GLOBAL ARTS + HUMANITIES DISCOVERY THEME 2019-2020
CONTENTS
About Letter from the Faculty Director Who We Are Guiding Principles
1 2 3 5
Faculty + Fellows
6 7 9 11 13
Cross-Disciplinary Collaborations
15 16 17 19 21 23 25
COVID-19: Arts + Humanities Interventions
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Society of Fellows Cluster Hiring Postdoctoral Researchers Graduate Team Fellows
Bodies in Virtual Space Difficult Subjects K-12 Teaching Institute Moving Subjects Week Indigenous Arts + Humanities: K’acha Willaykuna Be the Street: Storytelling and Theatre DaNCe2U #mentalhealth
Experiential Learning
29 30 31 32
Points of Pride
33 34
Engage
35 36
Defining the Color Line Virginia Field School Livable Futures Louisiana Field School Dance Brazil Program Highlights Collaborators
DESIGNER | Breanne LeJeune EDITOR | Puja Batra-Wells
ABOUT Global Arts + Humanities is part of Ohio State’s Discovery Themes, a universitywide initiative created to connect experts and facilite cross-disciplinary research and creative practices, teaching and community engagement to accelerate new discoveries and translate knowledge into solutions for meaningful impact.
LETTER FROM FACULTY DIRECTOR, WENDY S. HESFORD If public universities are to play a leading role in fostering cultural understanding and advancing democracy and social justice — including at moments of great uncertainty, like we are facing with the COVID-19 pandemic — they must invest in the transformative potential of cross-disciplinary research and the vital role of the arts and humanities. Integrating and elevating the arts and humanities across the full breadth of the university’s mission is challenging, but GAHDT is poised to take on these challenges and provide a leadership role in increasing the university’s capacity to support cross-disciplinary collaborations and to address pressing global and local concerns.
Across the United States, faculty and administrators are talking about how to provide an education that is internationally engaged, worldly, interdisciplinary, and that promotes community involvement. Ohio State has taken the lead in this pursuit. Through a $2.5 million investment and $2.5 million earmarked for tenuretrack cluster hires and programming in the Global Arts + Humanities Discovery Theme, Ohio State has advanced its goal of facilitating crossdisciplinary research to accelerate new understandings and translate knowledge into solutions for social impact. To date, GAHDT has invested $3.8 million in 100+ faculty research and creative productions that address migration and movement, struggles for livable communities, environmental justice, and social rights in health and cultural systems.
Investment in the integrated arts + humanities
65%
30%
Grants supporting women faculty
Grants supporting underrepresented groups
2
45%
Grants invested in community-engaged projects
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$3.8m
I invite you to learn more about the transformative work of GAHDT, highlighted here, and to join us in amplifying the vital role of the arts and humanities in sustaining diverse lifeworlds, communities and just futures.
WHO WE ARE
PETER L. HAHN College of Arts and Sciences Lead Dean
WENDY S. HESFORD Department of English Faculty Director
“The Global Arts + Humanities Discovery Theme invests in transformative research and creative practices that demonstrate the value of the arts and humanities to better understand the human condition and address pressing global concerns.” — DEAN HAHN
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PUJA BATRA-WELLS Program Manager
BREANNE LEJEUNE Program Coordinator
THEODORA DRAGOSTINOVA Department of History Faculty Fellow, Im/Mobility
JULIA N. HAWKINS Department of Classics Project Director, Medical and Health Humanities and the Arts
HASAN KWAME JEFFRIES Department of History Faculty Fellow, Undergraduate Experiential Learning
SUSAN MELSOP Department of Design Faculty Fellow, Community
MICHAEL MERCIL Department of Art Advisory Committee
DOROTHY NOYES Departments of English and Comparative Studies Faculty Fellow, Methods and Practices (Humanities)
SUSAN PETRY Department of Dance Faculty Fellow, Methods and Practices (Arts)
TOWNSAND PRICE-SPATLEN Department of Sociology Advisory Committee
SUSAN WILLIAMS Department of English Faculty Fellow, Strategic Advancement
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JENNIFER SUCHLAND Departments of Slavic and Eastern European Languages and WGSS Advisory Committee
MYTHELI SREENIVAS Departments of History and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Advisory Committee (AU’19)
GUIDING PRINCIPLES
MISSION Global Arts + Humanities will establish Ohio State as a leader in the integrated arts and humanities by elevating cross-disciplinary research and creative practices, experiential learning, community engagement, diversity and a global ethic of responsibility.
CORE GOALS + Research Build intellectual community and capacity across the university through cross-disciplinary research and creative practices and/or production. + Student Engagement Deepen undergraduate student engagement and experiential learning and enhance graduate education through crossdisciplinary research and professional development opportunities. + Social Change Demonstrate the value of cross-disciplinary research and creative practice to address local and global concerns and empower faculty and students to contribute to society as change agents. + National Recognition Increase Ohio State’s national recognition and distinction in the integrated arts and humanities.
