The Humanities Council has awarded 38 new grants for innovation and collaboration in 2026-27. Led by 51 faculty from across 27 departments and programs, these projects will advance inquiry and enrich scholarship at Princeton University and beyond. Together, these projects highlight the rigor and richness of the humanities as an increasingly interdisciplinary and outward-facing field.
These grants will enable scholars to harness new technologies, build and sustain knowledge communities in emerging disciplines, produce pathbreaking humanities research, and experiment with collaborative forms of creative practice.
This year’s projects include:
- An academic workshop in the new Princeton University Art Museum on the minerality of modern art
- A community-engaged exploration of Black American theater
- A yearlong environmental humanities discussion group
- The development of a print-based poetry publishing platform
- A cross-disciplinary symposium on Afrodiasporic music across genres and generations
- The creation of a teaching archive that supports collaboration between engineers and architects
- A comparative investigation of Canadian French vowels using ultrasound tongue imaging technology
The awards include grants from the David A. Gardner ’69 Magic Project, which supports ideas that have the potential to change how the humanities are conceived and taught. This year, students will explore the novel “One Hundred Years of Solitude” alongside experts in Colombia, study the material history of film in Edison Film Archive, and participate in classroom conversations about technoscience with disabled scientists, medical researchers, and artists.
In addition to the Magic Projects, the Council will support new Collaborative Humanities Grants that connect faculty and scholars across the United States and abroad to develop shared areas of focus and generate research in promising and underrepresented fields. New collaborative projects in 2026-27 will examine the life and exile of Soviet film director and screenwriter Andrei Tarkovsky, devise new approaches to study Byzantine frescos at the monasteries of Meteora in Greece, and study authoritarian resurgence across the Americas.
The Council has also awarded special grants for initiatives, conferences, and workshops related to literature, music, and art.
A full list of awarded projects appears below.
MAGIC GRANTS
Magic Grants are designed to serve as the initiating spark and primary support for bold, imaginative projects that break new ground intellectually or pedagogically. Full descriptions of these projects can be found on the Magic Grant website.
- Crafting the Nation: Art, Materiality and Independence in the Post-Colony
Anna Arabindan-Kesson (African American Studies and Art & Archaeology) and Perrin Lathrop (Princeton University Art Museum) - Minerality in Modern and Contemporary Art
Monica Bravo (Art & Archaeology) - Acoustic output and Lingual Articulation of Canadian French Vowels
Vincent Chanethom (French and Italian) and Florian Lionnet (Linguistics) - From Letterform to Literary Site: The Material Lives of Korean Textual Objects
Ksenia Chizhova (East Asian Studies) - Solitude, Singleness, Singularity
Beatriz Colomina (Architecture) - Black Theater Making Initiative
Jane Cox (Theater, Lewis Center for the Arts); Rhaisa Williams (Theater, Lewis Center for the Arts); Chesney Snow (Theater, Lewis Center for the Arts) - Archive for Queer and Trans Spatial Practice
S.E. Eisterer (Architecture) - Displacement Squared (Dialogical Video Opera)
Aleksandar Hemon (Creative Writing, Lewis Center for the Arts) and Aynsley Vandenbroucke (Dance, Lewis Center for the Arts) - Student Travel and Attendance at the United States Institute of Theatre Technology Annual Conference
Tess James (Theater, Lewis Center for the Arts) and Jane Cox (Theater, Lewis Center for the Arts) - Sounding the Diaspora: Afrodiasporic Music Past, Present, Future
Nathalie Joachim (Music) - Atlantis Workshop: Princeton Research Across Disciplines
Erika Kiss (University Center for Human Values) - The Poetry Press Project
Dagmara Kraus (German) - Textuality, Materiality and Reading Practices Workshop
