced for Andreya Ouamba in the Dakar-based company, Premier Temps. Since 2004, he has been developing work with his company, Cadanses, and he has toured several staged contemporary dance works.

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NYAMA McCARTHY-BROWN Assistant professor, Department of Dance

McCarthy-Brown’s research is grounded in social justice; she synthesizes scholarship and creative practice to create embodied and engaged research.

Much of this research is presented in her book, Dance Pedagogy for a Diverse World: Culturally-Relevant Teaching in Theory, Research and Practice.

RASEL AHMED Post-MFA Researcher in Creative Arts Department of Theatre, Film and Media Arts Ahmed is a community-based filmmaker who uses cinematic tropes and techniques to combine documentary with fantasy. His experimental videos explore his dialogic relationship with displacement, citizenship, border and loneliness.

CHRISTOPHER CASTILLO Postdoctoral Researcher Department of English

Castillo is a writing studies scholar from Chicago who focuses on hip-hop composition and has expertise in multi-literacies, digital and sonic literacies and community-based research.

RACHEL HOPKIN Postdoctoral Researcher Center for Folklore Studies & Humanities Collaboratory

MICHAEL CHARLES Postdoctoral Researcher Newark Earthworks Center

Charles earned a PhD in chemical and bio molecular engineering at Ohio State with expertise in community-engaged sustainable engineering and design, specifically with Indigenous peoples.

Hopkin is a radio producer and folklorist with expertise in performance and ethnographic research. She is currently the archivist for the Center for Folklore Studies Archives.

JULIA KEBLINSKA Postdoctoral Researcher Center for Historical Research & Center for SEELC & East Asian Studies Center

GREGORIO GONZALES Postdoctoral Researcher Department of Comparative Studies

Gonzales is an anthropologist with expertise in critical Indigenous studies and Comanche studies. He also teaches courses in borderlands studies; race, ethnicity, migration studies; and Southwest studies.

Keblinska’s research focuses on Chinese film and media cultures, East Asian film and socialist media. She is developing comparative approaches to post-socialism in East Asia and Eastern Europe.

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Post-MFA and Postdoctoral Researchers The Global Arts + Humanities’ Post-MFA and Postdoctoral Researcher program fosters cross-disciplinary exchange and professional development with the goal of facilitating their entry into tenure-track positions in the academic marketplace and the public arts and humanities. The valuable presence of these researchers adds intellectual energy and vitality to the College of Arts and Sciences as a whole, contributing to interdisciplinary collaboration between DIONNE LEE academic units and the development of innovative Post-MFA Researcher in Creative Arts scholarship and curricula. To this end, the Departments of Art & Women’s, program includes a strong mentoring Gender and Sexuality Studies component and also offers a series Lee is a visual artist working in photography, collage and video to explore power, survival of formal and informal professional and personal history in relation to the American

development opportunities. landscape.

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The Society of Faculty Fellows Multidisciplinary inquiry is built on the strength of disciplinary foundations and comparative skills. The Society of Fellows fosters a multidisciplinary community that supports the synthesis and translation of knowledge across disciplines to engage critical societal challenges in the form of an annual theme.

The theme for 2020-21 is Extinction | Imagination, and the program facilitator is GAHDT Faculty Director Wendy S. Hesford. This theme considers extinction broadly as a range of existential threats to ecosystems, species, populations, cultures, languages and lifeways, and the role of imagination in crafting equitable responses to these threats.

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MARGARET FLINN Department of French and Italian Flinn’s book project argues that contemporary French film, TV and comics respond (in)directly to threats humanity has posed to itself through climate change, via a positively-framed mobilization of historically-nationalist mythologies about French cultural exceptionalism.

HANNAH KOSSTRIN Department of Dance Kosstrin’s work approaches extinction by analyzing historical and contemporary dance phenomena to envision worldmaking possibilities in the wake of untenable geopolitical hegemonies and systemic discrimination.

BEN McKEAN Department of Political Science McKean’s research explores how to build solidarity and motivate political action in the face of the current climate catastrophe, which threatens our way of life and humanity itself with extinction.

KRIS PAULSEN Department of History of Art Paulsen’s book, Flesh in the Machine, explores speculative works in art, fiction and film, analyzing the political, cultural and social consequences of “technological fixes” for the increasingly uninhabitable Earth and potential human extinction.

JACOB RISINGER Department of English Exploring the dual origin of the Anthropocene and the Industrial age, Risinger’s book project interrogates the convergence between Romantic imagination and industrialization and the consequent rise of the concept of ‘power’ in aesthetics and poetics.

ELISSA WASHUTA Department of English Apocalypse Cosmology is an essay collection narrating Washuta’s experience as a chronicallyill Native woman insisting on survival between apocalypses, in a world headed toward its eventual end.

JASPER WAUGH-QUASEBARTH Department of Comparative Studies Waugh-Quasebarth’s project builds upon existing research partnerships to explore how communities in mountain forest regions are imagining new futures through cultural heritage despite ongoing ecological, economic and social extinction crises.

