Research updates, observations, and opportunities from the Humanities Research Institute.
Latest Posts
- Research Remixes Sound Studies x Black Girlhood
Blair Ebony Smith (Art Education, Gender & Women’s Studies) was a 2023 HRI Summer Faculty Fellow. Smith used the fellowship funding to support a research trip to Richmond, Virginia. Learn more about HRI’s Summer Faculty Fellowships, which are designed to help faculty at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign maximize the summer in service of their ongoing professional development. Describe an aspect […] - Decolonial Feminist Research Addresses Contemporary Issues Through Latinx Social Imaginary
Emma Velez (Gender and Women’s Studies) is a 2022–2023 HRI Campus Faculty Fellow. Velez’s manuscript, “Orienting Historias: Unraveling the Coloniality of Gender through Las Tres Madres,” shows how the processes of colonization shifted, embodied, and emplaced orientations to social life through the imposition of the categorial logics of race, gender, and sexuality. Learn more about HRI’s Campus Fellowship Program, which supports a […] - Fellowship Invites Community Conversation on Political Stakes of Storytelling
Research Focused on Movement of Ideas Across Cultures Eva Kuras (Comparative and World Literature), the 2022–23 Mellon Pre-Doctoral Public Humanities Fellow, writes about her fellowship project, what drew her to this work, and what “public humanities” means to her. What motivated you to apply for the Mellon Pre-Doctoral Public Humanities Fellowship? I have always been interested in bridging the divide […] - Research Re-envisions Social, Ecological Relations Through Indigenous Literary and Visual Texts
Deena Rymhs (American Indian Studies) is a 2022–2023 HRI Campus Faculty Fellow. Rymhs’ project “Putting Back Together: Re-Worldings in annie ross’s Pots and Other Living Beings” focuses on a recently published book of poet and weaver annie ross (Maya). Composed of diptych photographs stitched together in a poetic travelogue through nuclear-infused (Indigenous) lands, Pots and Other Living Beings re-envisions social and ecological […] - Research on Black Women, Corporeal Aesthetics in 21st Century Paves Way for Black Futures
Amanda Smith (French and Italian) is a 2022–2023 HRI Campus Graduate Student Fellow. Smith’s research project, “21st Century Black Beauty Resistance: Collectivism, Individuality, and In/Visibility in Black French Women’s Body and Hair Representations,” examines representations of Black women’s bodies and hair in Francophone autobiographical, sociocultural, and literary texts written by 21st century Black women to uncover how they illuminate white […]