HUMANITIES RESEARCH INSTITUTE F A L L
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N E W S L E T T E R
Symptoms of Crisis
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At HRI we respectfully acknowledge that we are on the lands of the Peoria, Kaskaskia, Piankashaw, Wea, Miami, Mascoutin, Odawa, Sauk, Mesquaki, Kickapoo, Potawatomi, Ojibwe, and Chickasaw Nations. These Nations were forcefully removed from their traditional territories and these lands continue to carry the stories of these Nations and their struggles for survival and identity. As part of a land-grant institution, we have a particular obligation to recognize the peoples of these lands and the histories of dispossession upon which the university rests. In keeping with the spirit of land acknowledgment statements, we also recognize that these histories are both shared with and distinct from those of African American, Latinx, Asian American and Pacific Islander communities, among others. As humanists we recognize that the past is not past, and that no field or arena of inquiry is exempt from the responsibility of addressing the legacies of settler colonialism, enslavement, and their contemporary manifestations well beyond acknowledgments such as this. Thus, this statement is a demonstration of our ongoing commitment to supporting the work of Indigenous scholars and communities. It is also a reminder of how accounting for Indigenous erasure and survivance makes visible the urgency of imagining change as collaboratively and collectively as possible. Let us, then, together envision what Muskogee Creek/Cherokee poet Joy Harjo calls "a map to the next world."
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Table of Contents Director’s Letter.
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Annual Theme 2022–23: Un/Doing.
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Fellowships: At the Beating Heart of Humanities Research . . . . . . . .
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HRI Fellows, 2021–22 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Research Clusters, 2021–22. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Mellon Emerging Areas in the Humanities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Humanities Without Walls. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Upcoming Events .
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A Year of Creative Writers 2021 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Application Deadlines.
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The Year in Review . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 State of Humanities in Illinois. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Humanities Indicators Shed Light on Trends and Attitudes. . . . . . . . 21 InkWell Retreat. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 "Off the Shelf" Podcast.
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Inaugural Humanities Research Lab Launches. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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The Odyssey Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Training in Digital Methods for Humanists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Education Justice Project. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 National Humanities Advocacy Day. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 HRI Interns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Giving to HRI. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 HRI Staff & Advisory Committee.
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Director’s Letter I think we can all agree that the academic year 2020–21 was a remarkable one. Undaunted (more or less) by the prospect of two full semesters of remote programming, and thanks to the determination and elbow grease of the amazing HRI staff, we continued to support research in the humanities and related fields in a host of expected and unexpected ways. We powered through the pandemic by staging a succession of Zoom events that kept the questions of the day in front of us and reminded audiences of critical issues beyond COVID per se as well. In the process, those who tuned in to our Zoom-fests came to appreciate more fully, I think, how entangled health and well-being are with practically everything humanists care about.Histories of race, theories of environmental change, forms of creative expression, matters of political moment, conditions of economic in/equality, articulations of the local and global, and of course, structures of meaning and value—the lectures, performances and discussions we engaged with often mapped directly onto the variety of crises that COVID threw into bold relief. For it was admittedly hard not to see and hear everything through a pandemic lens, even as we strove to bring and keep COVID "out of isolation" from the pre-conditions and co-morbidities of life across the contemporary planet. And yet, there were also spaces where our intellectual and scholarly work continued apace—if not beyond COVID, exactly, then in parallel with (and despite) it.Our Campus Fellows Seminar met uninterruptedly on Zoom, and it was a genuine pleasure to convene every other week and engage the amazing work-in-progress of faculty and graduate student colleagues engaged in our annual theme, The Global and its Worlds.A partnership between HRI and the Illinois Global Institute, this past year’s seminar showcased a wealth of research that tacked between the global and the local in the context of truly interdisciplinary discussions. While there is no real substitute for the embodied seminar, and all the casual, unanticipated hallway and coffee break conversations it enables, we managed to have frankly amazing conversations both on screen and through the Zoom chat function.In fact, I think much more of a shared bibliography was generated in this virtual setting than in the course of past seminars, so easy was it for everyone to drop full references and citations to relevant work into the sidebar for all to see.People also had back-channel exchanges which allowed for intellectual traffic that I hope will be followed up on with in-person coffees and other kinds of give-andtake as conditions permit this coming fall.The "silver lining" theme is always in danger of becoming hackneyed, but there were some welcome consequences from all the remoteness we collectively experienced. Chief among those was the extended reach across campus, local community, state, nation and globe we enjoyed as a result of being able to host events in the proverbial Zoom room.Through HRI events as well as programming organized by Professor Naomi Paik, the faculty lead of our Andrew W.Mellon Foundation-supported Legal Humanities project, we were able to beam in speakers from Europe to Australia, and to stage transnational conversations between guests as well as between presenters and audiences in Champaign-Urbana and across the country.Nor did the virtual space diminish the often-magical power of our many captivating guests—like human rights advocate Behrouz Boochani and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Tyehimba Jess, to name just two who levitated huge Zoom audiences with their charismatic presence.There was so much enveloping darkness last year: illness, death, grief, loneliness, terror and more.To have been able to share even a few such moments of otherworldliness and inspiration with you was a remarkable gift.
"Histories of race, theories of environmental change, forms of creative expression, matters of political moment, conditions of economic in/equality, articulations of the local and global, and of course, structures of meaning and value—the lectures, performances, and discussions we engaged with often mapped directly onto the variety of crises that COVID threw into bold relief ."
Dr.Burton and Tyehimba Jess, who was in residence for Poetry Month.
And what will opening up mean? Surely things can never be the same; nor should they be.At HRI our theme for 2021–22 is, appropriately, "Symptoms of Crisis" (see p.6–7).Though this may
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"There was so much enveloping darkness last year: illness, death, grief, loneliness, terror, and more . To have been able to share even a few such moments of otherworldliness and inspiration with you was a remarkable gift."