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FOCUS AREAS The Global Arts + Humanities Discovery Theme has identified four cross-disciplinary Focus Areas for investment to strengthen research networks across the university. + Community amplifies the culture of engagement and service that is part of the university’s mission by demonstrating the transformative power of critical and creative practices. + Im/Mobility engages the multifaceted aspects of migration and movement that people experience stemming from social, cultural, political, environmental and economic factors. + Livability fosters collaborations that focus on challenges presented by the climate crisis, struggles for livable communities, environmental justice, land and food sovereignty, and social rights in health and cultural systems. + Methods + Practices emphasizes exchanges and practices that showcase integration of arts and humanities methods across disciplines, deepen disciplinary contributions and engage methodological challenges.
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FACULTY + FELLOWS Global Arts + Humanities facilitates crossdisciplinary collaboration in the arts and humanities by providing support in the form of research and creative practice grants; faculty, graduate and postdoctoral research fellowships; and experiential teaching and learning grants.
THOMAS DAVIS Associate Professor, Department of English Davis’ project conceptualizes the relationship between attachment formation to place and its impact on environmental humanities research and activism. He details the conditions under which attachments are made and unmade by examining fiction and visual art.
PALOMA MARTINEZ-CRUZ Associate Professor, Department of Spanish and Portuguese
TRISTRAM McPHERSON Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy
ILA NAGAR Associate Professor, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures
Martinez-Cruz’s research examines how the COVID-19 pandemic has engendered new conversations about who is an “essential” worker and argues that a mapping of south-tonorth migrations should be informed by a human rights perspective.
McPherson explores the Anthropocene through three linked ethical questions relating to non-human animals, individual responsibility and methodologies for the study of ethics. He hopes to develop novel ethical concepts to enable political actors to better address pressing global challenges.
In India, politicians and news media weaponize language to diminish democratic principles and incite violence against non-dominant populations. Nagar studies how supporters of the Indian movement toward Hindu fundamentalism use linguistic trickery to marginalize Muslims, women and LGBTQ communities.
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SOCIETY OF FELLOWS The Global Arts + Humanities Society of Fellows brings Ohio State faculty from across the disciplines together to share research around an annual cross-disciplinary theme. The theme for 2020-2021 is Human Rights Pasts and Futures. The goals of the Society of Fellows are to support faculty research and creative practices that highlight the transformative power of the arts and humanities to address global challenges and social needs; develop shared responses; and facilitate the multi-disciplinary exchange of ideas and methods on a shared topic. In addition to participating in a biweekly seminar and the Digital Dialogue series, fellows co-organize a culminating year-end event to share their work.
INÉS VALDEZ Associate Professor, Department of Political Science
SARAH VAN BEURDEN Associate Professor, Departments of History and African and African American Studies
JOEL WAINWRIGHT Professor, Department of Geography
Richardson will create a onewoman show that illuminates how intersecting gender, class and racial vulnerabilities shape Black women and girls’ experiences navigating the COVID-19 pandemic and the systemic inequities that structure their lives.
Valdez explores the imperial genealogy of labor and immigrant rights during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries when the white working class in the U.S. and English settler colonies adopted imperial discourses of racial hierarchy to exclude migrants of color from jobs and land.
Van Beurden studies the repatriation of Belgian colonial collections by addressing the distance between the theory of human rights and UNESCO regulations on cultural heritage and the persistent demands for the restitution of African colonial collections that have recently reemerged in force.
Does sovereignty always precede the rule of law, or does the rule of law produce sovereignty? In his study of the colonization of Indigenous lands of the Americas, Wainwright hypothesizes that the rule of law arrives as a means of ordering space, bodies and justice, realizing an immanent structure of racial difference.
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ELAINE RICHARDSON Professor, Department of Teaching and Learning
CLUSTER HIRING
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In 2017-2018, the Global Arts + Humanities launched a cluster-hire program to enhance current faculty strengths in the area of global migration and mobility. GAHDT has completed seven 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; racial justice and community engagement; the circulation of cultural forms in socialist Eastern Europe; Afro-Caribbean and Afro-Latino histories of gender, migration and labor; 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 underrepresented groups — build on the scholarly community already in place and advance our commitment to diversity.
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JESSICA DELGADO Associate professor, Departments of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies and History
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.
VÍCTOR ESPINOSA Assistant professor, Department of Sociology (Newark)
Espinosa is a sociologist, ethnographer and curator who studies the intersection of art and transnational migration. He is the author of Martín Ramírez: Framing His Life and Art and El Dilema del Retorno: Migración, Género y Pertenencia en un Contexto Transnacional. He is currently working on a book project, Staging Migrant Suffering: Melodrama in Latin American and Latino Activism.
JOAN FLORES-VILLALOBOS Assistant professor, Department of History
Flores-Villalobos specializes in the history of gender, race and migration. Her current book project, The Silver Women: Intimacy and Migration in the Panama Canal, explores the labor migration of West Indian women during the Panama Canal construction and the diasporic and affective and economic linkages they created during this period.
PHILLIP 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 is interested in the migration of media: mechanisms that facilitate the circulation of texts within and beyond Eastern Europe.
NYAMA McCARTHY-BROWN Assistant professor, Department of Dance
McCarthy-Brown’s research agenda is grounded in social justice; she synthesizes scholarship and creative practice to build an embodied and engaged body of research. Much of this research is presented in her book, Dance Pedagogy for a Diverse World: Culturally-Relevant Teaching in Theory, Research and Practice. She regularly performs and presents her choreography, both in the U.S. and abroad.
