2023–24 HRI Fellows Announced

The Humanities Research Institute at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign has awarded its annual Campus Fellowships to seven faculty members and seven graduate students from the campus for the 2023–24 academic year. These fellows represent a range of disciplines and interests from the Colleges of Education, Fine and Applied Arts, and Liberal Arts and Sciences. There will be no designated research theme; applicants were invited to propose projects investigating any subject.

HRI is also pleased to announce the 2023–24 Mellon Pre-Doctoral Fellow in Public Humanities. The Public Humanities Fellowship is an opportunity for a doctoral student in the humanities to be in residence with the Odyssey Project and to pursue a public humanities-related project under the guidance of a designated faculty mentor.

Please join HRI in congratulating these new fellows!

HRI Campus Fellows

FACULTY FELLOWS

Jessica R. Greenberg (Anthropology), “Making Violence Visible: Anticipatory Justice and the Democratization of Evidence in Human Rights”

Jon Hale (Education Policy, Organization and Leadership/Curriculum & Instruction), “I Pledge Allegiance: A History of Racist Ideas, Textbooks, and Teaching in the United States School System”

Justine S. Murison (English), “American Obscenity: Realism in the Age of Comstock”

Magdalena Novoa E. (Urban and Regional Planning), “Insurgent Heritage: Grassroots Movements and Citizenship in Chile”

Hermann von Hesse (Art History, Art & Design), “‘Love of Stone Houses’: Urban Merchants and Material Culture on Africa’s Gold Coast”

Renata Ryan Burchfield (American Indian Studies), “Weaving Sovereign Webs: Process and Performative Sovereignties in Indigenous Creative Cultural Production”

Anna Torres-Cacoullos (Spanish and Portuguese), “Modernist Cine-grafies: Writing with Motion Pictures, Reading with Moving Images in Spain (1918–1930)”

GRADUATE FELLOWS

Miguel A. Avalos (Sociology), “Limitrophic Dwelling: Home, Temporal Sequestration, and the U.S.- Mexico Border Regime”

Soumya Dasgupta (Architecture), “{Design} Empire: Transformations of Architectural Productions in Urban India, 1991–2020”

Carrie Johnson (Creative Writing, English), “What Lingers: Labor Poetry and the Legacy of Industrialization in Modern Society”

Gisabel Leonardo (Spanish and Portuguese), “Melenas Malcriadas: The Black Aesthetics of Hair and Dominicanidad”

Adam LoBue (History), “‘Preventive, Pre-emptive and Educative’: Political Literacy, Anti- Communism, and Cold War Knowledge Production in East Africa, 1948–1975”

Ky Merkley (Classics), “Trans History From Antiquity For Today: Reading Gender in the Literature of the Roman Empire”

Alexandra Sundarsingh (History), “Unraveling Indenture in the Indian Ocean World, 1815– 1925”

Mellon Pre-Doctoral Fellow in Public Humanities

Ashli Anda (Philosophy), “Minding the Gap: Public Philosophy for Incarcerated Youth”  |  Faculty Mentor: Shelley Weinberg