Antoinette Burton Professor of History Swanlund Endowed Chair Director, Humanities Research Institute UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS URBANA-CHAMPAIGN | 3
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Annual Theme 2022-23: Un/Doing HRI’s fellowship theme for 2022–23, "Un/Doing," is a result of collaboration among HRI and African American Studies, American Indian Studies, Asian American Studies, Latina/Latino Studies and Gender and Women’s Studies. At the intersections and overlaps of activism and scholarship are calls for un/doing the status quo that threatens us all—to abolish and defund, to decolonize, divest, decriminalize, dismantle, and de-center.Far from a passive opposite of doing, the slowing down, refusals, and work stoppage techniques of Un/Doing show it to be active, intentional, and on-going, with the productive potential of dismantling.From the de-individualization of basic needs (food, housing, health) to mutual aid and collective models of solidarity, what are the spaces and practices that Un/Doing makes possible? At this moment when various forms of collective Un/Doing seem newly imaginable, whether involuntarily (through a pandemic, for instance) or voluntarily (through new social movements), what openings might it offer for reorienting humanities research? How might the prospect of Un/Doing take on different risks or possibilities in particular disciplinary or interdisciplinary formations? Since the establishment of African American Studies, American Indian Studies, Asian American Studies, Gender and Women’s Studies, and Latino/Latina Studies as academic fields in the late 1960s, these interdisciplinary formations have been institutionalized in ways that often position them as discrete intellectual projects tied to particular identities, with the assumption that certain keywords—race, ethnicity, indigeneity, gender and sexuality—have priority within specific fields an d not others.To what extent have intersectional approaches developed over the last three decades undone those assumptions or not? What is the relationship between the theoretical and methodological porousness of these fields—and interdisciplinary areas in general— and the threat of administrative undoing (i.e., dismantling) of academic programs? What is the relationship between Un/Doing and unlearning (whether the object be racism, sexism, transphobia or ableism)? If the distinction between "doing" and "being" has been generative for a range of theories and methods that emphasize practices, performativity and/or process, how might Un/Doing be situated (or not) within these investigations? What modes of Un/Doing allow for new and generative knowledge, methodologies and collaborations? We seek faculty and graduate fellows in and allied with humanities disciplines and interdisciplines whose research grapples with the im/possibilities of Un/Doing in and across various fields, with particular attention to race, indigeneity, gender, and/or sexuality. For eligibility, terms and application guidelines, visit go.illinois.edu/campusfellows. Applications are due December 3, 2021.
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"The seminars with peers was certainly one of the most expansive intellectual experiences of my career so far. It challenged me to see beyond my own disciplinary training (particularly methodologically).It gave me some confidence in terms of dealing with the anxieties of doing interdisciplinary scholarship, and it introduced me to new theoretical orientations that I had not yet considered." –Tyler Denmead (Art and Design, Faculty Fellow 20162017)
"The theme during my fellowship year was ‘Publics,’ and that helped me begin to envision a career in the public humanities.I’m currently a public humanities fellow with the ACLS, and my experience at the HRI came up in my interview.I think interdisciplinarity is at the heart of my scholarly identity (and more general worldview), and my experience at the HRI affirmed that." –Chris Hedlin (English, Graduate Fellow 2016–2017)
"My fellowship allowed me to unapologetically lean into my multidisciplinary rearing, and to fruitfully engage with the work of Japanese scholars (both within and beyond musicology) that has generally been limited by the boundaries of land and language.My time with HRI has affirmed the precipice at which the ‘global turn’ places us and has made clear a continued and collective need to meaningfully embrace multilateral and multilingual interaction across disciplines." – Makoto Takao (Music, Faculty Fellow 2020–2021)
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Symptoms of Crisis HRI FACULTY FELLOWS, 2021–22 John Levi Barnard
Anne BurkusChasson
Eleanor Courtemanche
"The Edible and the Endangered: Food, Empire, Extinction"
"The Oddity of Chen Hongshou: A Telling Sign of SeventeenthCentury China?"
"Fragile Capitalism: The Long Afterlife of Victorian Crisis"
Carolyn Fornoff
Bruce Rosenstock
Sandra Ruiz
Comparative and World Literature
Spanish and Portuguese "Mexican Culture in the Era of Climate Change"
Art History
Religion
"Flesh of One’s Flesh: A Black Hebrew Theology of Kinship"
English
Latina/o Studies / English "Minoritarian Pedagogy: Psychoanalytic Affections in the Space of Aesthetics"
Emily E. LB. Twarog Labor and Employment Relations
"Hands Off: A History of Sexual Harassment Resistance in the US Service Industry, 1936–2020"
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HRI GRADUATE STUDENT FELLOWS, 2021–22 Joseph Coyle
Anthropology "Queer Pentecostal World-Making in an Uncertain Brazil"
LeiAnna X. Hamel
Slavic Languages and Literatures "Undisciplined Bodies: Deviant Female Sexuality in Russian and Yiddish Literatures, 1877– 1929"
Megan Gargiulo
Erin Grogan
Spanish and Portuguese
English
"Cruising Dystopia: Queer Futurity and Toxic Temporalities in the Anthropocene"
"Race, Gender, and Recogimiento: Discursive Representations of Space, Sexuality, and Productivity in Late Colonial Mexico"
Lilah Leopold
Sarah Marks Mininsohn
"Countering Apocalypses Then, Now, and Tomorrow: Land Use, Resource Extraction, and Contemporary Art"
"Performance Nests: Choreographing Frameworks for Instability and Contamination"
Art History
Dance
Jessica Witte English
"The Fasting Girl: A Literary, Digital, and Medical History of Anorexia from the Novel to the Clinic (1740–1900)"
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Fellows and Research Clusters RAGDALE RESIDENTIAL CREATIVE FELLOW .
SUMMER FACULTY RESEARCH FELLOWS Christopher Kempf English
"All These Ithacas" and Local Color
Magdalena Novoa E.
Urban and Regional Planning "Wounded Landscapes: Race, gender, and grassroots preservation in Wallmapu"
Andrea Stevens English
"Racial Masquerade and the Caroline Court, 1625–1649"
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ANDREW W. MELLON GRADUATE FELLOW IN PUBLIC HUMANITIES Pre-Doctoral Fellow
Azlan Smith English
"Verbatim Theater as Civic Art" Azlan Smith is an MFA candidate in Creative Writing: Fiction at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Before that they taught high school for nine years.Their research interests center on storytelling's participation in culture, genre fiction as modern mythology, and public humanities projects that use narrative for community building and activism.Over the last eight years they've developed Voices, a collaborative project that builds a stage for participants' stories, offering communities another way to see, share, and support themselves.
RESEARCH CLUSTERS 2021–22 The "Animal Turn"
Co-Directors: Jane Desmond (Anthropology) Jamie Jones (English)
Big Tech, Information, and Society Director: Nikki Usher (Journalism)
Co-Directors: Cabral Bigman-Galimore (Communication) Stewart M. Coles (Communication) Jacob Fisher (Advertising) Carl Gunter (Computer Science) Eva Maslowska (Advertising) Emily Van Duyn (Communication)
Critical Interventions in Labor Studies
Co-Directors: Emily E. LB. Twarog (Labor and Employment Relations) Stephanie Fortado (Labor and Employment Relations) Augustus Wood (Labor and Employment Relations)
Environmental Humanities
Co-Directors: Robert Morrissey (History) Rebecca Oh (English) Pollyanna Rhee (Landscape Architecture)
Medical Humanities
Co-Directors: Stephanie Hilger (Germanic Languages and Literatures) Justine Murison (English) Cosponsored by the Carle Illinois College of Medicine.