MOMAR NDIAYE Assistant professor, Department of Dance
Ndiaye has worked with many well-known choreographers from Africa, Europe, Asia and America. Since 2010, he has danced for internationally-acclaimed choreographer Andreya Ouamba in the Dakar-based company, Premier Temps. Since 2004, he has been developing work with his own company, Cadanses, and he has created and toured several staged contemporary dance works.
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. She writes on issues as they relate to economic exchange, with an emphasis on the political-philosophical foundations of transnational private law and questions of gender inequality and global justice.
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POSTDOCTORAL FELLOWS
Our postdoctoral program fosters cross-disciplinary exchange and professional development with the goal of facilitating fellows’ entry into tenure-track positions in the academic marketplace. The valuable presence of postdoctoral fellows adds intellectual energy and vitality to the College of Arts and Sciences as a whole, contributing to interdisciplinary collaboration between academic units and the development of innovative scholarship and curricula.
FEDE CÁMARA HALAC, School of Music + ACCAD
Cámara Halac’s work focuses on live multimedia performance, instrumental and computer music, and immersive music for massively-multichannel systems. He designs and theorizes audio and image database systems that explore the relationships between sound, image, space and performance.
MORIAH FLAGLER, Departments of Theatre + Comparative Studies
Flagler is a teacher, theatre maker and scholar. Her research focuses on community-based devising, applied improvisation and digital storytelling. She is the artistic director of Be the Street — a community partnership in the Hilltop neighborhood of Columbus.
ERIC HERSCHTHAL, Department of African and African American Studies
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Herschthal’s research interests include the history of slavery and abolition; African American history from the colonial era through Reconstruction; early American history; and the history of science, medicine and technology.
HARRY KASHDAN, Department of French and Italian
Kashdan’s research focuses on the food cultures of the contemporary Mediterranean and how experiences of migration and diaspora are expressed in Italian, Arabic and Sephardi Jewish literature. His current projects examine the literary qualities of Mediterranean cookbooks.
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SONA HILL KAZEMI, Department of English
Hill Kazemi is a multi-lingual postdoctoral researcher of migration studies, disability studies and medical humanities. Her research program is located in contradictions among transnational disability rights frameworks in the context of global and regional imperialism(s).
JASPER WAUGH-QUASEBARTH, Center for Folklore Studies
Waugh-Quasebarth teaches the Ohio Field School course and coordinates the Sharing Visions Project. His recent research interests have involved craft economies and production in global mountain forests, with a focus on Carpathia and Appalachia and collaborative methods.
DANIELLE SCHOON, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures
Schoon is a cultural anthropologist with interests in migration, performance studies and the politics of identity. Her current research focuses on the ‘politics of presence’ for Roma (“Gypsies”) in Turkey and Turkish migrants in Europe and the United States.
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GRADUATE TEAM FELLOWS
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In 2019, the Global Arts + Humanities Discovery Theme inaugurated a one-of-a-kind arts and humanities fellowship inspired by the team science model. The Graduate Team Fellowship program brings together graduate students whose projects intersect with GAHDT Focus Areas – providing students with an opportunity to gain cross-disciplinary mentorship embedded in a collaborative ecology. The program gives graduate students an essential toolkit of skills as they prepare to enter an evolving job market – one that is highly dependent on networks, technology and a collaborative ethos. The Graduate Team Fellowship program has supported 15 interdisciplinary scholars thus far. This year’s cohort explored the potential of the arts and humanities to address challenges presented by the climate crisis, environmental degradation, medical addiction, and cultural representations of underrepresented communities. Graduate fellows met monthly with Professors and Faculty Fellows Dorothy Noyes and Susan Van Pelt Petry, engaging in cross-disciplinary dialogues that provided opportunities for more carefullyhoned and translatable research descriptions, job talks and public-facing contributions.
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DOROTHY NOYES + SUSAN PETRY
“Dialogues about methods and content across the rich range of interdisciplinary projects unearthed new understandings of shared or divergent systems of knowledge production, which newly framed the graduate experience as one focused on building collaborative research cultures.”
GRADUATE FELLOWS (Top left to right) Jacklyn Brickman, Art Mercedes Chavez, English Sophia Enriquez, Music Ehsan Estiri, NELC (Bottom left to right) Rhys Gruebel, Design Trevor Marcho, Music Aviva Neff, Theatre Lyndsey Vader, Dance
Why now?
We live in complex times characterized by diverse and grave global challenges that require socially-responsive, multifaceted solutions. Truly innovative solutions depend on scholarship that harnesses insights from a crossdisciplinary and collaborative perspective. Such integrative knowledge allows scholars to develop much more complex and innovative outputs by engaging research questions from a variety of methodological and theoretical orientations, and to interrogate unquestioned assumptions, biases and blind spots tacit in their disciplinary and research cultures. This also includes training students in ways of negotiating a competitive research-funding environment by mentoring them through grant and proposal writing.