CARMEN WINANT Department of Art Winant’s project builds on a collaboration with photographer and former lesbian separatist, Carol Newhouse, whose oeuvre is comprised of thousands of negatives of womyn moving to the land and establishing new lives together with entirely new, non-patriarchal value sets.

Fellows

Graduate Team The Graduate Team Fellowship Program prepares graduate students in the arts and sciences with an opportunity to gain crossdisciplinary mentorship embedded in a collaborative ecology. To date, the GTF program has supported 32 interdisciplinary scholars.

This one-of-a-kind program provides students for a newly evolving job market – one highly dependent on networks, technology and a collaborative ethos. Graduate fellows meet monthly with GAHDT faculty mentors, engaging in cross-disciplinary dialogues that provide opportunities for carefullyhoned and translatable research descriptions, job talks and public-facing contributions.

This experiences builds tolerances for varying academic perspectives, fostering in graduate students a receptivity towards networkbased insight building. This fellowship encourages agility in methods and modes, creativity of mind and practice, and intellectual grit.

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DANIELLE FOSLER-LUSSIER (MENTOR) School of Music Fosler-Lussier’s principal interests include music in international contact and exchange; the role of women in the creation of concert life, state support for the arts, and educational institutions; and music history pedagogy.

ILA NAGAR (MENTOR) Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures Nagar teaches South Asian culture and studies topics in sociolinguistics situated at the nexus of language, politics, sexuality, power and meaning.

ROBERT BARRY JR, PhD Department of Comparative Studies Project Title Blackberry Molasses: Un/ Gendering Black Masculinities in the Afterlives of Slavery

KORTNEY MORROW, MFA Department of English Project Title Run it Back: Mapping of Black Material Cultural from the Rustbelt to the Blackbelt

SARAH CRAYCRAFT, PhD Department of Comparative Studies Project Title Young in the Village: The Project of Revitalization in Contemporary Bulgaria

PREETI SINGH, PhD Department of English Project Title Postcolonial Exceptions: Cultural Lives of the Indian National Emergency: 1975-77

JOY ELLISON, PhD Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Project Title Coalitions at the Crossroads: Transgender Movements in the Midwest (1945-2000)

LYDIA SMITH, MFA Department of Art Project Title I Leave No Stone Unturned

JACOB KOPCIENSKI, PhD School of Music Project Title Sounding Queer Appalachia: Music, Sound, Meditation and Listening in Queer Communities of Contemporary Appalachia

HENRIQUE YAGUI TAKAHASHI, PhD Department of Spanish and Portuguese Project Title Racial Entanglements: Orientalism and Anti-Blackness in Brazil

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Graduate Research Grant Recipients The Global Arts + Humanities’ Graduate Research Grant Program enhances opportunities for graduate students (PhD and MFA) in the arts and humanities to advance their research and/or creative practice, thereby fostering crossdisciplinary inquiry in alignment with GAHDT’s Society of Fellows and its annual theme.

In 2021-22, GAHDT awarded ten $2,500 research grants to graduate students from seven academic disciplines — four are in MFA programs and six are in PhD programs.

KRIS PAULSEN (MENTOR) Department of History of Art Paulsen specializes in contemporary art, with a focus on timebased and computational media. Her work traces the history of technology in the arts, from photography to new media, with an emphasis on telepresence, virtuality, interface studies and early video art.

ANDREW BISHOP, PhD Department of English Project Title Coping with Simplicity: Anthropogenic Violence and Extinction in Industrial-Era American Travel Literature LYDIA CORNETT, MFA Department of Art Project Title Said/Unsaid: A Visual Study in Nonverbal Communication

KASHIF DENNIS, PhD Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Project Title Sugar Dhaddy

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OMAR DIENG, PhD Department of African and African American Studies Project Title Becoming Afro-European: Practice and Rootedness in the African Diaspora

TAMARA McCARTY, PhD Department of Dance Project Title Marginalized Motion: Late-Medieval German Dance in Law, Practice and Memory ALEXANDROS NIKOLAIDIS, PhD Department of Educational Studies Project Title Educational Dimensions of Social Injustice

AARON PETERS, MFA Department of Art Project Title Broken Objects FERNANDO SÁNCHEZ LÓPEZ, PhD Department of Spanish and Portuguese Project Title Social Simulations in the Face of Catastrophe: A Generic and Cognitive Approach to El hoyo and La peste’s Worldbuilding BRETT TAYLOR, MFA Department of Art Project Title De/Re/Un-Becoming: Composing Being at the Intersection of Ability, Gender and Sexuality

MOLLIE WOLF, MFA Department of Dance Project Title The WILDS

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Undergraduate Research Apprentices The Global Arts + Humanities’ Undergraduate Research Apprenticeships are competitive research grants that provides 7-10 upper-level students the opportunity to be mentored through multidisciplinary approaches to the study of an annual theme, to build an intellectual cohort around the theme, and to produce research/creative responses to inquiries impelled by these engagements. The theme for the 2021-22 academic year is Extinction | Imagination.

