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Home Division of Research & Innovation News & Impact Fine Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences Support Program

Fine Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences Support Program  

In efforts to encourage scholarship and growth of externally funded research in these areas, the Division of Research & Innovation offers the Fine Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences Support Program.     

Applicants were invited to request funding for professional indexing, image reproduction, pre-tenure faculty subvention, open-access book fees, and field work and archival research. Several applications were submitted, and 13 proposals were funded.  The winning applicants are:  

  • Dr. Keri Brondo (kbrondo@memphis.edu), interim associate dean in the College of Arts & Sciences and professor in anthropology, for Professional Indexing and Image Reproduction for the book Culture, Nature, and Environmental Sustainability: Anthropological Perspectives

    • Culture, Nature, and Environmental Sustainability: Anthropological Perspectives
      Support from the Fine Arts, Humanities, & Social Sciences Program will cover the indexing costs for my forthcoming book (with Luis Vivanco): Culture, Nature, and Environmental Sustainability: Anthropological Perspectives.

      Drawing on both historical and cutting-edge work in anthropology and related interdisciplinary spaces, Culture, Nature, and Environmental Sustainability shows how making critical, constructive sense of sustainability challenges requires close attention to the material entanglements of nature and people that operate in distinct but interconnected ways at different scales (local, national, regional, global); symbolic and historically-specific constructions of nature, ecology, and human-nature relations that shape how environmental problems are understood and framed; authoritative forms of belief, knowledge, power, and control, and sharp conflicts around the legitimacy of scientific and non-scientific perspectives and practices; and differential experiences of environmental benefits and degradation, depending on intersectional matters of social inequality, class, race, ethnicity, gender, age, and other factors. The book is under contract with Wiley-Blackwell Press and scheduled to release early 2024.

  • Dr. Rebecca Howard (rmhward2@memphis.edu), assistant professor of Art History, for Pre-Tenure Faculty Subvention and Image Reproduction for the book manuscript Portraiture and Mnemonics in Renaissance Italy: Commemoration through Body and Brain
    • Portraiture and Mnemonics in Renaissance Italy: Commemoration through Body and Brain
      Howard is an assistant professor of Art History in the Department of Art. The project funded by this award is for her single-author book manuscript, Portraiture and Mnemonics in Renaissance Italy: Commemoration through Body and Brain. Research explains how portraitists in early modern Italy depicted their sitters in ways that both conveyed their interior natures and connected with the minds of viewers. The book explores the period's scientific studies of how the brain and memory might function and how early modern people were taught to remember things, applying this scientific context to portrait creations and other commemorative objects. The award will help offset the costs of publication subvention fees and obtaining image rights and high-quality reproductions for the book.
  • Dr. Aram Goudsouzian (agoudszn@memphis.edu), professor of American History, for Field Work and Archival Research for the project “The Sports Page: Writers, Athletes, and the Challenge of the Sixties”  
    • The Sports Page: Writers, Athletes, and the Challenge of the Sixties
      Project is called “The Sports Page: Writers, Athletes, and the Challenge of the Sixties.” It looks at how a diverse cast of nonfiction writers who described and shaped the shifts in American sports culture from the mid-1950s through the mid-1970s. While reinventing the craft of sports writing, they injected sports into larger, contentious conversations about American identity.
  • Dr. Marika Snider (mesnider@memphis.edu), assistant professor of Architecture, for Field Work and Archival Research to study historic preservation in France for the project "Narrating the Layers of Paris’s Architectural History through New Media"
    • Communicating the complicated histories of Île de la Cité, Paris
      Award is the Richard Morris Hunt Prize to study historic preservation in France. The research topic is provisionally titled Narrating the Layer’s of Paris’s Architectural History through New Media. Researcher is hoping that she will be able to learn from the French how they tell complicated histories. They are forerunners in urban histories and using technology to tell more nuanced stories of the places we inhabit.
  • Dr. Beverly Tsacoyianis (btscynis@memphis.edu), associate professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic History, for Open Book Access Fees for the co-edited volume Disability History in the Middle East

    • Disability History in the Middle East, co-edited volume
      (Editors: Dr. Beverly Tsacoyianis and Dr. Sara Scalenghe)

