Summer Stipends Pave Way for Humanities Research Around the World

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Clockwise from upper left: Erika Almenara, Justin Gage, Rocio Gomez and Lynn Jacobs. Jeremy Hyman not pictured.

Summer is time for kicking back on vacation, taking a refreshing swim - and as many scholars know - engaging in sustained research and writing.

Five humanities scholars in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences competed for and earned $5,000 summer stipends to engage in research abroad and/or writing respites. The awardees are:

Erika Almenara, assistant professor of Spanish in the Department of World Languages, Literatures and Cultures, traveled to Chile and Peru to undertake research for her book project, Literary and Cultural Representations of Social Gender Perception in Post-Conflict Societies. She consulted newly opened archives in Santiago and Lima that house documents relevant to the Pinochet military dictatorship and the conflict between the Peruvian government and the terrorist group Shining Path. Likewise she collected testimonies and analyzed art and other cultural forms in order to understand how the violation of human rights impact perceptions of gender.

Justin Gage, instructor of history in the Department of History, will utilize summer stipend monies to conduct archival work in several repositories across the nation, including the National Archives in Washington, D.C., as well as other institutions in Kansas City, Denver, San Francisco and Los Angeles. A 2015 graduate of the doctoral program in history at the U of A, Gage has secured a book contract from the University of Oklahoma Press for his manuscript, We Consider Ourselves as One: Creating a Native American Community and the Spread of the Ghost Dance. He emphasizes Native American agency and illustrates how native peoples used literacy, an imposed assimilationist tactic, to bolster their own cultures and resist wholesale domination.

Rocio Gomez, assistant professor of history in the Department of History, will travel to Mexico's national archive to finish up research for her book project, Silver Veins and Dusty Lungs: Water, Public Health, and the Environmental Legacies of Industry in Modern Mexico, 1835-1945 (under contract with the University of Nebraska Press). She will also begin research on her second project, Victors and Vanadium, a history of science and biography of Andrés Manuel del Río. Gomez is a global environmental historian and her research focuses on human-nature interactions and public health.

Jeremy Hyman, instructor of philosophy in the Department of Philosophy, discovered the only known copy of drafts of Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy circulated by Marin Mersenne, who was charged by the philosopher with sharing it with various intellectuals. After a multiyear search, Hyman found the copy in the municipal library of Toulouse, France. He has also secured a contract from Norton to publish an English translation and critical edition of the manuscript. Hyman presented his preliminary analysis of the manuscript at the Sorbonne in Paris and also traveled to Toulouse to further study the manuscript and begin establishing its provenance.

Lynn Jacobs, distinguished professor of art history in the Department of Art, is working on a book on German triptychs of the 15th century. Her current study departs from her former studies in that she examines the visual representation in the art and the medium format of said art. Jacobs traveled to Cologne and Munich and also connected with major German scholars and curators. Jacobs is an internationally recognized European triptych expert who has even been contacted by Leonardo DiCaprio's production company for her consultation.