Texas A&M awards 2021 Arts & Humanities Fellowships to 10 faculty members

Texas A&M University has named 10 faculty members as Arts & Humanities Fellows for 2021, the Division of Research announced today. Each new fellow will receive a three-year grant of $15,000 to support their outstanding scholarship.

Since 2015, the Arts & Humanities Fellowship Program has provided funding to 50 Texas A&M faculty members, including the 10 newest fellows.

Through this program, Texas A&M acknowledges the essential contributions of the arts and humanities to the development and advancement of civilization, Vice President for Research Mark A. Barteau said.

“Our Arts & Humanities Fellowships encourage our scholars and artists to pursue excellence in their fields,” Barteau said. “The arts and humanities are vital to shaping our understanding of our world and to preparing the leaders of the future. This year’s fellows have proposed groundbreaking projects in anthropology, philosophy, religious studies, Hispanic studies, communications, feminist studies, literature, architecture and political science. I look forward to the new learning that will come from their work.”

Application to the program is open to all Texas A&M faculty engaged in scholarship in the humanities or in creative work in the arts.

For 2021, the program received 42 applications, according to Gerianne Alexander, associate vice president for research and director of the program. “Once again, we were pleased to receive applications of high quality,” Alexander said. “We encourage all eligible faculty to develop proposals for next year’s fellowships.”

Each spring, Arts & Humanities fellows are chosen by a peer-review committee from project-based applications. Selections are based on merit and originality, professional qualifications, clarity, benefit to the public and the quality of the overall proposal.

Arts & Humanities Fellowships for 2021 were awarded to the following faculty members:

Daniel R. Bare, assistant professor, Religious Studies Program, will produce a book-length study of the American Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville—from the Jim Crow era, through the civil rights movement and into the late twentieth century.

Deborah Carlson, associate professor, Department of Anthropology, College of Liberal Arts, will create an illustrated multilingual lexicon of nautical terminology in a searchable, open-access digital database, stretching from the Greek Archaic to the Early Modern period, integrating literary descriptions of water craft with the physical remains of ships and boats.

Daniel Conway, professor, Department of Philosophy, College of Liberal Arts and a 2016 Arts & Humanities Fellow, will compose a book designed for teachers and scholars working in genocide studies, exploring the relevance of popular films in science fiction.

Sara DiCaglio, assistant professor, Department of English, College of Liberal Arts, will write a monograph illustrating how pregnancy is largely absent from rhetoric about reproduction. The project examines this rhetoric in public health communication, cultural models of pregnancy and scientific studies.

Jessica Howell, associate professor, Department of English, College of Liberal Arts, will complete research for a monograph that will draw upon women’s and gender studies, life-writing studies and postcolonialism to analyze literary and cultural figures.

Hyeran Jo, associate professor, Department of Political Science, College of Liberal Arts, will conduct research on the effectiveness of countries, international organizations and international civil society actors in reducing sexual violence inside global-conflict zones.

Hilaire Kallendorf, professor, Department of Hispanic Studies, College of Liberal Arts, will draw upon a database of 800 Spanish plays from 1550-1700 and employ digital humanities methodology to consider these works an archive of moral knowledge.

Alain Lawo-Sukam, associate professor, Department of Hispanic Studies, College of Liberal Arts, will examine the division between Peninsularists and Latin Americanists that has obscured the history of Spain in Africa and African-Hispanic literature.

Jennifer Mercieca, associate professor, Department of Communications, College of Liberal Arts, will conduct research for a book to analyze modern propaganda techniques.

Zachary Stewart, assistant professor, Department of Architecture, College of Architecture, will produce a book that investigates the medieval parish church as one of the earliest settings for collective material production in the West.