Daniela Mairhofer (Classics) and AnneMarie Luijendijk (Religion) - The Intellectual Legacy of Umberto Eco
Federico Marcon (East Asian Studies and History) - A Place Between: Space and Sound and Happening
Michael Meredith (Architecture) and Donnacha Dennehy (Music) - Engineer / Architect Collaborations: Archives, Structure and Historiography
Guy Nordenson (Architecture) - Housing Transformed
Mónica Ponce de León (Architecture) - Basquiat, the Blue Ribbon Paintings, and the Art of Reproduction
James Steward (Princeton University Art Museum) - Project Resonance: Instruments and Residency
Dan Trueman (Music) - Rhythms of Typography, Typographies of Rhythm: Literature and Textual Media in Early Modern and Modern China
Xiaoyu Xia (East Asian Studies) - Environmental Anthropology: Renewals
Jerry Zee (Anthropology)
Course enrichment
- Reading “One Hundred Years of Solitude“
Javier Guerrero (Spanish and Portuguese) - Disability in the Techno/scientific Imagination
Kelsey Henry (Society of Fellows, African American Studies, and Humanities Council) - Language to Be Looked At / Creativity and American Sign Language
Irene Small (Art & Archaeology) and Peter Cook (Linguistics and American Sign Language)
COLLABORATIVE HUMANITIES GRANTS
Collaborative Humanities Grants support pairs or groups of faculty as they develop a shared area of focus that advances research or teaching in emerging or underrepresented fields in the humanities. Full descriptions of these projects can be found on the Collaborative Humanities Grant website.
- Painting in Place: The Fresco-Painting Workshops of Sixteenth-Century Meteora
Charlie Barber (Art & Archaeology) - Rising Authoritarianisms and the Powers of Family Complexes Today
João Biehl (Anthropology) - Seminar in Interdisciplinary Psychoanalytic Studies
Brigid Doherty (German and Art & Archaeology) - Inter-Institutional Project in Scholarly and Collegial Translation
Karen Emmerich (Comparative Literature) - Heirloom Gardens Project
Hanna Garth (Anthropology) and Tessa Lowinske Desmond (SPIA) - Tarkovsky and Italy: An International Conference and Film Event
Yuri Leving (Slavic Languages and Literatures) and Elena Fratto (Slavic Languages and Literatures) - Environmental Humanities Works-In-Progress Discussion Group
Erika Lorraine Milam (History)
TEAM TEACHING GRANTS
Team Teaching Grants support new, interdisciplinary co-taught courses that build bridges within the humanistic disciplines or across the humanities, creative arts, social sciences and natural sciences. More information can be found on the Team-Teaching website.
- Between Selves: Living Letters from Antiquity to the Present
Yelena Baraz (Classics) and Esther Schor (English) - Introduction to Comparative Cinema Studies: Media, Machines, Worlds
Steven Chung (East Asian Studies) and Thomas Levin (German) - Thinking with Books
Beatrice Kitzinger (Art & Archaeology) and Katie Chenoweth (French and Italian) - Musical Theater and Fan Cultures
Stacy Wolf (Theater, Lewis Center for the Arts) and Elizabeth Armstrong (Sociology and SPIA)
SPECIAL GRANTS
Special Grants from the Faber, Stewart, and Cone funds in the Humanities Council support projects and conferences related to literature and religion and music-related activities, respectively. Full descriptions of these projects can be found on the Special Grants website.
- Salzburg Seminar on Opera, Politics and Cultural Diplomacy
Spyros Papapetros (Architecture) and Rubén Gallo (Spanish and Portuguese) - Global Seminar, Musical Theater and Storytelling in Southern Italy
Stacy Wolf (Theater, Lewis Center for the Arts and American Studies) - Sondheim’s Afterlives
Stacy Wolf (Theater, Lewis Center for the Arts and American Studies)
The Humanities Council’s mission is to nurture the humanities locally and globally, engage diverse perspectives past and present, and enrich public dialogue with humanistic approaches.
The Council offers a wide array of funding opportunities for research, teaching, collaboration, innovation, and outreach. Information about eligibility and deadlines to apply can be found on the Council’s website.