Russia and the Global Color Line
Co-Directors: Eugene M. Avrutin (History) Valeria Sobol (Slavic Languages and Literatures)
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Emerging Areas In The Humanities In 2015, (then) IPRH received a grant of $2,050,000 from The Andrew W . Mellon Foundation to support the development of emerging areas in the humanities .The grant sponsors faculty, post-doctoral and pre-doctoral fellowships, as well as undergraduate internships, to form three robust, inter-generational research groups—in Bio-Humanities, Environmental Humanities, and Legal Humanities—to run consecutively until 2022 . These groups model multi-disciplinary collaborations and develop new curricular opportunities for undergraduates on campus . The 2021–22 academic year marks the last year of the Emerging Areas in the Humanities grant .
ANDREW W. MELLON LEGAL HUMANITIES RESEARCH GROUP HRI is pleased to introduce the newest members of Mellon Legal Humanities Research Group, the final Mellon Emerging Areas research group.In addition to new pre-doctoral fellows and undergraduate interns, the group is also welcoming a new director: Professor Colleen Murphy.Please see the calendar of events on page 14 for an exciting slate of Legal Humanities-related programming.
Colleen Murphy
Claire Branigan
Ian Toller-Clark
Faculty Fellow
Pre-Doctoral Fellow Anthropology
Pre-Doctoral Fellow History
"Ineffective Laws, Active Citizens: Creating Justice in the aftermath of Femicidio in Argentina"
"Carceral Democracy: Race, Prisons, and the Realignment of Politics in Wisconsin, 1940–1972"
Roger and Stephany Joslin Professor of Law, Professor of Philosophy and Political Science, Acting Executive Director of the Illinois Global Institute
These newest members will join current Post-Doctoral Fellows Dr. Sabeen Ahmed and Dr. Beverly Fok.
UNDERGRADUATE INTERNS
Alex Wellman Economics and Political Science
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Legal Humanities at Illinois 2020–21 marked the launch of the Mellon Legal Humanities Research Group under the leadership of director and faculty fellow A.Naomi Paik (Asian American Studies). Though all their activities were undertaken virtually, thanks to the pandemic, the inter-generational group nonetheless launched a vibrant slate of public programs, which took legal humanities and social justice as their guiding framework and followed two primary strands of interest: forced migrations and abolition. Their public programs included a film screening of The Infiltrators and discussion with the creators, as well as a riveting Zoom conversation with Behrouz Boochani and his collaborator/translator Omid Tofighian.Boochani had recently received asylum in New Zealand in late 2019 after enduring nearly seven years in the Manus Prison, detained by the Australian state as part of the "Pacific Solution" of offshore detention for migrants and asylum seekers.He spoke to the corpus of his work in journalism, filmmaking, literature, and other cultural creation, focusing particularly on the need not only to provide information and awareness (via journalism, for example), but to impact people’s understandings of border regimes and their effects on people who must endure them.The year’s programming culminated with a Lecture by Leti Volpp (Robert D.and Leslie Kay
Raven Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley). (For more Legal Humanities programming highlights, please see page 19). In addition to pursuing their own individual research projects, the group engaged in collective study on foundational texts of legal humanities and
examined texts engaging with Critical Race Theory, theories of sovereignty, political theology, notions of the human in legal discourses, and different approaches to legal history. Constituted by scholars in anthropology, philosophy, history, political science, literary studies and cultural studies, the group engaged readings that ranged across methodological approaches to core questions of liberal legal regimes, sovereign and biopolitical power under the law, genealogies of different legal regimes (particularly in colonial contexts), and relationships between legal regimes and social and
cultural conditions. Professor Paik also arranged professional development opportunities for the group and campus affiliates, including a session featuring Dr.Nadine Naber, who offered a three-hour workshop on "Liberate Your Research," focusing on naming and claiming our methodological
interventions, and a second workshop focused on publishing articles and first books for early career engaged scholars who can face more obstacles to publishing.The latter featured Jennifer Lynn Kelly, an assistant professor of Feminist Studies at UC Santa Cruz who worked through years-long processes to get her work on justice tourism in Palestine published. Mark Simpson-Vos, head of acquisitions at UNC Press, spoke from the editor/press perspective on getting a first book manuscript published. The group also devoted a significant portion of their
time together last year to curriculum development, collaborating with the Departments of Philosophy and Anthropology to develop courses that will support the "Law and Cultures" track of the College of Law’s new undergraduate minor in Legal Studies . Dr. Ahmed is slated to teach a Philosophy Department course on the "Philosophy of Law and Government" this fall 2021 semester, and Dr . Fok will teach a course on "Personhood: Comparative Perspectives," with the Department of Anthropology in spring 2022 . Last but not least, the 2020-21 legal humanities interns—Buthaina Hattab, Maria Martinez, and Adem Osmani—held information sessions and recruited four fellow undergraduates to participate in their research symposium, which this year took the form of a web showcase of their work . With their collaborators— majors in English, Political Science, Geography, and Psychology—they held a launch event in April as part of Undergraduate Research Week, to showcase their research and related web publication: legalhumanities. web.illinois.edu . HRI wishes the best to the outgoing Legal Humanities Pre-Doctoral Fellows, Silvia Escanilla Huerta and Brenda Garcia, and the interns as they embark on new ventures, and extends its profound thanks to Professor Paik for her groundbreaking leadership in launching the group this past year .
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Humanities Without Walls The challenges and opportunities that 2020 presented have continued into the current year, and Humanities Without Walls has grown and adapted to meet these challenges and leverage these opportunities.
New Team Members Since receiving our second renewal grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in summer 2020, we have brought several new team members onboard and have expanded our operations to offices on several consortial campuses. Peggy Brennan is a PhD candidate in History who has worked with HWW in different capacities over the last few years, developing a substantial knowledge base of the projects we have funded and of the graduate students who have participated in those projects.We are thrilled to welcome her aboard in her full-time role as assistant director of operations for HWW (see page 28 for more). We are equally enthusiastic about our new associate director for career diversity, Maggie Nettesheim Hoffmann, who was herself a member of the 2017 summer workshop cohort.Post-workshop, Maggie has been an articulate and powerful voice calling for the necessity of career diversity in the academy, running career bootcamps at her home institution, Marquette University, and developing all content for the 2019 HWW predoctoral career diversity summer workshop.In her new capacity, Maggie is responsible for the content development and logistics for the 2021 virtual summer workshop, as well as consulting with the University of Michigan on their 2022 iteration of the HWW summer workshop. Benjamin Linzy also joined the HWW ranks as program coordinator in HWW’s "satellite office" at Marquette.Ben brings a varied skillset and professional background to this position and has already demonstrated a steady hand at the tiller in the face of logistical challenges.