Award recipients develop their own research and creative project, participate in group mentoring sessions and attend three of the Society of Fellows Digital Dialogues webinars. Apprentices also collaborate with GAHDT Communications Coordinator, Breanne LeJeune, to produce a public-facing webpage for their project, which is housed on GAHDT’s website: go.osu.edu/sof-undergraduate.

MARGARET FLINN (MENTOR) DANIEL ADAMSON Department of French BA History and Italian Education and Sovereignty: Flinn’s research focuses on film, The Carlisle Indian Industrial School and Indigenous art and politics as intersecting People’s Resistance, cultural discourses 1879-1892

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KARA KOMARNITSKY BFA Dance Minors in Business and Environmental Science Embodied Practices for Reimagining Our Relationship with Nature

CORBIN LANKER BS Earth System Sciences BS Oceanographic and Marine Sciences Ohio Farmers: Struggles, Communities, Experiences

ELIZABETH LEVINE BA Political Science Minors in Spanish, Italian What’s the Beef with Beef?

ARVCÚKEN NOQUISI EVA SCHERRER BA Moving Image Production BA History BS Sonic Arts BA Political Science Minors in Theatre, Spanish Oh-vtvlvketv, To Go Further: Bananas Beyond Borders: The Indigenous Communal Approaches to Counteracting United Fruit Company and its Informal Empire in Colombia Institutional Neglect (1899-1929)

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TABITHA WILLIS BS Medical Anthropology BS Biology Breeding Mistrust: How the Scars of Medical Apartheid Perpetuate Environmental Racism

Diversifying

Impact Diversity, inclusion and equity drive every program and every decision at GAHDT, including how we think about impact assessments for social change.

Arts and humanities processes of engagement — listening, doing, creating, embodying — stimulate new insights, approaches and orientations, and thus may be considered forms of impact.

Standard metrics — ­ like the number of publications, citations, performances, grants and awards — often do not make legible the processes that enable such achievements — thus failing to capture the value of each stage of action and change.

Attention to these processes help to demystify disciplinary frames, biases and assumptions, fostering more collaborations that enable researchers to communicate to wider and more diverse audiences; build research relationships that shift emphasis from individually driven impacts to collaboratively-constituted ones; reimagine reputational metrics to broaden spheres of knowledge creation to include community engagement, activist pedagogies and public practices; cultivate sustainable outcomes by attending to project cycles, their successive iterations and reflexive assessments.

The following feature highlights GAHDT’s project outcomes that exemplify attention to these modes and processes. From fostering multidisciplinary education and community building to institutional interventions that reimagine structures and practices to diversifying representation – these projects demonstrate the power of cross-disciplinary arts and humanities to address critical problems like racial and structural inequities.

FOSTERING MULTIDISCIPLINARY EDUCATION

Multidisciplinary education cultivates relational forms of inquiry that cut across and connect previously-separated categories and domains of knowledge, improving the ability of students to think critically, recognize bias and understand complexity and ambiguity.

TRANSFORMING EDUCATIONAL ACCESS

Providing access to educational opportunities and equity-based curricula cultivates critical reflexivity, centers marginalized voices, and fosters new imaginings of just alternatives.

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REIMAGINING INSTITUTIONAL PRACTICES

Reimagining an equitable institution requires a sustained commitment to diversity and inclusion. This includes building communities of practice that share resources to demystify existing structures, evaluating hierarchies, and intervening in ways that hone core competencies in social justice.

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DIVERSIFYING REPRESENTATION

Transformative change can only be achieved through attendance to multiperspectival engagements, grounded partnerships and democratic participation. Tools such as contextualization and comparison demystify our relations and interdependencies and commit us to a global ethic of responsibility.

ARCHIVING DIVERSITY: DIVERSIFYING KNOWLEDGE Knowledge-making includes naming, categorizing and creating records that cast certain narratives and peoples to the foreground.

To demystify the historical record is to recover hidden histories, expunged narratives, and collective imaginings.

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FOSTERING MULTIDISCIPLINARY EDUCATION

Global Arts + Humanities Discovery Theme Signature Program

Difficult Subjects In 2020-21, the Difficult Subjects: K-12 Teaching Institute brought together 17 pre-K, kindergarten, elementary, middle and high school teachers from twelve schools and 3 school districts in Central Ohio for a year-long exploration of multidisciplinary approaches to understanding and teaching American slavery.

Multidisciplinary approaches demystify normative narratives. They help students unlearn misconceptions about a subject by providing them with different lenses through which they can interrogate what they believe to be true. The arts and humanities, in particular, offer new lines of sight, helping students see differently what

they have already seen and think critically about what they have accepted as truth.

The institute had a profound impact on the participants. Shannon Griffin, a fourthgrade teacher at Olentangy Heritage Elementary School, reported that the institute provided her with “an entirely new way of teaching the subject.” Kristin Marconi, an eighth-grade American history teacher at Olentangy Orange Middle School, developed mapping and research activities for her students using the Freedom on the Move database. “I can’t wait to do this lesson in class and have the students create our own class map each year,” she said.

