Global Initiatives
2022-23
- Land, Language and Art
Sarah Rivett (English and American Studies) with Simon Morrison (Music, Slavic Languages and Literatures, Fund for Canadian Studies); Bryan Just (Art & Archaeology); Laura Kalin (Linguistics, Humanities Council); Tessa Desmond (American Studies); Daniel Rubenstein (Ecology and Evolutionary Biology)
This new three-year project, from the Native American and Indigenous Studies Initiative at Princeton, supports initiatives to foster new methodologies and modes of knowledge production in three areas of research and learning that are central to Indigenous Studies: land, language, and art.
- Rome Archive and Library Seminar
Anthony Grafton (History)
This three-year grant provides partial support for a summer graduate seminar held in Rome, in partnership with the University of Notre Dame, where students will study archives in the Vatican Library and Archive, the National Library, and the Jesuit Archive, and allow curators and scholars to share their experience working with these materials.
2021-22
- Comparative Antiquity
Martin Kern (East Asian Studies)
This ongoing collaboration aims to transform the research, study, and teaching of antiquity, broadly at Princeton, in hopes of providing a model for similar change elsewhere. This grant supports a wide range of activities including conferences, workshops, course development, and long-term and short-term academic visitors.
- International Network for Comparative Humanities
Maria DiBattista (English and Comparative Literature)
This ongoing initiative supports a working group of literary scholars from both sides of the Atlantic dedicated to promoting the comparative study of humanities. The project aims to develop a new definition of “networking” within the humanities by hosting workshops featuring faculty and students for sustained discussions.
2019-20
- American Contact: lntercultural Encounter and the History of the Book
Rhae Lynn Barnes (History)
Supported by a Humanities Council David A. Gardner ’69 Magic Grant in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania and Johns Hopkins, this project explores the use of material texts and objects in cross-cultural encounters in the Americas.
2018-19
- The Princeton Project on the Ethiopian Miracles of the Virgin Mary (PEMM): An International Research Collaboration
Wendy Laura Belcher (Comparative Literature and African American Studies)
This multi-year project creates a comprehensive catalogue, clavis, edition, and database of the over 700 folktales of the Ethiopian Marian miracles, written from the 1300s through the 1900s in the ancient African language of Gəˁəz. Firestone Library holds the largest collection in the Americas of parchments containing these folktales and is digitizing and posting them online. In anticipation of a surge in global interest, this project creates better data about the manuscripts. This project was also supported by the Center for Digital Humanities, and the translation of a core text was supported by a grant from the Office of the Dean for Research. Supported by a Humanities Council David A. Gardner ’69 Magic Grant for Innovation.
Collaborative Humanities
2022-23
- Art Hx: The Visual and Medical Legacies of British Colonialism
Anna Arabindan-Kesson (Art & Archaeology and African American Studies)
This two-year grant will support artists-in-residence, fellows, and community-focused programing for Art Hx, an ongoing project that explores the historical, and ongoing, entanglements of art, race, and colonial medicine through the curation of a digital database and research platform.
- LUDUS
Beatrice Kitzinger (Art & Archaeology); Jamie Reuland (Music)
This three-year project, which was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, develops an interdisciplinary working group devoted to the study of the Middle Ages. It will foster collaboration between scholars and artists and promote the visibility of Medieval Studies through programming in the performing arts.
- Organizing Stories: Toward a Scholarly-Activist Praxis
Autumn M. Womack (African American Studies); Monica Huerta (English, American Studies)
This ongoing student-driven project investigates the long history of anti-racist activism, racial justice organizing, and coalition-building as it relates to questions of narrative, storytelling, and humanistic study. By creating new avenues of exchange between Princeton University and community-based social justice work, students and activists will imagine new ways to support and amplify a scholarly-activist praxis.
- Waldemar Cordeiro: Bits of the Planet
Rachel Price (Spanish and Portuguese)
This digital exhibition focuses on the pioneering paintings and sculpture, media theory, early computer art, and landscape architecture of Brazilian artist Waldemar Cordeiro (Rome 1925—São Paulo 1973). This grant will support an artist to innovate the infrastructure for the exhibition.
2021-22
- Native American and Indigenous Studies Initiative at Princeton (NAISIP)
Sarah Rivett (English and American Studies)
This Exploratory Grant supports a new Native American and Indigenous Studies Initiative at Princeton (NAISIP), beginning with the formation of a working group consisting of faculty, staff, and students from across the disciplines and the University, while working to establish and maintain partnerships with Indigenous communities. The collaboration will host a lecture series for the 2021–2022 academic year, a Lenape/Lunape language symposium, an Indigenous Pedagogy workshop, and a conference on storytelling and environmental change in Siberia and the American Arctic.
In Fall 2021, the NAISIP working group will host its first seminar series, bringing leading Native scholars, artists, and activists to campus as a way of fostering cross-disciplinary dialogue in our community and beyond. The aim of the seminar series is to rethink the academic domains of knowledge and power in order to transform Indigenous-settler relationships. The full series schedule can be found here.
- Art Hx: Visualizing the Medical Legacies of British Colonialism
Anna Arabindan-Kesson (Art and Archaeology and African American Studies)
Art Hx explores the historical, and ongoing, entanglements of art, race and colonial medicine through the curation of a digital database and research platform that brings artists, writers, health professionals and scholars into dynamic conversations around archival objects and art works.
2020-21
- Organizing Stories: Toward a Scholarly-Activist Praxis
Autumn M. Womack (African American Studies), Monica Huerta (English, American Studies)
A student-driven project that will investigate the long history of anti-racist activism, racial justice organizing, and coalition-building as it relates to questions of narrative, storytelling, and humanistic study more broadly.
2019-20
- African American Religious Studies Workshop
Judith Weisenfeld (Religion)
This workshop will bring together faculty and graduate students in African American religious studies to develop collaborative research projects, produce resources for teaching, mentor junior faculty and graduate students, and offer training and support for public scholarship and engagement. The project will create opportunities for scholarly engagement and collaboration across institutions and disciplines. Supported by the Humanities Council’s Stewart Fund for Religion
- Bodies of Knowledge
Elena Fratto (Slavic) and Natalie Prizel (English and Society of Fellows)
A new phase in the Bodies of Knowledge workshop will enable interdisciplinary teaching and research initiatives in three new directions: environmental studies, visual arts, and disability studies. The project includes a conference on environmental studies and the body in a global context, considering Russia, Japan, and beyond. Supported by a Humanities Council David A. Gardner ’69 Magic Grant
- Language, Power and Identity: A Community of Learning Project
Christine Sagnier (Department of French and Italian)
In a collaboration with the University of Aix-en-Provence, undergraduates at Princeton and in France will discuss issues related to language in society via on line video. Both groups will enroll in an introduction to sociolinguistics in their respective institutions. The curriculum will include interviews and collaborative tasks, enabling students to gather data and present findings to other members of the “community,” benefiting from intercultural exchanges. Supported by a Humanities Council David A. Gardner ’69 Magic Grant
- Digital Humanities and Visual Resources: The Material and Digital Lives of Eastern European and Russian Artifacts
Thomas Keenan (Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Library); Katherine Reischl (Slavic); and Natalie Ermolaev (Center for Digital Humanities)
This September 2019 gathering at Princeton is a collaboration with the Herder Institute in Margburg, Germany and the Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University. Combining short instructional sessions, keynote lectures, and works-in-progress presentations, the project will expand networks of scholarly exchange to include partners from American institutions and elsewhere in Europe (Russia, Hungary, and the Czech Republic). Supported by a Humanities Council David A. Gardner ’69 Magic Grant