Building collaborative cultures
While there is strong evidence of the collaborative ecology in STEM fields, the arts and the humanities still have to demonstrate this ‘culture change’ as they continue to emphasize specialization, often at the cost of collaboration. The GAHDT Graduate Team Fellowship program aims to advance cross-disciplinary teambased research cultures by brokering collaboration and facilitating the sharing of conceptual frameworks and disciplinary alignments. Not only will this experience build tolerances for varying academic perspectives, it also fosters in graduate students a receptivity towards network-based insight building. Our fellowship thus encourages agility in methods and modes, creativity of mind and practice, and intellectual grit.
Model for relational scholarship
GAHDT is invested in advancing cooperative scholarship that is relational in its orientation. It is a model of research and practice that acknowledges our varying entanglements in the process of knowledge production — the human and non-human world, the digital and the material, the social and the singular. It fosters a critical consciousness and an ethic of global interdependence and collaboration.
EHSAN ESTIRI
“This kind of crossdisciplinary research represents an avant-garde and non-conventional approach — I hope to learn from other fellows on how they draw on multiple fields in arts and humanities to answer their questions.”
LYNDSEY VADER “This fellowship creates a space that honors creative critical-thinking through research grounded in theory and practice. The potential for cross-pollination of ideas made the teambased component of the fellowship particularly appealing.”
MERCEDES CHAVEZ “Working with cinema studies and environmental humanities, my work presents an emergent and naturally cross-disciplinary methodology, drawing out the interplay between the industrial/cultural object of film and the human relationship to nature.”
1st
The first crossdisciplinary, teambased graduate fellowship program in the nation
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COLLABORATIONS
CROSSDISCIPLINARY COLLABORATIONS We live in complex times characterized by diverse and grave global challenges that require socially-responsive, multifaceted solutions. Truly-innovative solutions depend on scholarship that harnesses insights from a cross-disciplinary and collaborative perspective.
BODIES IN VIRTUAL SPACE On June 4, 2020, Methods Faculty Fellows Dorry Noyes and Susan Van Pelt Petry convened a Zoom event for Global Arts + Humanities affiliates to discuss what happens when activities that presuppose bodily copresence move to virtual space. The Bodies in Virtual Space event exceeded all expectations, with over 100 registered attendees, including Ohio State faculty, staff and graduate students from 28 different units; community members; alumni; independent scholars; and prospective graduate students.
PRESENTERS SHADRICK ADDY | Visiting assistant professor, Department of Design/ACCAD SUSAN MELSOP | Faculty fellow, Department of Design Addy and Melsop discussed leveraging emerging technology for ethically-driven and compassionate remote community engagement. JACKLYN BRICKMAN | Graduate fellow, Department of Art Brickman shared her experience presenting a visual art experience online as well as some modes of translation for collaborative, interactive installations. TREVOR MARCHO | Graduate fellow, School of Music Marcho discussed Drumming Over a Distance, an initiative for people living with Parkinson’s disease to strengthen bonds with their caregivers and families.
JASPER WAUGH-QUASEBARTH | Postdoctoral fellow, Center for Folklore Studies Waugh-Quasebarth spoke to how collaborative methodologies can root projects in equitable relationships.
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RYANN PATRUS | Graduate student, Department of Comparative Studies MAURICE STEVENS | Professor, Department of Comparative Studies Patrus and Stevens shared their experience hosting a virtual workshop as part of the Society for Disability Studies conference.
DIFFICULT SUBJECTS K-12 Teaching Institute
HELMA GROOT, Art teacher at Bexley High School “The institute is helping me find informed and culturally-sensitive ways to talk to my students about the role slavery played in the history of the US. The lectures and discussions provide me with excellent resources and ideas for lessons.”
The Difficult Subjects: K-12 Teaching Institute brings together 19 elementary, middle and high school teachers from Central Ohio for a year-long exploration of multidisciplinary approaches to understanding and teaching a difficult subject in America’s past and present. ‘Difficult subjects’ are those that center on the experiences of historically-marginalized groups in America — experiences that have had a profound effect on the lives of marginalized people, not only over the course of individual lifetimes, but across multiple generations. Having elementary, middle and high school teachers as a part of the institute reflects the guiding pedagogical belief that teaching difficult subjects requires scaffolding, or introducing difficult subjects to students early in their educational journey and complicating their understanding of these subjects as they mature.
go.osu.edu/difficult-subjects
Why American slavery?
Now, more than ever, students need to understand the deep roots of racism and the enduring legacy of slavery in order to make sense of the times in which we live. The institute has chosen to explore American slavery during its inaugural year because slavery is foundational to America. From the colonial era through the Civil War, slavery was the pivot around which America turned — driving American economic growth and territorial expansion and profoundly influencing American culture and society. The institute will: + Deepen K-12 teachers’ knowledge of the complexity and centrality of difficult subjects in the American experience. + Facilitate curriculum development for teaching difficult subjects. + Share best practices for teaching and develop new practices in collaboration with the teacher participants.
Why multidisciplinary?
Having teachers who specialize in a range of arts and humanities subjects reflects a fundamental pedagogical belief that difficult subjects are best learned across the curriculum, rather than in isolated subject areas.
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Workshops led by scholars from Ohio State, Cornell University, the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Freedom Center
HASAN KWAME JEFFRIES, Institute Leader and Associate Professor of History “As our nation comes to grips with systemic racism, teachers face the awesome task of explaining the most difficult aspects of America’s past and present to students more eager than ever to learn hard truths. The Difficult Subjects: K-12 Teaching Institute is committed to preparing teachers to meet this challenge head on. Our students deserve nothing less.”