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In a time when teachers are being pressured to dismiss rather than discuss historical experiences and people’s identities, teaching difficult subjects has become unusually hard. Multidisciplinary approaches provide a way out of this morass. For teachers, multi-disciplinary approaches enable teaching topics from different angles, thereby avoiding many current political pitfalls while still teaching challenging content honestly, accurately and effectively.

In other words, art, music, literature and creative writing can all be used to teach a difficult social studies subject like slavery.

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HASAN KWAME JEFFRIES, Institute Director and Associate Professor of History

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Global Arts + Humanities Discovery Theme Signature Program

The 2021-22 Graduate Team Fellows consists of eight students pursuing MFA or PhD degrees from disciplines across the arts and humanities. Faculty mentors Danielle Fosler-Lussier and Ila Nagar collaborated on the following responses about the transformative value of process as an impact of the arts and humanities.

How has your experience as GTF mentors shifted how you think about the impact of arts and humanities research and creative practices?

In a cross-disciplinary conversation, talking about the “how” of our research — methods and practices — is invaluable. The fellows have come to understand intersecting methods and shared struggles, and in so doing have developed new ways to make their work legible for a wider audience.

These conversations have also enabled the fellows to identify who they want to be as publicly-engaged scholars and artists.

How can the process of crossdisciplinary work be understood as integral to the outcomes?

A large artistic project and a dissertation may have a similar scope of work, but the process can be very different — or it can seem different on the surface, with techniques of organizing and sharing knowledge underneath that might be in common. For instance, When Kortney Morrow shared her approach to the micro-work of building a poem and the macro-work of deciding how several poems fit together, she discussed how each poem feels like a different

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shape or color and how it took time to figure out the book’s rhythm. This tactile understanding helped those writing dissertations — because acknowledging that part-whole relationship is helpful in a large project and because thinking about the work in tangible ways makes the process of organizing knowledge less abstract.

How might we understand humanistic methods and practices as drivers of social change?

By demystifying disciplinary assumptions — by translating methods and practices across disciplinary lines — students have come to a deeper understanding of methods as pivotal to shaping the impact and outcomes of their work. The Graduate Team Fellows have come to see their methods as a form of action in the world that have ethical consequences.

They are conscious that they are generating knowledge with and for the communities with whom they are in conversation. Working together has cultivated a belief that processes of sense-making are best done in community, and that these processes are central to how the arts and humanities foster social change.

FOSTERING MULTIDISCIPLINARY EDUCATION

Process as Transformation

Supported by a Race, Ethnicity and Social Justice Grant

The Ohio Prison Education Exchange Project 23

Directed by Mary Thomas (Associate Professor, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies) and Tiyi Morris (Associate Professor, African and African American Studies), OPEEP emphasizes collaborative-learning opportunities for incarcerated students alongside campus students in several of central Ohio’s prison facilities. It is working to increase access to college classes for incarcerated and justice-involved individuals. Broadening experiences of learning in new and challenging contexts illustrates the rewards of engaging in intellectual projects through empathy and a shared commitment to recognize the dignity of all people.

In May 2021, OPEEP held its first inside-out training, which included 20 faculty and instructors from five Ohio State campuses, five colleges and fifteen unique disciplines. The project will administer two dozen unique courses which will be offered in the next three academic years. Working with the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, along with the Ohio Reformatory for Women and the Southeastern Correctional Institution, OPEEP has four inside-out courses for the 2022 spring semester, and it has established the first ever learning community at ORW with incarcerated student leaders.

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OPEEP has made it possible for me to bear witness to the transformative process of collaborative learning and education as the practice of freedom in a more powerful and intimate way...

Through my teaching, I attempt to empower students to use the knowledge gained about themselves and our society to challenge inequalities and injustices.

TIYI MORRIS Associate Professor of African and African American Studies-Newark

[This program] has led to many alumni, both inside and out, to make career choices that will help to deter crime and help those who are involved in the criminal justice system, as well as helping to create other programs inside of prison that help with cognitive thinking. Thus, helping to lower the recidivism rate and make those who feel hopeless to think towards brighter futures.

INSIDE ALUMNI

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Together, over a semester, we realize that more connects us than separates us. Yet, important differences between us exist. Only by holding our differences intact through shared respect can we forge futures not tethered to inequality and prejudice.

MARY THOMAS Associate Professor of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies

What I learned from this class (and about myself) cannot be found in a traditional classroom setting; it is only something that can be taught to students who are fully immersed within the correctional setting. This course inspired me to attend graduate school and earn a clinical social work degree.

OUTSIDE STUDENT

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TRANSFORMING EDUCATIONAL ACCESS

Grounded in a commitment to equity and radical inclusion, the Ohio Prison Education Exchange Project is underpinned by the belief that quality higher education is a right — regardless of one’s background, identity or status.