      This edited volume presents a comprehensive analysis of the current state of the field focused on Middle Eastern communities with thematic approaches to disability history, from Morocco to Iran and from the period of the Prophet Muhammad in the 7th century to the present day. With a thematic focus (in sections such as “carceral spaces”, “at home,” and “at work”) and intersectional voices, the volume showcases the diversity of experience as well as future directions in disability history research that align activism with a pedagogy of empathy. The volume will serve as a keystone in the burgeoning field of disability studies in the Middle East and of Middle Eastern communities worldwide. Foregrounding questions on the ethics of treatment and advocacy for policy reform in the present day and for inclusion of marginalized voices in the past, this volume can serve both as guide to scholars and activists new to the field and a celebration of the initiative of pioneers in the field.

  • Dr. Mark Mayer (mmayer@memphis.edu), assistant professor of English, for a Pre-Tenure Faculty Subvention grant for the novel The Central Fire
    • The Central Fire
      Project is titled The Central Fire. The Central Fire is a novel about the Pythagorean cult that came to power in the Greek colonies of southern Italy around 500 BCE. The novel combines researched historical realism and elements of fantasy based on the Pythagoreans’ beliefs about arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy and on legends told about Pythagoras himself. Mayer is interested in the relationship between the discovery of “beauty” and “harmony” in mathematics and the forms of economic exploitation that “beautiful math” can seem to justify.
  • Dr. Jonathan Tsay (jtsay@memphis.edu), assistant professor of Piano, for a Pre-Tenure Faculty Subvention grant for the compilation album Legacy: Piano Music of Jiang Wen-Ye and Ma Shui-Lon
    • Legacy: Piano Music of Jiang Wen-Ye and Ma Shui-Long
      This album will feature the music of two Taiwanese composers whose lives and works reveal the sophistication and craftsmanship of classical music works originating from East Asia from the 1930s-2000s, but also are a fascinating look into the turbulent history of Taiwan from pre-WWII Japanese occupation through Kuomintang rule and its modern day influence and controversy on the world stage. This album will be the first compilation of these works recorded in the U.S.
  • Dr. Joanna Golden (nluo@memphis.edu), associate professor of Accountancy, for a Field Work and Archival Research grant for the project "Management Diversity Culture"

    • Management Diversity Research Topic in Accounting
      Management Diversity Culture

      This research focuses on the diversity characteristics of the entire executive group and offers a more complete and nuanced understanding of the impact of management diversity. Therefore, this study contributes to the research and practice of management diversity, corporate governance, and corporate sustainability.

  • Dr. Melanie Conroy (mrconroy@memphis.edu), associate professor of French, for an Open Access Book Fees grant for the project "Uncertainty in Humanities Network Visualization"
    • Uncertainty in Humanities Network Visualization
      Prof. Melanie Conroy (World Languages and Literatures) received a publication subvention grant as a part of the Fine Arts, Humanities, and Social Science Support Program to make her co-authored article "Uncertainty in Humanities Network Visualization" available open-access. This article is a collaboration with researchers from Germany, the Netherlands, Australia, Switzerland, and other countries, primarily from the humanities and computer science, that seeks to define best practices for the display of uncertainty in humanistic network diagrams.
  • Professor Elise Blatchford (lbltchfr@memphis.edu), associate professor of Flute, for a Field Work and Archival Research grant for a self-directed residency in Baroque flute at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague
    • Field Work: Baroque Flute Study in the Hague
      Blatchford is conducting a self-directed residency in Baroque flute at the Royal Conservatory in the Hague. This project will directly affect flutists in the School of Music, who will now be able to study the Baroque flute, an 18th century wooden flute with one key. This was the flute that Bach and Handel wrote for, and the study of this instrument, which is quite different from our modern flute, will allow a deeper understanding of performance practice for music of the time period. Playing on this older flute creates a kind of empathy with the composers who wrote for the instrument. This study will enrich Baroque offerings at the University of Memphis, including our ensemble Collegium Musicum.
  • Dr. Cookie Woolner (cwoolner@memphis.edu), associate professor of History and Women’s Studies, for a Professional Indexing grant for The Famous Lady Lovers: Black Women and Queer Desire before Stonewall
    • Book Indexing funds for The Famous Lady Lovers
      Award is to create the index for Woolner’s forthcoming book, The Famous Lady Lovers: Black Women and Queer Desire before Stonewall (University of North Carolina Press, Fall 2023). This book will be one of the first historical monographs to center the intimate lives of African American women who loved women. Focusing on the 1920s and 30s, when “lady lover” was a term for a woman who loved the same sex, Woolner demonstrates the important role Black queer women played in American culture in a time of great social change. She documents the emergence of their social worlds in northern cities against the backdrop of the Great Migration, Prohibition, Jim Crow segregation, and the growing Black popular entertainment industry. 
  • Dr. Robert Byrd (rdbyrd@memphis.edu), associate professor of Journalism and Strategic Media, for a Field Work and Archival Research grant for the project "Covering AIDS in the Southern Queer Press"