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Growing Partnerships and Opportunities To further our goals of incorporating principles of reciprocity and redistribution into humanities research, HWW has partnered with We CU to create positive and meaningful community change through our initiatives; constituted its first Career Diversity Alumni Advisory Board, comprising members of our first five workshop cohorts; and invited Dr.Jenny Davis (Director of the American Indian Studies Program and Associate Professor of Anthropology, UIUC) to serve as HWW’s consultant on ethical methods and reciprocal community partnerships. Through HWW’s pilot program, the Summer Bridge Experience, four humanities graduate students are working with We CU and Dr.Derek Attig, Assistant Dean for Career & Professional Development in the UIUC Graduate College, to use their expertise collaborating with community partners while exploring various careers paths and learning new skills.In summer 2021, these doctoral students were Erin Grogan (English), Olivia Hagedorn (History), Alex Kessler (English) and Michelle Patino-Flores (Anthropology). In preparation for the first of two rounds of our latest Grant Research Challenge grant cycle, HWW has provided Seed Grant funds to all consortial campuses.The HWW website has been updated to include collaborative research best practices, a year's worth of virtual workshops on collaborative research, and a database of HWW experts.
PhD Futures Now! Podcast Launch Lastly, HWW now has a podcast on collaboration, career diversity, and graduate education in the humanities called PhD Futures Now! You can listen to the first five episodes through any standard podcast outlet for thoughtful, candid conversations on subjects from the diverse range of careers possible for humanities doctoral students to questions of diversity, equity, and inclusion within the humanities and the academy.
UPCOMING DEADLINES: November 1, 2021 HWW Career Diversity Summer Workshop application deadline
November 15, 2021 First round of Grand Research Challenge application deadline
March 1, 2022
Summer Bridge Experience application deadline
April 15, 2022 Second round of UIUC seed grants application deadline
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2021–22 Calendar of Events
2021
SEPTEMBER
9 |
OCTOBER
6 | PERFORMANCE
HUMANITIES WITHOUT WALLS
Career Diversity Alumni Panel Supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
OPENING 15 | HRI RECEPTION
Joe Morris & Tomeka Reid Duo | Larry Ochs & Don Robinson Duo
Open House and Celebration (Outdoors!)
Presented by Nick Rudd Music Experience & Improvisers Exchange.
23-24|
14 |
SYMPTOMS OF CRISIS
Roy Scranton English and Environmental Humanities Initiative, University of Notre Dame "Learning to Die in the Anthropocene"— Lecture and book discussion Cosponsored by Illinois Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and Environment.
28|
LEGAL HUMANITIES
Samuel Moyn Law and History, Yale University Supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Cosponsored by the Illinois Global Institute Transitional Justice Initiative.
SYMPTOMS OF CRISIS
Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University "Revolution as History’s Emergency Brake!"
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SYMPTOMS OF CRISIS
Helen Neville (Educational Psychology and African American Studies) and Lou Turner (Urban and Regional Planning) "Fanon After Fanon" Public Positions Series with the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WISER)
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OF 13 | FESTIVAL WRITERS
Franita Tolson
Jericho Brown (English and Creative Writing, Emory University) and Roxane Gay (author/ cultural critic)
Law, Vice Dean for Faculty and Academic Affairs, University of Southern California Supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Cosponsored by the Illinois Global Institute Transitional Justice Initiative.
29-30|SYMPOSIUM "How Does Culture Move? — Movement and Stasis in Global Cultural History" Organized by the School of Literatures, Cultures, and Linguistics, with cosponsorship from HRI.
NOVEMBER OF 12 | FESTIVAL WRITERS Tracy K. Smith
Part of A Year of Creative Writers at Illinois. Cosponsored by the Creative Writing Program, Department of English and Krannert Center for the Performing Arts.
30|WORK-IN Odyssey Projects in the Midwest
DECEMBER
7 | HUMANITIES WITHOUT WALLS Summer Bridge Program Info Session Supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
U.S.Poet Laureate (2017); Humanities and Creative Writing, Princeton University
2022
Part of A Year of Creative Writers at Illinois.
FEBRUARY
Cosponsored by the Creative Writing Program, Department of English and Krannert Center for the Performing Arts.
2 | HUMANITIES WITHOUT WALLS Summer Bridge Program Info Session Supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Seed Grant Info Session Supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
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MEDICAL OF 9 | SYMPTOMS CRISIS 23-25|HUMANITIES RESIDENCY Kirsten Ostherr English and Medical Humanities, Rice University Made possible by a gift from Dr. Dan Shin, class of 1991.
MARCH
1-4 |
WRITER IN RESIDENCE
Dave Eggers Cosponsored by the Creative Writing Program, Department of English. Supported by the Presidential Initiative to Celebrate the Impact of the Arts and the Humanities.
2 |
Religion and Politics and African American Studies, Director American Culture Studies, Washington University in Saint Louis
Supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY
Presentation and Celebration Co-hosted by the Women and Gender in Global Perspectives Program.
OF 7 | SYMPTOMS CRISIS Natalie Diaz Creative Writing, Arizona State University
"Apostles of Justice: How J.Edgar Hoover and his F.B.I.Aided and Abetted Evangelical Conservatism" Cosponsored by the Department of Religion.
22 |HUMANITIES WITHOUT WALLS Grand Research Challenge Info Session Supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
24 |
EJP-HRI LECTURE SERIES
Dwayne Betts Poet and memoirist
HUMANITIES WITHOUT WALLS
Summer Bridge Program Info Session
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Lerone A. Martin
APRIL
Cosponsored with the Education Justice Project. Supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
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SYMPTOMS OF CRISIS
Vincent Brown (History and African American Studies, Harvard University), Cheryl Finley (Art and Visual Studies, Cornell University), and Christopher Freeburg (English)
Inside Scoop and Poetry Reading Cosponsored by the Program in American Indian Studies and the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity & Inclusion.
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LEGAL HUMANITIES Anthony Ray Hinton
Author/ Activist and Equal Justice Initiative Community Educator Supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Cosponsored by the Illinois Global Institute Transitional Justice Initiative.
OF 19 | SYMPTOMS CRISIS Olufunmilayo I. Olopade Medicine, Associate Dean for Global Health, Director of Clinical Cancer Genetics, University of Chicago "Race, Breast Cancer, and African American Women" Co-hosted by the Cancer Center at Illinois.
21 | WITHOUT WALLS HUMANITIES
Grand Research Challenge Info Session Supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
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Undergraduate Research Symposium Part of Undergraduate Research Week.Supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
MAY PRIZES FOR 5 | RESEARCH Ceremony and Reception
Panel and Discussion: Slavery’s Counterlives UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS URBANA-CHAMPAIGN | 15
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HRI looks forward to continuing our relationship with PYGMALION as a sponsor in 2021 . The annual festival stages a multidisciplinary, multi-day event that includes music, literature, technology, food, makers, comedy, podcasts, science, arts, and more . Mark your calendars for September 23–25 . For the full slate of presenters, including our own former faculty fellow Nikki Usher and current Mellon Public Humanities Fellow Azlan Smith, visit thisispygmalion.com.
