Announcing the 2021-22 Institute for the Humanities Fellows

Eight U-M lecturers and tenure-track faculty have received 2021 summer fellowships at the Institute for the Humanities. A cohort of eight U-M faculty members and eight graduate students will be fellows at the institute during the 2021-22 academic year.

The Summer Fellows will meet virtually, while the fall/winter cohort will take up residence at the Institute during their fellowship periods, both forming an intellectual community while pursuing original research and participating in regular, cross-disciplinary fellows’ seminars. Fellowship recipients represent diverse disciplines within the humanities and span several colleges and schools across the university, this year including U-M Flint, public policy, art and design, and architecture.

The Institute for the Humanities facilitates work that examines humanities traditions broadly across space and time; deepens synergies among the humanities, the arts, and disciplines across the university; and brings the humanities to public life. Each year it provides fellowships for Michigan faculty, graduate students, and visiting scholars who work on scholarly and artistic projects. It also offers a wide array of public and scholarly events, including public lectures, workshops, and discussions. The Institute for the Humanities Gallery—a fully curated, vibrant exhibition space—is known for bringing to campus artists whose work directly addresses current social issues and concerns.

Since its inauguration in 1987, the institute has granted fellowships to over 375 Michigan faculty fellows, Michigan graduate student fellows, and visiting fellows.

The fellows and the topics of their research projects are:

Sueann Caulfield, associate professor, history and the Residential College
“Stretching the Boundaries of Legitimacy: The Changing Meaning of Family in Brazil”

Jason Fitzgerald, assistant professor, English language and literature
“Theatre at the End of Humanism”

Irene Hwang, lecturer III, architecture and urban planning
“Pivotal Constructions of Unseen Events: How Architecture Shaped American History, 1871-2020”

Diana Louis, assistant professor, women's and gender studies and American culture
“Colored Insane: Slavery, Asylums, and Mental Illness in the 19th Century”

Jennifer Metsker, lecturer IV, art and design
“Swell”

Jonathan Ready, professor, Classical studies
“Immersion, Identification, and the Iliad”

Molly Spencer, lecturer III, public policy
“Six and Rose: A Study of Form in Free Verse Poetry”

Kathleen Wroblewski, lecturer III, history
“Migration to the Self: Education, Political Economy, and Religious Authority in Polish Communities, 1880-1929”

Samer Ali, associate professor, Middle East studies
Norman and Jane Katz Faculty Fellow
“Arabo-Islamic Humanities in Tenth-Century Iraq: Expressive Culture and Nonviolent Resistance”

Victor Mendoza, associate professor, English language and literature & women’s studies
Hunting Family Faculty Fellow
“Extimate Attachments: Race and the Promise of Imperial Citizenship”

Rebekah Modrak, professor, art and design
Helmut F. Stern Faculty Fellow
“UnProductiveSolutions: Humanizing Technology”

Christopher Molnar, associate professor, history, Flint
Steelcase Faculty Fellow
“Playing With Fire: Race, Memory, and Migration after German Reunification”

Ellen Muehlberger, professor, history and Middle East studies
John Rich Faculty Fellow
“Appearances: Recognition and Suspended Knowledge in Late Antiquity”

Lisa Nakamura, professor, American culture
Helmut F. Stern Faculty Fellow
“Understanding Digital Racism After COVID-19”

Kin-Yee Ian Shin, assistant professor, history and American culture
Richard and Lillian Ives Faculty Fellow
“Imperfect Knowledge: Chinese Art and American Power in the Transpacific Progressive Era”

David Temin, assistant professor, political science
John Rich Faculty Fellow
“Remapping Sovereignty: Indigenous Political Thought and the Politics of Decolonization”

James Denison, history of art
Sylvia 'Duffy' Engle Graduate Fellow
“Stieglitz Groups: Race, Place, and the Essentializing Logics of American Modernism”

Marisol Fila, Romance languages and literatures
A. Bartlett Giamatti Graduate Fellow
“Content and Form: The Black Press and Articulations of Blackness in Twenty-First Century Buenos Aires, São Paulo, and Lisbon”

Molly Keran, English language and literature
James A. Winn Graduate Fellow
“Reimagining Rape Stories: Convention and Consciousness in Feminized Genres”

Emily Lamond, Greek and Roman history
Constance and Marc Jacobson Graduate Fellow
“Disability in the Roman Familia”

Elizabeth McNeill, Germanic languages and literature
Mary Fair Croushore Graduate Fellow
“Speaking (of) Animals in the Life Sciences and Literature of 20th-Century Germany”

Nicole Navarro, history
David and Mary Hunting Graduate Fellow
“Beyond Racial Binaries: Latinos, African Americans, and Political Power in Washington, D.C., 1975-1995”

Raquel Vieira Parrine Sant'Ana, Romance languages and literatures
Richard & Lillian Ives Graduate Fellow
“In the Fissures of Authoritarian Knowledge: Sexual Difference in Contemporary Latin American Art (1980-2020)”

Hanah Stiverson, American culture
James A. Winn Graduate Fellow
“Radicalizing the Mainstream: The Icons and Ideologies of Cryptomasculinity and the Far Right”