REIMAGINING INSTITUTIONAL PRACTICES

Supported by a GAHDT matching grant for Ohio State’s Seed Fund for Racial Justice

Racial Pathways

STEAM Factory and Campus Compact This collaboration — led by Maurice Stevens and Zoë Plakias — leverages the STEAM Factory’s network of engaged faculty and staff, Ohio State’s broad set of DEI resources and Campus Compact’s reach to build an infrastructure of pathways for STEAM members to: 1) Increase knowledge about areas(s) of interest in racial justice and resources at Ohio State.

2) Develop a practice or intervention plan focused on change, enhancing racial justice in that area.

3) Execute and evaluate the intervention impact using quantitative and qualitative methods.

4) Share their learning.

5) Create a sustained community of practice with core competencies in racial justice.

This project supports the development of Ohio Campus Compact and its evolving micro-credential in racial justice. In doing so, the initiative provides a framework for participants to encounter, engage and apply racial justice-oriented knowledge, resources and practices in various contexts.

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[The Seed Fund for Racial Justice] was an answer to a pressing call — a fundamental recognition that Ohio State needed to bring to bear its collective expertise to address the effects of racism and racial disparities. The reality is to have the kind of society we aspire to — inclusive, equitable, diverse, empathetic — we need to work for it.

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JAMES L. MOORE III, Vice Provost for Diversity and Inclusion & Chief Diversity Officer

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Supported by a Racial Justice and Community Engagement Grant

With this pioneering initiative, the Wexner Center for the Arts radically reimagines racial equity within its institution.

Evidence of systemic change will be concrete and measurable — not only in the programs it produces and the impact it makes on the community, but also in the structure of the institution and how it functions operationally, administratively, programmatically and systemically.

While this work is a contribution to and beyond the arts and museum fields at large, at the root of this commitment is the intent to sustain reparative work in support of those historically injured and marginalized by such institutions.

With external expertise guiding the Wex toward improved hiring practices and enhanced community engagement, the Equity Framework program will produce a more diverse and equitable staff, board and structure that better represent the center’s values and demographics of the surrounding metropolitan area.

The Equity Framework program engaged community, regional and national partners, including the Racial Equity Institute and Third Space Action Lab, drawing on community and student thought partners and the Wex’s staff Equity Working Group.

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The Wexner Center for the Arts is embedding equity in every aspect of the institution—ensuring that not only are we highlighting diverse voices in the art itself, but that equity is elevated and intentionally pursued in our operations, structure, staffing, and audience experience. We are grateful to have Global Arts + Humanities as a partner in this critical work.

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KELLY STEVELT AND MEGAN CAVANAUGH Co-interim Executive Directors, The Wex

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REIMAGINING INSTITUTIONAL PRACTICES

Equity Framework Wexner Center for the Arts

Supported by a GAHDT matching grant for Ohio State’s Seed Fund for Racial Justice

DIVERSIFYING REPRESENTATION

Increasing Black Women in Ohio Elected Office 27

Black women advocate for their communities and work against racial discrimination and oppression through protest politics, social movements, activism and voting. However, across the country and here, in Ohio, Black women are

extremely underrepresented as elected officials across all levels and branches of government. Ohio ranks #22 in the number of women in elected office and is even lower in the numbers of Black women elected officials. The underrepresentation of Black women in elected office limits their voices in public debates and their abilities to enact the fullness of their citizenship rights to decide their own fate and that of their communities.

This further curtails the diverse perspectives required to address complex problems in a democracy.

“

Black women’s underrepresentation in elective offices is a significant racial justice challenge that this project seeks to address by connecting civic-engaged Black women across Ohio with culturally-relevant, evidence-based political education trainings that demystify the process of running for elected office.

This project further aims to increase Black women’s political participation and engagement across the state of Ohio through a grounded partnership pledged to create pathways to greater access and a nationally-recognized researcher with expertise in race, gender and politics. The initiative will increase the pool of diverse candidates in Ohio who are trained and educated on best practices for their potential campaigns.

Black women’s underrepresentation in elective offices is a significant racial justice challenge which we seek to address by connecting civic-engaged Black women across Ohio with culturally relevant, evidence-based political education trainings that demystifies the process of running for elected office. In doing so, we deepen democratic engagement for communities of color.

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WENDY SMOOTH, Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion College of Arts and Sciences

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CAPTION Department of Mathematics class photo, 1965.

ARCHIVING DIVERSITY: DIVERSIFYING KNOWLEDGE

Supported by a GAHDT matching grant for Ohio State’s Seed Fund for Racial Justice

Hidden Figures Revealed This project represents the first comprehensive historical study of Black mathematicians at a single U.S. institution, The Ohio State University. Nearly 200 mathematicians that identify as Black have earned degrees from the Department of Mathematics at Ohio State. They have gone on to become researchers, authors, high school teachers, economists, department chairs, lawyers, Ohio State personnel and university presidents — yet their stories and legacies have remained “hidden.”