Nick Rudd Music Experience & Improvisers Exchange Present: Joe Morris Joe Morris
HRI is excited to cosponsor a series of programs on music improvisation featuring New Englandbased guitarist Joe Morris, widely recognized as one of the most original and important improvising artists of our time. Morris begins his short residency at Illinois with a lecture at the Spurlock Museum drawing from and expanding on his 2012 book Perpetual Frontier: The Properties of Free Music, a concise volume on music improvisation developed (at the time) from nearly four decades of experience as a student, performer, curator, and educator in the field.Perpetual Frontier reflects Morris’ deep investigation into the methodologies of the field and encourages a practice that continually invites new possibilities.
David Robinson & Larry Ochs
Tomeka Reid
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 6, 2021 LECTURE
4 p.m.Joe Morris: "Properties of Free Music" Spurlock Museum PERFORMANCE: SPECIAL DOUBLE BILL 7:30 p.m.Joe Morris & Tomeka Reid Duo | Larry Ochs & Don Robinson Duo Humanities Research Institute, Levis Faculty Center
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2021 WORKSHOP:
Improvisers Exchange Workshop, Time and location TBD
A duo performance at HRI with Chicago-based cellist Tomeka Reid will follow the lecture that evening in a special double bill with a San Francisco Bay Area duo featuring Larry Ochs (saxophone) and Don Robinson (drums).The two groups featured as part of the annual Nick Rudd Music Experience will offer listeners an opportunity to hear distinct directions in Free Music, along with a first-time collaboration among all four players, illustrating in performance aspects of Morris’s earlier lecture. The residency ends with Morris leading an Improvisers Exchange Workshop where students, faculty, and community members are invited to participate.Please visit hri.illinois.edu for updated details on time and location.
RESEARCH CLUSTER EVENTS
A sample of some upcoming events planned by the HRI Research Clusters
MEDICAL HUMANITIES SEPTEMBER 30, 2021 Sandy Sufian on her Health Humanities Portraits Project (Zoom) Health Humanities, History, and Disability Studies; University of Illinois Chicago
FEBRUARY 23–25, 2022 Kirsten Ostherr Medical Humanities Residency English and Medical Humanities, Rice University
NOVEMBER 18, 2021 Rishi Goyal on Medical Humanities/ Literature in the ER (Zoom) Medical Humanities, Columbia University
APRIL 7, 2022 Reverend Terrance Thomas Hospital Chaplain, Champaign-Urbana
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A Year of Creative Writers at Illinois
HRI APPLICATION DEADLINES 2021–2022 AUGUST 20 NEH Summer Stipends SEPTEMBER 1 Interseminars Application SEPTEMBER 27 Prindable Internship OCTOBER 4 Humanities Gateway Internship FROM OCTOBER 15 Supplemental Event Fund, Spring 2022 applications open
Roxane Gay
Jericho Brown
Tracy K.Smith
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NOVEMBER 1 Humanities Without Walls (HWW) Career Diversity Summer Workshop Application NOVEMBER 15 First round: HWW Grand Research Challenge Application NOVEMBER 15 Interseminars Graduate Fellowship Application DECEMBER 3 Campus Fellowships FEBRUARY 4 Mellon Public Humanities Fellowship FEBRUARY 11 Summer Faculty Research Fellowships MARCH 1 HWW Summer Bridge Experience Application MARCH 4 Prizes for Research in the Humanities APRIL 8 Research Clusters APRIL 15 Second round: HWW UIUC Seed Grant Application FROM APRIL 15 Supplemental Event Fund, Fall 2022 applications open MAY 31 Reading Group Submissions
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HRI Year in Review During a most unusual year, HRI—like many organizations—turned to technology to connect with colleagues, students, and guests both on campus and around the globe.While we missed convening in person, it was a special experience bringing together speakers and attendees from home offices and living rooms across the U.S., New Zealand, Australia, Germany, and more. 1
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The Year of Creative Writers series continued with powerful readings and workshops by Daniel Borzutzky (1), Christopher Grimes (2), Cris Mazza (3), and Christina Pugh (4). Pulitzer Prize-winner Tyehimba Jess (5) joined us as a virtual poet in residence, spending time with students at a lunch event cosponsored by the Bruce D . Nesbitt African American Cultural Center, offering aninteractive craft talk, and wowing a rapt Zoom crowd with a kinetic reading of his work . 18 | HRI 2021 NEWSLETTER
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"I have heard this question many times, actually, for many years.But my understanding is just this: do something, you know? Just do something." - Behrouz Boochani, when asked about a call to action 1
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Our campus colleagues offered additional illuminating talks throughout the year .Jenny Davis led a Work-In to dive deeper into land acknowledgment statements, how they connect to larger Native American issues and ways to approach next steps .Lou Turner’s (1) talk on Hal Baron shined a light on the immense impact of this less well-known civil rights figure . TheProgram in Jewish Culture & Society put on a symposium featuring the work of scholars who study Jewish communities in the Caribbean . And this year’s International Women’s Day Celebration, already a much-anticipated event, included a video message from special guest U .S . SenatorTammy Duckworth (2), among many brilliant Illinois speakers, including President Tim Killeen (3), Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation Susan Martinis (4), and Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Sean Garrick (5).
Did you miss a speaker last year? Several events are available for viewing at go.illinois.edu/HRIvideos .Note that some videos are only available to users with a UIUC Net ID, so be sure to log in first to see all available recordings.
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The State of the Humanities in Illinois This past year, the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign once again proudly sponsored Illinois Humanities’ Public Humanities Awards, which were celebrated virtually in May.Dawoud Bey received the Beacon Award for his remarkable accomplishments as a photographer, humanist, and educator, and Tonika Lewis Johnson received the Public Humanities Award for her work as a photographer and social justice artist. As our state’s humanities organization, Illinois Humanities (IH) is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Illinois General Assembly, as well as by contributions from individuals, foundations and corporations.In 2020, with support largely from NEH’s CARES Act funds, IH conducted statewide crisis-relief grantmaking of more than $700,000 to 177 organizations.They conducted significant research to contextualize, report back, and reflect on the results of this investment. In April, we were proud to host IH Executive Director Gabe Lyon (pictured at left) on Zoom, where she presented the report’s findings and answered a variety of questions from the UIUC audience.HRI looks forward to continued collaboration with Illinois Humanities and opportunities to partner this year and into the future.
