Eight U-M lecturers and tenure-track faculty members have received 2020 summer fellowships at the Institute for the Humanities. A cohort of eight U-M faculty members and eight graduate students will be fellows at the institute during the 2020-21 academic year.
Both cohorts will take up residence at the institute during their respective fellowship periods, forming an intellectual community while pursuing original research and participating in regular, cross-disciplinary fellows’ seminars.
Fellowship recipients represent diverse disciplines within the humanities and span several colleges and schools across the university, this year including UM-Dearborn, the School of Information, the Penny W. Stamps School of Art and Design, and the A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, as well as LSA.
The Institute for the Humanities facilitates work that examines humanities traditions broadly across space and time; deepens synergies among the humanities, the arts, and disciplines across the university; and brings the humanities to public life.
Each year it provides fellowships for U-M faculty, graduate students and visiting scholars who work on scholarly and artistic projects. It also offers a wide array of public and scholarly events, including public lectures, workshops and discussions.
The Institute for the Humanities Gallery — a fully curated, vibrant exhibition space — is known for bringing to campus artists whose work directly addresses current social issues and concerns.
Since its inauguration in 1987, the institute has granted fellowships to more than 350 U-M faculty fellows and graduate student fellows, and visiting fellows.
The fellows and the topics of their research projects are listed below.
Summer Fellows, 2020
David Caron, professor of French, and women’s studies, LSA — “Think Strange: Transnational Queer Cinema and the Poetics of Personhood”
George Hoffmann, professor of French, and in the Honors Program, LSA — “What Westworld Tells Us about Being Human”
Paul Johnson, professor of history, and Afroamerican and African studies, LSA — “Architectures of Presence”
Jane Lynch, lecturer III in the Residential College — “Keeping ‘Idle Hands’ Busy: Ethical Subjects in the History of India’s Craft Industries”
Melanie Manos, lecturer II in art and design, Stamps School — “Visualizing Women’s Work”
Kelly Murdoch-Kitt, assistant professor of art and design, Stamps School — “ORBIT: Designing Intercultural Collaborations”
Veerendra Prasad, lecturer II in film, television, and media, LSA — “Unscripted Films in Uncontrolled Environments”
Carol Tell, lecturer II in English, Sweetland Writing Program, and director of the Lloyd Hall Scholars Program, LSA — “‘I’ll Eat You Up, I Love You So’: Conflicting Renderings of Eating in Childhood”
Faculty Fellows, 2020-21
Ghassan Abou-Zeineddine, Norman and Jane Katz Faculty Fellow, assistant professor of English, UM-Dearborn — “Adventures in Dearborn”
Linda Gregerson, John Rich Faculty Fellow, Caroline Walker Bynum Distinguished University Professor of English, and professor of English language and literature, LSA — “‘Saint Sorry’, a Collection of Poems”
Bethany Hughes, Hunting Family Faculty Fellow, assistant professor of American culture, LSA — “Redface: Race, Performance, and Indigeneity”
Matthew Lassiter, Hunting Family Faculty Fellow, Arthur F. Thurnau Professor; professor of history, LSA; and professor of urban and regional planning, Taubman College — “Deadly Force: Documenting and Mapping Police Violence and Misconduct in Detroit”
Ana María León, Charles P. Brauer Faculty Fellow; assistant professor of history of art, romance languages and literatures, LSA; and assistant professor of architecture, Taubman College — “NO SMALL ACTS: Counter-Institutions in Brazil, Chile, and Argentina, 1959-1983”
Janum Sethi, Steelcase Faculty Fellow, assistant professor of philosophy, LSA — “Kant on Prejudice and Communication”
Anna Watkins Fisher, Helmut F. Stern Faculty Fellow, assistant professor of American culture, LSA — “Resistance in an Age of Inevitability”
Jason Young, Richard and Lillian Ives Faculty Fellow, associate professor of history, LSA — “‘To Make the Slave Anew’: Art, History and the Politics of Authenticity”
Graduate Student Fellows, 2020-21
Alaa Algargoosh, Mary Fair Croushore Graduate Fellow, architecture — “Aural Architecture as Affect: Understanding the Impact of Mosques’ Acoustics on the Worshipper’s Experience”
Caitlin Clerkin, David and Mary Hunting Graduate Fellow, classical art and archaeology — “Hellenistic and Early Parthian Seleucia-on-the-Tigris Revisited”
Katherine Dimmery, A. Bartlett Giamatti Graduate Fellow, Asian languages and cultures, anthropology — “Heartache, and the Contested Ethics of Cultural Survival in Southwest China”
John Finkelberg, Mary Fair Croushore Graduate Fellow, history — “Becoming a Man in the Age of Fashion: Gender and Menswear in Nineteenth-Century France”
Yael Kenan, Sylvia ‘Duffy’ Engle Graduate Fellow, comparative literature — “States of Mourning: Nationalism and Mourning in Palestinian and Israeli Literatures After 1948”
Victoria Koski-Karell, Richard & Lillian Ives Graduate Fellow, anthropology — “Poetics of Water: Drinking-Water in the Wake of Cholera in Haiti”
Megh Marathe, Richard & Lillian Ives Graduate Fellow, information — “Understanding the Seizure in the Time of Digital Brainwaves”
Aaron Stone, James A. Winn Graduate Fellow, English — “Desires for Form: Modernist Narrative and the Shape of Queer Life”