This project seeks to bring their stories to light through dynamic storytelling, using an interdisciplinary team of faculty, staff and students in the arts and sciences. It will use these stories to create educational resources for K-12 teachers, develop external programming through a community partnership with the National Afro American Museum and Cultural Center of the Ohio History Connection, and disseminate project findings through a partnership with the National Alliance for Doctoral Studies in the Mathematical Sciences.

This project addresses racial justice in mathematics by shifting the narrative about who can be a mathematician, by highlighting Black scholars and by shifting focus from individual resilience to institutional and historical barriers for success in math.

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We believe that access to quality mathematics education is a critical social justice issue. All students deserve access to healthy learning environments and knowledge about mathematical opportunities. Taking action to address the lack of representation in STEM requires understanding the experiences of minoritized students during their mathematical training from historical, institutional and individual lenses.

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RANTHONY A.C. EDMONDS Postdoctoral Researcher, Department of Mathematics

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Current Project Catalog Arts Creation Grants

Exhibition and Education Lab at the Pizzuti Collection of the Columbus Museum of Art Kris Paulsen (History of Art) Into the Void Tom Dugdale (Theatre, Film and Media Arts) • Paul Sutter (Columbus-based Composer) #MentalHealthDance2U Nena Couch (Dance) • Valarie Williams (Dance) Performing Afghanistan Leslie Ferris (Theatre, Film and Media Arts) • Kevin McClatchy (Theatre, Film and Media Arts) • Janet Parrott (Theatre, Film and Media Arts) • Alam Payind (Theatre, Film and Media Arts) Weather Reports You Daniel Roberts (History) • Jeanine Thompson (Theatre, Film and Media Arts) The Woods Marc Ainger (Music) • Kyoung Lee Swearingen (Design) • Scott Swearingen (Design)

Centers + Institutes Grants Advancing Instructional Redesign on-Demand Joy Balta (Medicine) • Dir. Kay Halasek (Michael V. Drake Institute) • Melinda Rhodes-DiSalvo (Michael V. Drake Institute) • David Sovic (Michael V. Drake Institute) Archiving Black Performance: Memory, Embodiment and Stages of Being Adélékè Adéèko (African and African-American Studies Community Extension Center) • Crystal Perkins (Dance) • Valarie Williams (Dance) • Dir. Larry Williamsom Jr. (Hale Black Cultural Center) Asian Futures: A Collaborative Proposal Dir. Katherine Borland (Center for Folklore Studies) • Dir. Pranav Jani (South Asian Studies) • Dir., Namiko Kunimoto (Center for Ethnic Studies) • Asst. Dir., Rick Livingston (Humanities Collaboratory) • Dir. Harvey Miller (Center for Urban and Regional Analysis) • Mytheli Sreenivas (History) • Dir. Hugh Urban (Center for the Study of Religion) • Max Woodworth (Geography) Building Capacity for the Internship Program at the Wexner Center for the Arts Dionne Custer-Edwards (Wexner Center for the Arts) • Karen Simonian (Wexner Center for the Arts) • coInterim Executive Dir., Kelly Stevelt (Wexner Center for the Arts)

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Environmental and Social Justice Arts and Humanities Dir., John Brooke (Center for Historical Research) • Dir., Elena Irwin (Sustainability Institute) • Asst. Dir., Rick Livingston (Humanities Collaboratory) • Dir., Piers Norris Turner (Center for Ethics and Human Values) • Interim Executive Dir., Beverly Vandiver (Kirwin Institute) Experimental Archaeology and Medieval-Renaissance Worlds Dir., Chris Highley (Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies) Hiphop Studies in Queer Black Feminism Conference Elaine Richardson (Teaching and Learning) • Dir., Larry Williamson Jr. (Hale Black Cultural Center) Intercultural Competence for Global Citizenship Dir., Janice Aski (Center for Languages, Literatures and Cultures) K’acha Willaykuna: Andean and Amazonian Indigenous Art and Humanities Dir., Maria Palazzi (ACCAD) • Dir., Scott Schwenter (Center for Latin American Studies) Living Well, Dying Well Dir., Katherine Borland (Center for Folklore Studies) • Melissa Curley (Comparative Studies) • Hannibal Hamlin (English) • David Staley (Humanities Collaboratory) • Dir., Hugh Urban (Center for the Study of Religion) Revisioning Folklore Studies in the Academy and the Public Square American Folklore Society • Dir., Katherine Borland (Center for Folklore Studies) Toward a Digital Humanities Support Network Leigh Bonds (OSU Libraries) • Matt Lewis (Translational Data Analytics Institute) • Dir., Maria Palazzi (ACCAD) • David Staley (Humanities Collaboratory) Toward Truth and Reconciliation: Present-Day Indigenous Peoples in Ohio Asso. Dir., Marti Chaatsmith (Newark Earthworks Center) • Stephen Gavazzi (Human Sciences) • Asst. Dir., Rick Livingston (Humanities Collaboratory) • Dir., John N. Low (Newark Earthworks Center) • Brian Snyder (InFACT)