FROM THE ILLINOIS HUMANITIES COVID-19 REPORT "Public humanities organizations have something substantial to offer during this pandemic and, as well, throughout the course of our recovery. Overlooking this sector runs the risk of both losing community anchors most committed to preserving the artifacts, ephemera, and memory of Illinois’ history and identity, as well as failing to capitalize on an ecosystem ripe to contribute to the state’s ability to repair and heal the triple pandemics of COVID-19, racial reckoning, and disinvestment across rural and urban communities." ___________________ "Illinois Humanities’ COVID-19 relief grantee partners’ experiences align with what we know about how humanities organizations respond during times of crisis.Grantee partners are serving as community anchors for trusted information, for mitigating social isolation, for enabling people to make and create objects and narratives that help them to process loss, trauma and joy.They are also—while under significant duress—finding ways to incorporate new technologies and new modes for delivering on their missions." Read the full report at ilhumanities.org/covid19report. Report excerpts: Lyon, G., Hallett, M., Yoo, J.Miner, P., Bhat, A. On Wisdom and Vision: Humanities Organizations in Illinois during COVID-19 (2021) Chicago, IL., Illinois Humanities.Copyright: March 2021.Illinois Humanities.All rights reserved.Permission is granted for non-commercial reproduction of this report, with attribution to Illinois Humanities, 2021.
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Humanities Indicators Shed Light on Trends and Attitudes In a virtual presentation last fall, Robert Townsend, co-director of the Humanities Indicators for the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, shared recent findings about the state of humanities departments and analysis from a survey of the general public and its attitudes about the humanities. The Humanities Indicators is a database of comprehensive statistical information about the humanities in the United States, providing researchers and policy-makers in the private and public sectors with better tools to answer basic questions about areas of concern in the humanities.
Some key findings: While the number of bachelor’s degrees awarded in humanities disciplines has been declining in recent years, the number of minors has been steady and doctoral degrees in the humanities grew during the recession and remain stable. At two-year colleges, the number of degrees awarded in the liberal arts and humanities reached a record high in 2018. More than 84% of all workers with a terminal bachelor’s degree in the humanities reported they were satisfied with their jobs, while 90% of humanities majors with an advanced degree expressed satisfaction.
The study found that 78% of Americans wished they had taken more courses in at least one humanities subject in school, with languages other than English garnering the most interest (49% of respondents). Visit amacad.org/humanities-indicators to view this rich resource.Graphics courtesy of Humanities Indicators.
InkWell Retreat Strengthens Writing Practices In late June, 140 UIUC faculty and graduate students from across disciplines attended an HRI-sponsored professional development opportunity presented by InkWell Academic Writing Retreats. Titled "Ready, Set, Flow: How to Overcome Overwhelm & Make the Most of Your Writing Time," the day-long virtual workshop was led by InkWell founder Michelle Boyd.Formerly a tenured faculty member herself, Boyd has shifted her focus to research and service on helping scholars better understand their writing process. "The InkWell retreat was a great experience, especially because Dr. Boyd was such a skilled facilitator," said participant Jessica Harless, PhD Student in Education Policy, Organization & Leadership. "The strategies she introduced were concrete and immediately usable—they had an impact on my writing that very day.Most of all, participating in the retreat re-boosted my confidence, making a real difference in my dissertation progress this summer.It meant a lot for HRI to invest in and offer this kind of resource."
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"Off the Shelf" Podcast Explores Frameworks for Social Change "Off the Shelf: Revolutionary Readings in Times of Crises" is a new podcast series from HRI that features in-depth conversations with Black scholars on the UIUC campus. Each episode explores books, scholars, and concepts they recommend we take "off the shelf" to help us understand our current moment in history. Host Augustus Wood—a former HRI fellow and current research cluster co-director—is a postdoctoral researcher in Labor and Employment Relations specializing in political economy and gentrification, social movements and working-class labor in late 20th- and early 21st- century African American urban history. "One element missing from today’s problem solving in crisis time is intellectual rigor and theoretical critique," Wood said."Bringing intellectualism back to the forefront of solving social crises will undoubtedly move our society out of this New Nadir and closer to a new vision where we, the people, will determine how our society will operate." Season one’s six-episode span yielded vibrant, challenging conversations: from Lou Turner’s deep dive on Hal Baron and his struggle against institutional racism and economic inequality, to Helen Neville’s insights on Black liberation through the lens of Black psychology, and Sundiata Cha-Jua’s analysis of global capitalism’s impact on Black socioeconomics and communitybuilding.Catch up on what you missed at go.illinois.edu/ShelfPod and watch for season two coming this fall.
The Power of "Why?": Inaugural Humanities Research Lab Launches In fall 2020, Professor Jane Desmond (Anthropology) taught the inaugural Humanities Research Lab with her course "Humans and Animals: Friends or Food?" (ANTH 126), which engaged undergraduate students in interdisciplinary humanities research while posing questions about the non-human world.The Humanities Research Lab, an effort supported through HRI and the Office of Undergraduate Research, offers departments the opportunity to keep classes small and focused on developing intensive links between research and community engagement. "Collaborative, creative research is thrilling," Desmond said."This course, structured as a lab that seeks to articulate research questions and paths to the future, recognizes how closely linked human and non-human animals are in nearly every dimension of our lives, helping students embrace the power of research." "Creating pathways to understanding is critical to an engaged citizenship, no matter what profession our students choose down the road," she said."Research is about the power of asking ‘why?’ Why are things the way they are? How did they come to be that way? What costs (visible and invisible) are tallied to maintain this status quo? Who benefits and who doesn’t? Is the status quo what we, as citizens, desire moving forward? Could we imagine a different, a better future? And if so, what would it look like and how can the humanities, with its deep commitment to grasping, analyzing, and articulating—how we see the world, in all our plurality—help us understand how to get there? These are the underlying commitments of the course and its ultimate goal—to create researchers of us all and inquisitive life-long learners."
"Creating pathways to understanding is critical to an engaged citizenship, no matter what profession our students choose down the road. Research is about the power of asking ‘why?’"
Read the full story at go.illinois.edu/ResearchLab.
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The Odyssey Project The Odyssey Project could not be prouder of the achievements of its faculty and, most importantly, its students during the past year . In response to the pandemic, Odyssey went socially distanced and online, making numerous adaptations to better support students in a virtual learning environment . From socially distanced recruiting and orientation sessions to virtual classroom discussion and online tutoring, faculty, staff, and interns worked hard to make The Odyssey Project accessible to its students . One of the most common bars to online education remains access to computers and the internet . To ensure students’ success, the program loaned out tablet computers and worked with University of Illinois Student Services to ensure that each student had a reliable internet connection . In addition to Odyssey’s regular wraparound support services, Odyssey Project Advisor and Student Experience Coordinator, Michelle Awad, provided on-call
technology support, helping students troubleshoot a variety of technology challenges as they arose.The faculty made creative use of Zoom and met regularly to support one another and offer suggestions for how to engage Odyssey students online.Fall 2020 Artist-in-Residence, MFA candidate Catalina Hernandez, introduced ways to use the camera’s field of view to express mood and feelings.The method proved so popular that it became a frequent way to start class meetings.