    • Covering AIDS in the Southern Queer Press
      Robby Byrd, Associate Professor; Department of Journalism and Strategic Media; Project title: Covering AIDS in the Southern Queer Press

      Most of the current literature on Queer press coverage of the AIDS/HIV epidemic focuses on large urban centers on the East and West coasts. In fact, most of the current literature on mainstream journalism coverage focuses on the same urban areas. Despite a more recent push for the telling of Southern Queer histories, little Southern Queer journalism history has been told. This project is Byrd’s attempt to add the stories of the Southern Queer press to the body of existing journalism history. By shedding light on the publications produced by gay and lesbian journalists/activists in the Southern United States—particularly from the 1981 to 2000, this project aims to provide a deeper understanding of the role of the Queer press in community building and worldmaking specifically during a time of unparalleled crisis.

  • Dr. Wendy Atkins-Sayre (wltknssy@memphis.edu), Chair of the Department of Communication and Film and Professor of Rhetoric and Media Studies, for a Professional Indexing grant for the book manuscript Resilience Rhetorics: Interrogating the Role of Food in Southern Appalachian Community Building 

    • Resilience Rhetorics: Interrogating the Role of Food in Southern Appalachian Community Building
      Project Title:  Resilience Rhetorics: Interrogating the Role of Food in Southern Appalachian Community Building. Project type:  Book manuscript. Authors:  Ashli Q. Stokes (University of North Carolina—Charlotte) and Wendy Atkins-Sayre

      For more than a century, the Appalachian region of the United States has been created, forgotten, and rediscovered for various economic, cultural, and political purposes. We join those in other disciplines explaining the relationship between Appalachian stereotypes, identity, and culture by using a rhetorical lens to explore how the perimeters of Appalachian identities have been established and are reiterated through its foods. Rhetorically analyzing Appalachian foods helps provide a more nuanced understanding of this region, illustrating how messages about its cuisine simultaneously shape, reinforce, and challenge how we view its present. Framed through the idea of resilience, or the capacity to spring back from a setback, to recover, and withstand adversity, we detail how Appalachian foodways provide examples of survival in spite of adversity but also exemplify harmful cultural elements that plague the region, such as racism, poverty, and narratives of hypermasculinity and whiteness. To explain how the ideas surrounding resilience and Appalachia are rhetorically constructed, we first illustrate how the texts that circulate best become carriers of public consciousness, constituting understanding and memory of events and cultures. We then analyze the identity-shaping qualities of regional food rhetoric, arguing that food provides topoi, or “commonplaces” for discussions, that offer inventional capabilities other commonly deployed topoi cannot.  Specifically, the authors’ analysis locates three food-based messages of resilience that shape an understanding of Appalachia: a foodway that strengthens the region by preserving and resurrecting different iterations of its food traditions, fortifies its communities through food care, and melds stories together to make it possible for more people to see themselves reflected in a broader Appalachian narrative. Accounting for these multiple expressions of resilience deepens our understanding of a term that has taken on increasing significance, simultaneously demonstrating how a variety of regional food traditions help constitute resilience but also reify familiar damaging stories.

      This book project uses rhetorical criticism to analyze the Southern Appalachian region through its foodways. The analysis reveals a more complex image of the region through a study of its food and food traditions while also accounting for the strength of rhetorical appeals to resilience. The findings on foodways and resilience extend beyond the Appalachian region, providing guidance for future studies on critical regionalism and the South.

       

All funding recipients will be required to propose an article for The Conversation, a service that creates visibility for faculty work among a national general readership audience, within one year of funding. For more information on these awards, email researchdev@memphis.edu.