Summer Institute Grants GAHDT Fellows at the DMAC Institute Scott DeWitt (English) • John Jones (English) • Liz Miller (English) Global and Popular Music Summer Youth Camp Eugenia Costa-Giomi (Music) • Richard Palese (Music) Ohio State to Community Dance-Intensive Pipeline Nyama McCarthy-Brown (Dance) Voices of Franklinton Susan Melsop (Design) • Sébastien Proulx (Design)

Community-Engaged Projects Anti-Racism and Social Justice Education in the Performing Arts Nyama McCarthy-Brown (Dance) • Crystal Michelle Perkins (Dance) • Mindi Rhoades (Teaching and Learning) ¡Aquí se Habla Español! Public Outreach at COSI in Spanish Kathryn Campbell-Kibler (Linguistics) • Leslie C. Moore (Linguistics) • Laura Wagner (Psychology) Be the Street Katherine Borland (Comparative Studies) • Moriah Flagler (Theatre, Film and Media Arts)

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Being Black / Becoming Black Adéléke Adéeko (African and African American Studies / English) • Kwaku Korang (Comparative Studies) Drug Prevention at High Schools in the Epicenter of the Opiate Epidemic Linda Mizejewski (Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies) • Alina Sharafutidinova (City of Columbus Department of Public Safety / Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services) Equity Framework at the Wexner Center for the Arts Dionne Custer-Edwards (Wexner Center for the Arts) • Kelly Stevelt (Wexner Center for the Arts) Fostering Racial Justice: Teacher Professional Development and Student Learning Yana Hashamova (Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures) • Caroline T. Clark (Teaching and Learning) Linden Murals of Empowerment: Public Art for Racial Justice Njeri Kagotho (Social Work) • Guisela Latorre (Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies) • Rebecca Persons (Social Work) Public Narrative Collaborative Lisa Florman (History of Art) • Sarah Iles Johnston (Classics) • Jim Phelan (English) • George Rush (Art)

Experiential Learning: Discovery Field Schools Border Issues and Activism in Ohio Faculty Leaders: Stephanie Aubry (Spanish and Portuguese) • Katherine Borland (Comparative Studies and Center for Folklore Studies) Dancing Connections and Communities Faculty Leader: Nyama McCarthy-Brown (Dance) Experimental Cinema in New York City Faculty Leaders: Roger Beebe (Art) • Erica Levin (History of Art) Ohio Folklore Field School Course Faculty Leaders: Katherine Borland (Comparative Studies and Center for Folklore Studies) • Cassie Patterson (Center for Folklore Studies)

Matching Funds for Ohio State’s Seed Fund for Racial Justice Arts-Based Anti-Racist Initiatives in High Schools Kelly Stevelt (Wexner Center for the Arts) • Big Walnut High School • Joni Boyd Acuff (Arts, Administration, Education and Policy) Hidden Figures Revealed: Dynamic History and Narratives of Black Mathematicians at Ohio State Ranthony A.C. Edmonds (Mathematics) Increasing Black Women in Ohio Elected Office Wendy Smooth (Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies; Political Science) Racial Pathways Stephanie Dodd (Ohio Campus Compact) • Clayton Hurd (Ohio Campus Compact) • Richard Kinsley (Ohio Campus Compact) • Zoë Plakias (Agricultural, Environmental and Development Economics) • Maurice Stevens (Comparative Studies)

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Using a STEAM Model to Develop an Access Pipeline for Students in Columbus Metro Schools Melvin Pascall (Food and Science Technology) • Nick White (Department of English)

Open Grants Collaboration for Humane Technologies Peter K. Chan (Design) • Norah Zuniga Shaw (ACCAD / Dance) Collaborative Gaming Platform for Disabled Children and Their Families Asimina Kiourti (Electrical Engineering) • Kyoung Lee Swearingen (Design) • Scott Swearingen (Design) • Susan Thrane (Nursing) How the Arts and Humanities Can Benefit Our Wellbeing Elizabeth B. -N Sanders (Design) • Paul Reitter (German) • Yvette Shen (Design) Livable Futures Thomas Davis (English) • Jennifer Suchland (Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies / Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures) • Mary Thomas (Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies) • Norah Zuniga Shaw (ACCAD / Dance) Migration, Mobility and Immobility Theodora Dragostinova (History) • Danielle Fosler-Lussier (Music) • Yana Hashamova (Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures) • Robin Judd (History) • Paloma Martinez-Cruz (Spanish and Portuguese) • Ryan Skinner (Music) Uses of Narrative Theory Katra Byram (German) • Jim Phelan (English)