Keynote delivered by Becca Heller, human rights lawyer and MacArthur Foundation Fellow
MOVING SUB of Columbus and Ohio State. Next, the performance of Afro-Swedish artist, activist and cultural advocate Josette Bushell-Mingo reflected her journey as an actor, director and vocalist. The following day, graduate students from eight departments shared their work in a research and creative practices forum.
In October 2019, the Migration, Mobility and Immobility Project held Moving Subjects Week to showcase the work of Ohio State faculty, students and community partners. Attracting over 700 attendees, MSW highlighted the power of creative practices and humanities methods to address critical local and global challenges.
A highlight was the keynote address by Becca Heller, director of the International Refugee Assistance Project. Heller addressed why refugees and migrants seek safety in other countries, what legal processes are
MSW launched with a celebration of Indigenous Peoples’ Day, featuring exhibits of Potawatami Basketry and Andean and Amazonian artifacts as well as a lecture on the native history
Read student reflections on Moving Subjects Week
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BJECTS WEEK available to them and how notions of ‘crisis’ are being politicized to keep people out. She pleaded to confront rising xenophobia and protect vulnerable people.
MSW was led by Professor Theodora Dragostinova in close collaboration with the MMI’s team of faculty leaders and graduate students from across the disciplines.
SASHA ZBOROVSKY, History, English and Hebrew “[Becca Heller’s] speech significantly strengthened my interest in working with migration history when I begin my PhD... By studying the migration history of Soviet Jews to the United States in the 1990s, I can emanate that knowledge to legislative teams and thereby, assist refugees.”
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MSW continued with author Kapka Kassabova, whose work explores the borderlands between Greece, Turkey and Bulgaria. Next, a roundtable discussed local iterations of Día de los Muertos. The final day was dedicated to the observance of Día de los Muertos,
including a film screening, a procession, an altar reception and the pop-up exhibit Latinx Comics Past, Present and Future. Students from the Department of Dance performed “How Movement Moves: Dancing across Borders, from West Africa to the Americas.”
K’ACHA WILLAYKUNA
In Quechua, art is defined as k’acha willaykuna, “messages with beauty,” which embody meaningfully-made and knowledgeably-made things. K’acha Willaykuna is an interdisciplinary Andean and Amazonian Indigenous Arts and Humanities Collaboration that affirms Ohio State’s commitment to the study of and critical engagement with Indigenous cultures of Abya Yala (the Indigenous denominator for the American continent in its entirety). The project centers around an appreciation of material cultural production, oral traditions and performance practices as key sites of Andean and Amazonian Indigenous knowledge, memory and meaning making. This project is facilitated by a team of eight principal investigators comprised of faculty and librarians.
Project highlights Nationally-touring pop-up exhibit
The Hidden Life of Things features items from Ohio State’s Andean and Amazonian Indigenous Art and Cultural Artifact Collection along with digital, interactive features developed by undergraduate student curators.
Artist in residence
K’acha Willaykuna welcomed Sebastián Calfuqueo Aliste, a Mapuche artist and activist from Chile who uses ceramics, installations, performances and video art to reflect on the Mapuche subject’s social, cultural and political status. View event videos on our website.
Virtual reality collaboration
K’acha Willaykuna and ACCAD produced a virtual environment for users to experience Andean and Amazonian worldviews. It showcased at the 2019 Innovate Conference, CLAS Indigenous Languages and Cultures of Latin America conference, and elsewhere.
ONE Community Conference
K’acha Willaykuna presented a workshop for K-12 educators, exploring concepts of cultural humility and Andean/Amazonian Indigenous knowledge-making, for which OSU Libraries developed resource guides.
“This Decoloniality?” and “Our Unlearning Hour” Groups
These weekly forums bring students, faculty, staff and community partners together to tackle timely debates about/from/with decolonial methods and practices grounded in Indigenous arts and humanities. The group also produces a weekly newsletter.
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BELOW: Andean etched story gourd, or calabacita tallada, presenting a microcosmic view of Andean mythic and everyday life. Item belongs to Ohio State’s Andean and Amazonian Indigenous Art and Cultural Artifact Collection. View collection online.
“Among Andean and Amazonian Indigenous communities, wisdom and meaning making are passed down from one generation to the next by way of practice, experience and applied knowledge. Our Indigenous Arts and Humanities Initiative problematizes the historical marginalization of these traditions as epistemologies and critically engages Indigenous art and Indigenous artists in ongoing efforts to understand and implement methods emergent from non-Western perspectives and practices.”
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MICHELLE WIBBLESMAN, Lead Co-PI and Associate Professor of Spanish and Portuguese
BE THE STREET
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Storytelling + Theatre
Teens at the Hilltop YMCA, recentlyarrived immigrants from Latin America at the Our Lady of Guadalupe Center and older adults at Dedicated Senior Medical Center have been brought together by Be the Street. Be the Street is a community-engaged project of The Ohio State University that offered three years of free performance workshops for residents of West Columbus.