The biggest heroes of the past year, however, are the Odyssey Project students who, despite the challenges wrought by the pandemic and despite the many competing concerns vying for their attention, stuck with the program through the school year. Eleven students completed the Odyssey Project this year and many plan to continue their education by earning their GED, an associate as well as bachelor’s degrees, or vocational training.
Even as they adapted their teaching methods, instructors still found new and creative ways to encourage students to take their learning out of the classroom and into the community. Philosophy Professor Shelley Weinberg, for example, partnered with University alumna and editor of the local Unity in Action Magazine, Tanya Parker, to provide Odyssey students with an opportunity to publish an article in the magazine on the intersections of philosophy with community issues.We hope to continue this partnership next year and into the future.
For the second year in a row, an Odyssey student has joined the Parkland Pathways program, which offers students the ability to complete their first two years at Parkland Community College and finish their bachelor’s degree at the University of Illinois.A number of other Odyssey students hope to transfer to Illinois when the time is right for them.Please join the Odyssey Project and the rest of HRI in wishing our graduates the best of luck, wherever their journey takes them.
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Training in Digital Methods for Humanists The third and final cohort of the Training in Digital Methods for Humanists project (TDMH), which was funded through the Investment for Growth Initiative via the Office of the Provost, convened this year under the direction of Dr. Judith Pintar (Teaching Associate Professor, iSchool) with support from Saniya Ghanoui (PhD candidate, History).Like everything else this year, the TDMH Fellows’ meetings happened in the Zoom room, where they were able to experience and engage with a variety of resources related to digital humanities on campus and to present their emerging work to each other, in the company of their TDMH mentors. They were joined this year by postdoctoral fellows Anna Torres-Cacoullos (Spanish and Portuguese) and Brooklyne Gipson (Communication), who thanks to support from both the American Council of Learned Societies and our own DRIVE (Diversity Realized at Illinois through Visioning Excellence) program, will transition to full-time faculty positions at Illinois in 2022.We also had the pleasure of hosting Keyanah Nurse, an ACLS Emerging Voices Fellow, in the group this year. Though TDMH is coming to an end, it continues in spirit and in practice through the Digital Humanities track of the "Study in a Second Discipline" program in the College of Liberal Arts and Science (contact: associate dean Clare Crowston).If you are interested in hearing more about the experiences of all of those who were involved in TDMH during its pilot phase, you can access the archive at publish.illinois.edu/tdmharchive.
EDUCATION JUSTICE PROJECT HRI is proud to help support EJP—directed by Professor Rebecca Ginsburg—with whom it has enjoyed a longstanding partnership . After a long and distant year, the Education Justice Project (EJP) will return to in-person instruction this fall! We were last able to teach at the prison in March 2020, when Danville Correctional Center (DCC)—a medium-security men’s prison where EJP has offered classes and programs for 12 years—went into lockdown due to the pandemic, cutting off contact between EJP instructors and program facilitators and their students . Since then, EJP has found ways to stay tethered to its students, through newsletters, correspondence courses and instructional videos . While these channels helped EJP stay connected, instructors are looking forward to returning to DCC, where EJP plans to offer three for-credit classes in fall 2021 . Safety procedures—including limited class sizes and mask requirements—will keep members safe as they return to physical learning spaces . While this past year has presented innumerable challenges, it has also given EJP the opportunity to expand certain areas of programming and explore new ones . In May 2020 the Reentry Guide Initiative, which creates informational books for people facing release and deportation from prison, produced a special COVID booklet for people leaving prison . They have continued to update their annual guides with new information about vaccines and safety protocols . Now they’re working on a series of reentry videos for the Illinois Department of Corrections that will play throughout the Illinois prison system . The videos offer advice for incarcerated people on obtaining important documents, as well as maintaining healthy relationships and preparing mentally for release . EJP has also initiated a prison-to-gown program, which will provide support for University of Illinois students who have interacted with the criminal justice system . In the coming year, EJP will conduct an exploration of the challenges those students face, with a goal to implement services that would help address those challenges . These new programs, along with a return to our in-person services, will make this a year of growth, connection, and innovation for EJP .
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National Humanities Alliance Humanities Advocacy Day 2021
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INTERNS Amina Malik, who served as the David F. Prindable Intern, graduated in May with a bachelor’s degree in history with a special interest in museum and archival sciences.Outside of academia, Amina enjoys being a part of local arts initiatives and has been teaching painting classes with the Peoria Art Guild for the past two years. Maya Moucharrafie, a rising junior majoring in Global Studies with minors in Arabic Studies and Legal Studies, served as communications and outreach intern with HRI. Maya looks forward to exploring pre-law opportunities and working in the humanitarian sector after graduation.She is passionate about UNICEF’s work for children and enjoys being a part of the Gala Committee with UNICEF at UIUC. We are also excited to share that the first Humanities Gateway Internships in Public Media and Civic Engagement were awarded in 2020–21.A partnership between the Humanities Research Institute (HRI) and Illinois Public Media, these internships are available to undergraduates majoring in humanities and related disciplines and were made possible in part by the generosity of donor Elizabeth Nolan.Gabby Castellanos (English and Sociology, class of 2021) served in fall 2020 and Kimberly Wilson (Sociology, class of 2021) served in spring 2021.
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Giving to HRI At a time when the humanities are even more critical to the flourishing of our collective future, HRI helps to advance faculty and student research that touches every aspect of community intellectual and social life—on scales both local and global.A commitment to a strong humanities research ecosystem is key if we are to strive for a just, livable, and sustainable future. The complexities of our current crises require collaborative solutions that take into account so many interconnected threads: history, the environment, the deep roots of racism, complex legal issues in immigration and the criminal justice system, politics, social justice, medical humanities, and religion.The research, programs, and speakers supported through HRI are essential in addressing the most pressing issues of our time.
THE AMPLIFYING POWER OF A GIFT We are grateful for the generosity of our supporters like Dr. Dan Shin, a double-major alumnus (Honors Biology, Economics) from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (’91).HRI’s 2020 Medical Humanities Lecture featuring Dr.Kirsten Ostherr was possible in large part due to the good offices of Dr.Shin, who is an infectious disease specialist with El Camino Hospital in Mountain View, CA and Palo Alto Medical Foundation. Dr.Shin's ongoing support of HRI continues to elevate our work.Most recently he supported book purchases for Odyssey Project students and also created an internship for undergraduates in the humanities that wish to partner with community organizations through the We CU initiative.We are grateful for his continued stalwart support—a shining example of direct, tangible impact on our students and programs. Kirsten Ostherr is returning to campus in February for a Medical Humanities Residency thanks to support from Dr. Shin.
