The U of A Humanities Center is delighted to announce the selection of recipients for their fall 2024 funding competitions.

HUMANITIES CENTER FELLOWS

This year the center's selection committee chose its inaugural group of two UAHC Fellows from a group of nine applications. The recipients are:

• Kelly Hammond, associate professor of history and associate director of the International and Global Studies Program, and

• Jennifer Hoyer, associate professor of world languages and literatures and director of the Jewish Studies Program.

Hammond will use the semester to work on her second book project, Wearing Many Hats: Chinese Muslim General Bai Chongxi (1893-1966). The book will highlight how Bai Chongxi capitalized on his military victories to carve out a space for Muslims in Chinese national politics. Hammond combines military, political, religious and ethnic studies in an innovative project that shows how military leaders are important not just to state building but also to the creation of policies for ethnic and religious minorities. 

Hoyer’s project, German Lyrical Mathematics: How the Neurodiversity Paradigm Can Help Us Think Differently, will position neurodiversity as an innovative and unique methodology that can help bridge the natural sciences and humanities. Specifically, she will use a neurodivergent reading of German lyric poetry from the 17th to the 21st centuries to intersect with mathematical concepts and thus change approaches to both lyrical poetry and mathematics.

SUMMER RESEARCH FELLOWSHIPS

The U of A Humanities Center's selection committee had the tough job of choosing two faculty from a group of 14 applicants to receive summer research fellowships of $5,000. The awardees are Mary Beth Long, associate professor of English and director of the Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program, and Daniela D’Eugenio, assistant professor of world languages and literatures and acting section head of the Italian Program.

Long will research at the Folger Library and Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., and the Wellcome Collection and British Library in London, United Kingdom, for her critical edition of A Trewe Reporte of the Life and Marterdome of Mrs Mararete Clitherowe, a woman pressed to death in 1586.

D’Eugenio will use the award to research in archives in Fiesole and Sesto Fiorentino in Florence, Italy, for her project Early Modern Calligraphic Communities: Circulation and Exchange in Italy and the Early Modern World.

PUBLISHING SUBVENTION GRANTS

Five faculty were awarded grants to help in the acquisition of visuals, support translation and acquire maps and other materials for publication of their monographs, edited volumes and articles. The faculty and their projects are:

Janet Allured, adjunct professor of history
Southern Methodist Women and Social Justice: Interracial Activism in the Long Twentieth Century

Todd Cleveland, Distinguished Professor of history, associate chair and director of graduate studies in history
Accessible Africa: Teaching and Learning About an Unfamiliar Past

Lisa Corrigan, professor of communication and director of the Gender Studies Program
Intimacy Regimes: Race, Sex, and Surveillance at Midcentury

Terrell Dionne, assistant professor of communication
In the Spirit of ?Atatiće?: Telling Decolonial Allotment Stories amid Pending Litigation

Kelly Hammond, associate professor of history and associate director of the Global and International Studies Program
Wearing Many Hats: Chinese Muslim General Bai Chongxi and the Chinese Muslim Association during the War of Resistance

OUTREACH INCENTIVE FUNDS

Outreach Incentive Grants facilitate the spread of humanities research or content into the larger regional community with talks, exhibitions, performances and conferences. The committee chose two recipients from the five applications. The programs and sponsors were:

Public Program: “The Mathematical Imagination: On the Origins and Promise of Critical Theory”
Sponsor: Laurence Hare, executive director, Undergraduate Excellence and Engagement, and associate professor of history

Keynote addresses for the 2025 annual Conference of the Celtic Studies Association of North America, which will take place at the U of A April 3-5.
Sponsor: Joshua Smith, associate professor of English 

The UAHC holds competitions yearly to provide funding to humanities faculty to support publishing, research and outreach. In addition, a limited number of small grants of $500 for events can be applied for on an ad hoc basis, and matching funds for larger grants are available with approval from the steering committee. Keep an eye on the UAHC website funding tab for information on upcoming competitions or reach out at uahc@uark.edu.

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About the University of Arkansas Humanities Center: The University of Arkansas Humanities Center, in the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences, promotes cross-disciplinary research and inquiry in the humanities, sponsors programs that engage humanities scholars and the wider public in conversations about critical topics, and fosters a strong role for the humanities in an increasingly global society.