Be the Street workshops focus on building community and exploring participants’ relationships with their neighborhoods. For the next 18 months, along with creating original performances with Hilltop communities, Be the Street’s Artistic Director, Moriah Flagler, will offer community engagement leadership trainings through performance-based facilitation methods to grassroots leaders.
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“It’s exciting to see how collaborators in our workshops are already adapting the performance activities for their own uses,” Flagler said. “One of our group members at the senior medical center tells me she’s going to lead the same activities at an upcoming women’s leadership retreat. Another community member has started her own teen storytelling group out of the Hilltop Library and has been leading it for over a year now.”
175+
Theatre workshops providing methods for creative and expressive storytelling
From 2019-2020, the project was co-facilitated by Artistic Director Moriah Flagler; faculty members Katherine Borland, Paloma Martinez Cruz and Ana Elena Puga; and Ohio State graduate and undergraduate students from several arts and humanities departments. The workshops provide a platform for participants to connect around stories about their lives in the Hilltop. These stories often celebrate places and people in the area — disrupting stereotypes around drugs and crime that some have come to associate with West Columbus. Since the project began in 2017, Be the Street has provided more than 175 workshops to Hilltop residents, from middle schoolers to senior citizens. Be the Street workshop participants are on their feet from the start, not only telling stories but also creating song and dance, as well as abstract physical gestures and movements that express their experiences. Before long, the space fills with the energy of many different words and bodies bringing their places of origin together into the Hilltop today. Check out the Be the Street Documentary, created by Peyton Del Toro and translated by Sebastián Muñoz Ruz.
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DaNCe2U #mentalhealth
VALARIE WILLIAMS, PROFESSOR OF DANCE
“The dancers are touring together and learning from different audiences, learning from each other and becoming ambassadors for dance as a critical artform to engender discussion about difficult conversations.” DaNCe2U #mentalhealth engaged 3,500 people in cross-disciplinary community dialogues about the interconnectedness of mental illness and dance — utilizing American-Jewish choreographer Anna Sokolow’s 1954 masterwork Rooms as a platform for discussions. The project invited audiences, with ages ranging from 12 to 80+, to examine mental illness and its consequences if left untreated through the non-threatening lens of dance performance and mental illness conversation panels. This project brought together physicians from Wexner Medical Center; experts from state county offices; multi-campus resources; and internationally-recognized visiting artists. Faculty from the Department of Dance, University Libraries and the College of Nursing collaborated to create the program that toured the state of Ohio and involved dance majors working with health experts; Sokolow Foundation Executive Director, Lorry May; and Bessie Award-winning performer Kirsten McKinney in master classes, lunches, dinners, panels and rehearsals. There were four primary goals for this project: 1) Align the arts as a generator for formal discussions on mental health issues; 2) Provide free and open access to a modern dance masterwork, contributing to audience development and dance preservation; 3) Promote and use cross disciplinary arts research practices; 4) Educate students how to activate primary source materials from University Libraries Special Partners included Collections’ Dance Notation Bureau the Sokolow Foundation, Collection. internationally-recognized
artists, county offices and Ohio State’s Department of Dance, University Libraries, College of Nursing and Wexner Medical Center
DaNCe2U #mentalhealth was featured on FOX news, ASC’s Daily Post, The Lantern and multiple social media outlets.
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“Vocally expressing what I have to say is difficult for me at times, and dance just opens up a whole new realm to say something that you can’t really say with words.” GIANNA BUFFANO, DANCE MAJOR
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COVID-19
Arts and Humanities Interventions The arts and humanities play a central role in helping individuals and communities create a sense of belonging. Cultural practices may not guarantee immunity to illness, but they are just as important to survive a pandemic as are medical interventions. It is incumbent upon us as arts and humanities scholars and practitioners to bring the insights and methods of our fields to facilitate the critical engagement with and new solutions to the challenges that COVID-19 has made excruciatingly visible, and to give voice to the struggles that contour the human experience and the ethical commitments that inspire social action. Collectively, we hope to chart new ways to address pandemic-revealed disparities and pandemic-related research that demonstrates that neither crisis nor remedy exist without culture. The facing page highlights five of the 19 grant projects funded via our special grant initiative. The complete list with full project details and collaborator lists is on our website.