THE POWER OF DISCOVERY: FELLOWS SEMINAR PROPELS STORY’S PUBLICATION For HRI’s faculty and graduate fellows, the Fellows Seminar is a key component of the yearlong experience.The Seminar, which meets throughout the fall and spring semesters, is a forum for fellows to share work-in-progress with colleagues from across disciplines—a fertile ground for discussion and discovery. English Professor David Wright, who was an HRI faculty fellow in 2017–18, recently published a new story in The New Yorker that saw its first external audience in the HRI Fellows Seminar. "The Fellows Seminar was the first response I had to this work," he said."A few friends had read the opening paragraphs, but leading up to the Seminar, I had almost no sense of how an audience might respond to a larger section." "The way that scholars tend to approach these sorts of seminars is different from how creative writers do.Though unused to this approach, the conversation among the fellows was lively and far reaching and completely, completely illuminating.Three years later, my novel is under contract, and an excerpt recently appeared in The New Yorker.I feel much indebted to HRI for helping me get here."
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KEY FUNDING OPPORTUNITIES As we reflect on our first year as an official institute, HRI remains committed as ever to fostering a bold, thriving humanities ecosystem at Illinois.We see you as a vital part of our community and invite you to join us in bolstering the essential work of the humanities to effect positive change. Key areas include: Faculty Fellowships
Faculty Research Funds
Graduate Fellowships
Endowed Residential Visiting Scholars
The Odyssey Project Research Clusters
Join us as we push the boundaries of research in the humanities and work to contribute to meaningful, material change for the collective good. You can make a gift at hri.illinois.edu/ giving or by contacting Director of Development Tony Pomonis (English ’02) at (217) 300-3470 or apomonis@uif. uillinois.edu.
Humanities Research Lab
With you, HRI will be empowered to discover collaborative solutions so that our collective future can, and will, flourish.
A CONNECTED COMMUNITY We invite you to join the email list for Amplify, which shares stories of the rippling impact of the humanities at Illinois and beyond.And sign up for our E-news to learn about HRI’s speakers, programs, and opportunities offered throughout the academic year.Visit go.illinois.edu/EmailList.
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WELCOME TO HRI Lydia Allen Lydia Allen came aboard HRI to serve as the events and client relations coordinator. Prior to HRI, she had been working as a conference organizer for nearly a decade, most recently coordinating the tri-annual gatherings for the Academic Perspectives conferences at Oxford University.Over the course of her career in conference organization, she has gained extensive expertise in event planning, coordination and facilitation. Lydia holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Political Science from the University of Johannesburg, where she focused on political socialization.She additionally holds a master’s degree in Education Policy, Organization and Leadership from the University of Illinois. Lydia has lived in Urbana for the past twenty years but has also called Princeton, NJ, Montreal, Canada, and Johannesburg, South Africa home.When she is not working, she can be found cycling across the prairie, walking at the UIUC Arboretum, gardening, or reading.
Margaret "Peggy" Brennan Peggy Brennan joined HRI as the assistant director of operations for the Humanities Without Walls consortium.Peggy has been involved with Humanities Without Walls (HWW) since 2017. As grad lab practicum coordinator, she oversaw the work of graduate student collaborators on Grand Research Challenge "Humanities in a Changing Climate" projects and attended the HWW Summer Career Diversity Workshop in 2018.As a research assistant in the fall 2020 semester, she expanded HWW communication strategies to publicize programs that are new to the grant. Peggy is a historian of early modern Europe and is finishing up a dissertation project in our own history department on the transatlantic migration of German-speaking refugees in the early eighteenth century.She holds a master’s degree from Trinity College Dublin and a BA from Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky.
HRI STAFF Antoinette Burton, Director aburton@illinois.edu, 217-244-3344 Nancy Castro, Deputy Director ncastro@illinois.edu, 217-244-7913 Lydia Allen, Events and Client Relations Coordinator allen7@illinois.edu, 217-265-6218 Peggy Brennan, Assistant Director of Operations, Humanities Without Walls mlbrenn2@illinois.edu, 217-265-5657 Erin Ciciora, Senior Communications Manager elukehar@illinois.edu, 217-265-7580 Alaina Pincus, Assistant Director for Education & Outreach apincus2@illinois.edu, 217-265-6330 Stephanie Uebelhoer, Office Support Specialist suebelho@illinois.edu, 217-244-3344 Jenna Zieman, Business Operations and Grants Manager zieman@illinois.edu, 217-244-5013
THE ODYSSEY PROJECT Michelle Awad, Odyssey Project Advisor and Student Experience Coordinator odysseyproject@illinois.edu, 217-300-3888
EDUCATION JUSTICE PROJECT Rebecca Ginsburg, Director info@educationjustice.net
HRI ADVISORY COMMITTEE Josue David Cisneros, Communication Rana Hogarth, History Rini Bhattacharya Mehta, Comparative and World Literature and Religion Ruby Mendenhall, African American Studies and Sociology Ghassan Moussawi, Gender and Women’s Studies and Sociology Fiona I. B. Ngô, Asian American Studies and Gender and Women’s Studies François Proulx, French and Italian Gilberto Rosas, Anthropology and Latina/o Studies
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Save the Date: HRI Opening Reception SEPTEMBER 15, 2021 The opportunity to connect across geographic boundaries through virtual events and meetings proved to be a brilliant silver lining of the past year.There is no doubt, however, that we have missed the special energy and connection that comes from convening in-person with colleagues and friends. We welcome you to an opening reception at Levis Faculty Center on the afternoon of September 15.Visit our newly renovated space on the first floor and gather outdoors with the humanities community at Illinois. Watch for more information coming soon!
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The Humanities Research Institute (HRI) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign fosters interdisciplinary study in the humanities, arts, and social sciences.Established in 1997 as the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities, HRI is a vibrant hub for humanities activity on campus.We coordinate and host lectures, symposia, and panel discussions on a wide variety of topics, and we award prizes recognizing excellence in faculty and student humanities research. We convene distinguished scholars from around the world, and we support Illinois faculty and graduate student research through fellowships and a bimonthly seminar.HRI cultivates collaborative faculty-driven initiatives through its Research Clusters; hosts multi-million-dollar external foundation grants; and supports faculty and graduate student reading groups.
Phone (217) 244.3344 Email info-hri@illinois.edu Website hri.illinois.edu @HRIatIllinois
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University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Levis Faculty Center, Suite 400 919 West Illinois Street Urbana, Illinois 61801
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