Research Office Awards Arts and Humanities Seed Funding to Faculty

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — The office of vice provost for research and economic development at the University of Arkansas has awarded five faculty research grants through its Arts and Humanities Seed Funding Program.

The grants, totaling $20,000, are intended to enrich the research and professional growth of the faculty member and the university and result in new opportunities for research or other creative endeavors. The money will be used on items that will further a project such as materials, supplies and travel.

Those selected for the grants and their departments are: Caree Banton, history; Amy Herzberg, drama; Lynn Jacobs, art; Cory Mixdorf, music; and Timothy Nutt, special collections, University of Arkansas Libraries.

“The proposals reflected a healthy diversity of interests in the arts and humanities on campus,” said Cynthia Sagers, associate vice provost for research and economic development. “This is the third year of the program, and all evidence suggests that this investment has the potential to stimulate further creative endeavors and extramural support.”

Caree Banton

Banton, an assistant professor of history, will use her grant to conduct research and make revisions to her book, More Auspicious Shores: Post-Emancipation Barbadian Emigrants in Pursuit of Freedom, Citizenship, and Nationhood in Liberia, 1834-1912. The book uses a narrative of a group of 50 Barbadian families and their efforts to emigrate to Liberia and to build a black nation that would be the envy of the world to explore meanings and experiences of freedom, citizenship and nationhood from a transatlantic perspective.

Amy Herzberg

Herzberg, a professor of drama, will use her grant to produce and act in a professional staged reading of The Spiritualist in New York City. The comic drama, written by Robert Ford, a visiting assistant professor of drama at the U of A, debuted last summer as a production of Fayetteville theater company TheatreSquared.

Lynn Jacobs

Jacobs, a professor of art, will use her grant to conduct research on her book, At the Threshold: Boundaries & Liminal Spaces in Late Medieval and Early Modern Netherlandish Art. Her book will demonstrate how the exploration of boundaries in a variety of forms of Netherlandish art served to infuse the works with greater meaning, ones not always recognized in more traditional interpretations.

Cory Mixdorf

Mixdorf, an assistant professor of trombone in the department of music, will use his grant to perform with Eurobrass  — a German-American brass ensemble founded in 1978 — for its annual three-week tour of Germany this summer. In addition to the tour, the group will record its third CD, on which Mixdorf will be featured a featured soloist.

Timothy Nutt

Nutt, head of the special collections department in University Libraries, will use his grant to support his research of Catholic and immigrant history in Arkansas. He plans to travel to archival repositories in Arkansas and Indiana to examine, review, and obtain research copies of primary materials, particularly photographs, letters, and pamphlets that document the histories of the founding of the nearly 140 extant and defunct Catholic parishes around Arkansas.

The office of vice provost for research and economic development received 21 applications from three colleges, one school and the Division of Agriculture. Proposals were reviewed by a group of research faculty selected from departments, schools and colleges from across campus. The panel discussed the reviews and developed a recommendation for funding to the vice provost for research and economic development.