This study examines how American and Chinese political discourses about COVID-19 impact the experiences and perspectives of students and scholars participating in international education programs in their home and host countries. Collaborators: (PI) Zhiguo Xie (East Asian Languages and Literature) + (PI) Cindy Xinquan Jiang (Office of International Affairs)
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COVID-19 AND THE IMPACT ON INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION
DANCE IN THE TIME OF COVID-19
Dance art makers at Ohio State and The University of Cape Town in South Africa partner to create a computer dance art project — a time capsule of shared global experience and resilience — in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Collaborators: (PI) Nadine George Graves (Dance) + (PI) Nya McCarthy Brown (Dance) + Lane Czaplinski (Wexner Center for the Arts) + Gerard Samuel (University of Cape Town)
DOCUMENTING THE STORIES OF LATINAS/OS/X IN OHIO DURING COVID-19
This project models transformational community engagement through the collection of oral histories of Latinas/os/x during COVID-19 in Ohio and the availability of these digitalized stories for students enrolled in coursework for the health professions to develop a better understanding of Latinx health disparities. Collaborators: (PI) Glenn Martinez (Spanish and Portuguese) + Elena Foulis (Spanish and Portuguese) + Palo Pinillos Chávez (Spanish and Portuguese) + Elizabeth Fitzgerald (College of Nursing) + Tatiana Friedman (Center for Languages, Literatures and Cultures) + Micah Unzueta (undergraduate student)
PANDEMIC PEDAGOGIES: PRECURSORS, PARADIGMS AND PORTENTS
This project creates pedagogical tools, including games and simulations, to help high-school and college students understand the social impacts of pandemics in their bodily, historical, scientific, spatial and moral dimensions. Collaborators: (PI) Thomas McDow (History) + (PI) Jim Harris (History) + Dana Howard (Philosophy) + Jesse Kwiek (Microbiology) + Susan Van Pelt Petry (Dance)
TALKING IN THE CLINIC: MANAGING CHRONIC DISEASE FOR PATIENTS AT HIGH RISK FOR COVID-19
At a time when pharmacologic measures are not available to treat or prevent COVID-19, this study of narrative communication between patients and physicians promotes chronic disease control by empowering patients to adhere to care plans that strive to mitigate complications arising from COVID-19. Collaborators: (PI) Seuli Bose Brill (General Internal Medicine) + (PI) Gabriella Modan (English/Linguistics) + Nathan Richards (graduate student)
Recipients of COVID-19 grants address intersections between public health and racial discrimination.
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Read our Commitment to Anti-Racist Practices.
EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING Global Arts + Humanities supports immersive educational experiences through its Discovery Field School program. Field schools are faculty-led, interdisciplinary, experientiallearning programs that take students to domestic destinations to learn about the transformational value of the humanities and the arts.
go.osu.edu/gahdt-virginia
VIRGINIA
Defining the Color Line Field School “Defining the Color Line: Race, Democracy and the Enslaved Community” was the theme of Associate Professor Hasan Kwame Jeffries’ multi-sited field school at President James Madison’s home, Montpelier, and Charlottesville, Virginia. The group spent four days at James Madison’s Montpelier — the restored former home and plantation of the United States’ fourth president, who was essential in drafting the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The Montpelier estate now serves as a permanent exhibition that highlights the history of American slavery through the lives of the enslaved community that lived on the property. Students learned about the ways in which Blackness has been imagined, defined and redefined in order to deny African Americans full citizenship rights in America. ANNA GLAVAŠ, Political Science + International Studies “...the work that the Montpelier team is doing really gives people the inability to separate the foundations of this country, notions of freedom and democracy, from the enslavement of an entire race of people.” MALINA RONET RANSOM, Theatre + AAAS “We had the opportunity to take a tour of the archeology labs at Monptelier... it’s amazing to think that a single object has the power to put someone’s story in history and to bring them back and not let them be forgotten.” KYLE HUFFMAN, Neuroscience “Walking around the site at Montpelier, we chronologically dove through the history, the archaeology, the power of place. And then driving down that winding road to Charlottesville, that was a portal hundreds of years into the future where you could see that direct connection.”
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livablefuturesnow.org
LOUISIANA
Livable Futures Field School VINCE BELLA, Education “What stood out to me most about the work that I did in the wetlands is that I likely won’t ever see the results of my labor. I just have to trust that my work was good and that the plants will continue to grow without my aid. A metaphorized version of these lessons is a large part of the reason I want to teach young people.”
The Louisiana coast loses approximately one football field worth of ground each hour, and coastal communities continue to exist under threat of storm surges. Yet, every eight square miles of wetlands reduces a hurricane’s surge by one foot — according to Britt Aliperti, program manager at Common Ground Relief, an organization devoted to wetlands restoration at the mouth of the Mississippi River and host of Ohio State’s first Livable Futures Louisiana Field School.
nursery to water and weed. There, the group discovered the impressive root systems of invasive grasses as they pulled them out from around water oak, live oak and cypress saplings. Later, they planted the trees they watered near a key spillway project.
The group also met with local artist Monique Verdin who pointed out hundreds of cypress tree stumps that had been killed by oversalinization from storm surges The field school was comprised of eight and saltwater spikes through undergraduates, two graduate students manmade canals. Students and two faculty members: Thomas Davis watched the landscape and (English) and Mary Thomas (WGSS). It architecture drastically change began with an introduction to the recent outside the city’s main levee walls history of New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward where houses are required to be and its ecological challenges. Then, the hoisted 20 feet into the air in team trekked to Common Ground’s tree order to qualify for insurance.
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osudancebrazil.wordpress
BRAZIL
Dance Brazil Program The Ohio State University Dance Brazil program is a 15-day experience. This particular trip to Salvador de Bahia was led by Professor Daniel Roberts and Assistant Professor Crystal Michelle Perkins. Dance Brazil introduces Ohio State dancers to Brazilian art and culture and provides the unique opportunity to study and perform with Brazilian dance masters, learn firsthand about AfroBrazilian culture and engage in cultural exchanges with Brazilian dancers. Before setting on this expedition, the 12 dancers took a class on the history, culture and language of Brazil in order to gain a respectful and educated global context. They also began learning ten repertoire dance pieces; these dances would be performed in Salvador and Lencois, Brazil, for grade schools, universities and communities in the area. The group also engaged in Brazilian culture by taking Capoeira and Samba classes, attending performances and meeting local collegiate and professional dancers. They also took a trip to the historic city of Lenรงois, where the dancers gave a performance in the round.
