Eight U-M lecturers and tenure-track faculty members have received 2021 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 2021-22 academic year.
The Summer Fellows will meet virtually, while the fall/winter cohort members will take up residence at the institute during their 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 Ann Arbor campus and U-M Flint.
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 Michigan 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 375 U-M faculty fellows and graduate student fellows, and visiting fellows.
The new fellows and the topics of their research projects are:
Summer Fellows, 2021
- Sueann Caulfield, associate professor of history and in the Residential College; “Stretching the Boundaries of Legitimacy: The Changing Meaning of Family in Brazil”
- Jason Fitzgerald, assistant professor of English language and literature; “Theatre at the End of Humanism”
- Irene Hwang, lecturer III, architecture and urban planning; “Pivotal Constructions of Unseen Events: How Architecture Shaped American History, 1871-2020”
- Diana Louis, assistant professor of women’s and gender studies and of American culture; “Colored Insane: Slavery, Asylums, and Mental Illness in the 19th Century”
- Jennifer Metsker, lecturer IV, art and design; “Swell”
- Jonathan Ready, professor of classical studies; “Immersion, Identification, and the Iliad”
- Molly Spencer, lecturer III, public policy; “Six and Rose: A Study of Form in Free Verse Poetry”
- Kathleen Wroblewski, lecturer III, history; “Migration to the Self: Education, Political Economy, and Religious Authority in Polish Communities, 1880-1929”
Faculty Fellows, 2021-22
- Samer Ali, associate professor of Middle East studies, Norman and Jane Katz Faculty Fellow; “Arabo-Islamic Humanities in Tenth-Century Iraq: Expressive Culture and Nonviolent Resistance”
- Victor Mendoza, associate professor of English language and literature and of women’s studies, Hunting Family Faculty Fellow; “Estimate Attachments: Race and the Promise of Imperial Citizenship”
- Rebekah Modrak, professor of art and design, Helmut F. Stern Faculty Fellow; “UnProductiveSolutions: Humanizing Technology”
- Christopher Molnar, associate professor of history at UM-Flint, Steelcase Faculty Fellow; “Playing With Fire: Race, Memory, and Migration after German Reunification”
- Ellen Muehlberger, professor of history and of Middle East studies, John Rich Faculty Fellow; “Appearances: Recognition and Suspended Knowledge in Late Antiquity”
- Lisa Nakamura, professor of American culture, Helmut F. Stern Faculty Fellow; “Understanding Digital Racism After COVID-19”
- Kin-Yee Ian Shin, assistant professor of history and American culture, Richard and Lillian Ives Faculty Fellow; “Imperfect Knowledge: Chinese Art and American Power in the Transpacific Progressive Era”
- David Temin, assistant professor of political science, John Rich Faculty Fellow; “Remapping Sovereignty: Indigenous Political Thought and the Politics of Decolonization”
Graduate Student Fellows, 2021-22
- James Denison, history of art, Sylvia ‘Duffy’ Engle Graduate Fellow; “Stieglitz Groups: Race, Place, and the Essentializing Logics of American Modernism”
- Marisol Fila, Romance languages and literatures, A. Bartlett Giamatti Graduate Fellow; “Content and Form: The Black Press and Articulations of Blackness in Twenty-First Century Buenos Aires, São Paulo, and Lisbon”
- Molly Keran, English language and literature, James A. Winn Graduate Fellow; “Reimagining Rape Stories: Convention and Consciousness in Feminized Genres”
- Emily Lamond, Greek and Roman history, Constance and Marc Jacobson Graduate Fellow; “Disability in the Roman Familia”
- Elizabeth McNeill, Germanic languages and literature, Mary Fair Croushore Graduate Fellow; “Speaking (of) Animals in the Life Sciences and Literature of 20th-Century Germany”
- Nicole Navarro, history, David and Mary Hunting Graduate Fellow; “Beyond Racial Binaries: Latinos, African Americans, and Political Power in Washington, D.C., 1975-1995”
- Raquel Vieira Parrine Sant’Ana, Romance languages and literatures, Richard & Lillian Ives Graduate Fellow; “In the Fissures of Authoritarian Knowledge: Sexual Difference in Contemporary Latin American Art (1980-2020)”
- Hanah Stiverson, American culture, James A. Winn Graduate Fellow, “Radicalizing the Mainstream: The Icons and Ideologies of Cryptomasculinity and the Far Right”