Special Initiatives Grants COVID-19 Grants Audiences and Online Reception: Before and After COVID-19 Harmony Bench (Dance) • Yana Hashamova (Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures) • Hannah Kosstrin (Dance) • Danielle Schoon (Near Eastern Languages and Cultures / Sociology) COVID Conversations: Life in a Time of Corona Katherine Borland (Comparative Studies) Cultural Presentation and the Mardis Gras Indians of New Orleans Virginia Cope (English) • Tiyi Morris (African and African American Studies) Dance in the Time of COVID-19 Nyama McCarthy Brown (Dance) Designing a Post-Pandemic Return to Campus Rebekah Matheny (Design) • Stephanie Orr (Office of Distance Education and eLearning) Designing for Public Health: Humanities and Arts Leading Transformation During COVID-19 Adame Fromme (Design) • Hazal Gumus-Ciftci (Design) • Rebekah Matheny (Design) • Susan Melsop (Design) • Will Nickley (Design) • Sébastien Proulx (Design) Documenting of Latinas/os/x in Ohio Stories During COVID-19 Through Performed Storytelling Palo Pinillos Chávez (Spanish and Portuguese) • Elena Foulis (Spanish and Portuguese) Investigating Human Dignity in Practice During the COVID-19 Crisis Melissa Guadron (English) • Christa Teston (English)

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Measuring Artists’ Challenges and Resilience After COVID-19 Elizabeth Cooksey (Sociology) • Rachel Skaggs (Arts, Administration, Education and Policy) Muted, Isolated and Displaced by Social Distancing Eugenia Costa-Giomi (Music) • Crystal Perkins (Dance) Pandemic Collaborative Diane Brogan-Habash (Medicine) • Julia Nelson Hawkins (Classics) • Jennifer Olejownik (Medicine / Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services) • Elizabeth Weinstock (EquitasHealth / Columbus Veteran’s Administration / Franklin Correctional Center) Pandemic Pedagogies: Precursors, Paradigms and Portents Jim Harris (History) • Thomas McDow (History) Poetry and COVID-19: A Collaboration Between Creative Writers and Environmental Scientists Zoë Brigley Thompson (English) Political Discourses During COVID-19 and the Impact on International Education Zhiguo Xie (East Asian Languages and Literatures) • Cindy Xinquan Jiang (Office of International Affairs) Quarantine Cookbook: Documenting Migrant Food Networks Under COVID-19 Philip Gleissner (Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures) • Harry Kashdan (University of Pennsylvania) Recovery Project: Actions of Survival, Archival of Resilience Amrita Dhar (English) • Sona Kazemi Hill (English) • Margaret Price (English) Talking in the Clinic: Barriers and Facilitators of Chronic Disease Adherence Seuli Bose Brill (Medicine) • Gabriella Modan (Linguistics) • Nathan Richards (English) Virtual Field Lab Lauren McInroy (Social Work) • Maria Palazzi (Design) What does Religion Sound Like in the Age of COVID-19 Lauren Pond (Center for Study of Religion) • Isaac Weiner (Comparative Studies)

Indigenous Arts and Humanities Ancient Indigenous Monuments and Modern Indigenous Art Christine Ballengee Morris (Arts, Administration, Education and Policy) • Marti Chaatsmith (Newark Earthworks Center) Indigenous Ohio: Ohio State and Native Arts: Humanities Past and Present Cheryl Cash (Comparative Studies) • John N. Low (Comparative Studies) • Stephen Gavazzi (Human Sciences) K’acha Willaykuna: Andean and Amazonian Indigenous Art and Humanities Elvia Andia Grageda (Spanish and Portuguese) • Alcira Dueñas (History) • Pamela Espinosa de los Monteros (Spanish and Portuguese) • Richard Fletcher (Arts, Administration, Education and Policy) • Megan Hasting (Center for Latin American Studies) • Eric J. Johnson (OSU Libraries) • Guisela Latorre (Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies) • Michelle Wibbelsman (Spanish and Portuguese)

Race, Ethnicity and Social Justice Grants Ohio State Prison Education Exchange Project Tiyi Morris (African and African American Studies) • Mary Thomas (Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies) Transformative Access Projects: Moving from Inclusion to Equity Evelyn Hoglund (Speech and Hearing) • Margaret Price (English) • Maurice Stevens (Comparative Studies)

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Points of Pride $4m

$800k

65%

Investment in cross-disciplinary research and arts + humanities interventions

Investment in cross-disciplinary collaborations that amplify the power of the arts and humanities to respond to critical societal challenges

Mentoring and cross-disciplinary research support for students

Funds allocated to advance cross-disciplinary student engagement and experiential learning in the arts and humanities

Grants support women faculty and staff

Two-thirds of our research monies support the research and creative practices of women faculty and staff

Grants support underrepresented groups

30%

A third of our grant monies support the research and creative practices of faculty and staff from underrepresented or marginalized communities.

Grants invested in community-engaged projects

45%

Nearly half of grants amplify community projects that embrace diverse perspectives and advance the transformative power of publicfacing, partner-engaged work.

CAPTION (Below) Allison Smith, Elizabeth Sugawara, Lexi Valentin and Hanna Mu perform Daabo, choreographed by Momar Ndiaye (Dance). This performance was part of GAHDT’s 2021 showcase event.

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