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POINTS OF PRIDE Diversity, equity and inclusion are central to our mission and core goals. We are committed to fostering a culture of social responsibility that empowers faculty and students to contribute to society as change agents. This includes hiring and retaining faculty from underrepresented groups and supporting research and creative practices, experiential learning and community partnerships that advance social justice and well-being.
HIGHLIGHTS 1
$3.8m | Investment in cross-disciplinary research and arts and humanities interventions Investment in faculty research that demonstrates the value of cross-disciplinary approaches to global concerns and challenges of the current moment.
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Funds allocated to advance cross-disciplinary student engagement and experiential learning in the arts and humanities.
65% | Grants support women faculty and staff
Two-thirds of our research monies support the research and creative practices of women faculty and staff.
30% | Grants support underrepresented groups
A third of our grant monies support the scholarship and creative practices of faculty and staff from underrepresented or marginalized communities.
45% | Grants invested in community-engaged projects
Nearly half of our grants amplify community projects that embrace diverse perspectives and advance the transformative power of public-facing, partner-engaged work.
65% | Hires were women
Two-thirds of our hires have contributed to the advancement of gender diversity among the ranks of our faculty and leadership.
42% | Hires were from underrepresented groups
Nearly half of our hires have contributed to the equitable representation of underrepresented groups among the ranks of our faulty and leadership.
INNOVATION | First team-based, arts and humanities graduate fellowship program in the United States
The Graduate Team Fellowship program brings together graduate students whose projects intersect with GAHDT Focus Areas – providing them with an opportunity to gain cross-disciplinary mentorship in a collaborative environment.
GOLD | International award recognizing design for social change
GAHDT received a gold award for our visual identity suite and a silver award for our signature brochure.
FINALIST | #MillionsofChangeMakers from Ashoka U
This award recognizes a broad, institutional commitment to building and supporting meaningful community partnerships. GAHDT was awarded for support of Be the Street; Design Matters in Brazil; DaNCe2U; and the Livable Futures Louisiana Field Schools.
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go.osu.edu/gahdt-pride
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$800k | Mentoring and cross-disciplinary research support for undergraduate and graduate students
ENGAGE By breaking down barriers to meaningful collaboration, we create an inclusive culture that empowers faculty, staff and students to foster social change, create sustaining life-worlds and develop a global ethic of responsibility. We invite you to engage with us and join our community of collaborators. TWITTER (Coming soon!) ATTEND EVENTS APPLY FOR FUNDING/ OPPORTUNITIES
Collaborators
$3.8m Grants awarded
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Center + institute collaborations
40+
Department + program collaborations
200+ Faculty + staff affiliates
College of Arts and Sciences College of Education and Human Ecology College of Engineering College of Medicine College of Public Health College of Social Work Moritz College of Law Knowlton School of Architecture School of Environment and Natural Resources School of Music Office of Distance Education and eLearning Office of International Affairs Thompson Library Special Collections University Archives University Libraries Urban Arts Space Humanities Institute Kirwan Institute Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design Barnett Center for Integrated Arts and Enterprise Center for Bioethics Center for Ethics and Human Values Center for Ethnic Studies Center for Folklore Studies Center for Human Resource Research Center for Languages, Literatures and Cultures Center for Latin American Studies Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies Center for the Study and Teaching of Writing Center for the Study of Religion Melton Center for Jewish Studies Middle East Studies Center Multicultural Center Newark Earthworks Center ASC Tech DESIS Lab Department of African-American and African Studies Department of Anthropology Department of Art Department of Arts, Administration, Education and Policy Department of Astronomy Department of Classics Department of Comparative Studies Department of Dance Department of Design Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures Department of Education Studies Department of Electrical Engineering Department of English Department of Evolution, Ecology and Organismal Biology Film Studies Program Department of French and Italian Department of Geography Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures Department of History Department of History of Art Department of Linguistics Department of Mathematics Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures Department of Philosophy Department of Political Science Department of Psychology Department of Slavic and Eastern European Languages and Cultures Department of Sociology Department of Spanish and Portuguese Department of Speech and Hearing Science Department of Theatre Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Albany Park Theatre Project (Chicago) CleanTurn Enterprises (Columbus) Columbia University (New York City) Columbus City Schools Columbus Museum of Art Columbus School for Girls Columbus Veteran’s Association Common Ground Relief (New Orleans) Cornell University COSI Equitas Health Franklin Correction Center Freedom Center Cincinnati Greater Columbus Arts Council Indian Institute of Technology Madras King’s College (London) London School of Economics Michigan State University Montpelier Estate (Virginia) Ohio Arts Council Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Ohio Humanities Council Olentangy Schools Our Lady of Guadalupe Center (Columbus) Reconstruction Inc. (Philadelphia) Sokolow Foundation Southern Poverty Law Tulane University University of Cape Town Watch Me Grow (Columbus) West High School (Columbus) Westland Flea Market (Columbus) Wexner Arts Center WYSO (NPR affiliate for greater Dayton) YMCA of Central Ohio (Columbus)