Interseminars Spotlight: Nathalie Sofia Martinez

Nathalie Sofia Martinez (Anthropology) is a member of the 23–24 graduate cohort for “Improvise and Intervene,” the second Interseminars project funded by the Mellon Foundation. She shares about her experiences with Interseminars below. How has your understanding of “improvisational practice” evolved over the course of this fellowship so far? [FALL 2022] Im-pro-vi-sa-tion /verb/ a type […]

Spatial, Queer, and Temporal Analyses of the Borderland Experience

Miguel A. Avalos (Sociology) is a 2023–2024 HRI Graduate Fellow. Avalos’s interdisciplinary dissertation project, “Limitrophic Dwelling: Home, Temporal Sequestration, and the U.S.- Mexico Border Regime,” explores the unintended consequences of transborder commuting or the practice of frequently traveling between a Mexican and U.S. border city. Learn more about HRI’s Campus Fellowship Program, which supports a cohort of […]

Movie Fan Culture and the Expansion of Literary Genres in Early 20th Century Spain

Anna Torres-Cacoullos (Spanish and Portuguese) is a 2023–2024 HRI Faculty Fellow. Torres-Cacoullos’ book project, “Writing for New Literacies: Moving-Image Storytelling and Film Culture in Silver Age Spain” is a study of these experimental practices of literary-cinematographic writing, where authors converted motion pictures into a methodological tool to explore fusing literature and film. Learn more about HRI’s […]

Research on Indentured Labor in British Empire Reexamines Cultural Narratives about Indian Ocean World

Alexandra Sundarsingh (History) is a 2023–2024 HRI Graduate Fellow. Sundarsingh’s dissertation, “Unraveling Indenture: Racial Indenture and Unfree Labour in the Indian Ocean World, 1815-1965,” argues that to understand the creation and operation of racial indenture in the British Empire as well as the expansion and racialization of unfree labor, it is necessary to examine its […]

Research Explores Influence of Obscenity Laws on Literary History

Justine S. Murison (English) is a 2023–2024 HRI Faculty Fellow. Murison’s manuscript, “American Obscenity: Realism in the Age of Comstock” examines the legal and cultural invention of “obscenity” in the United States. Learn more about HRI’s Campus Fellowship Program, which supports a cohort of faculty and graduate students through a year of dedicated research and writing in […]

Widening Access to Global Literary and Cultural Canons

Presenting Public Programming on Literature and Religion in the Humanities Divya Nair, current Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellow in Humanities as a Social Practice, is a scholar, artist, and public humanist. She works on race, empire, religion, and classical reception in Anglophone literature between 1500 and 1800 within a global historiographic framework. She completed her Ph.D. and […]

Ethnographic Research on Dual Immersion Program Supports Bi/multilingual Education

Anna Mendoza (Linguistics) held a 2023 HRI Summer Faculty Fellowship, during which she worked with a school community liaison who speaks Lingala, French, and English to interview a representative sample of dual immersion parents—about 30 of the approximately 70 families. Through bottom-up thematic coding, she investigated parents’ reasons for enrolling their children in the program, […]

Education Policy Research Analyzes Divisive Ideologies Shaping U.S. K12 Curricula

Jon Hale (Education Policy, Organization and Leadership/Curriculum & Instruction) is a 2023–2024 HRI Faculty Fellow. Hale’s research, “I Pledge Allegiance: A History of Racist Ideas, Textbooks, and Teaching in the United States School System” provides critical historical analysis of recent efforts to control the curriculum in schools. This project builds upon the historiography around the […]

Multilingual Arts in the Mediterranean: From the Medieval to Today

Eric Calderwood (Comparative and World Literature) held a 2023 HRI Summer Faculty Fellowship, during which he conducted fieldwork in Morocco and Spain for a new book project on the aesthetics and politics of multilingual art forms. Learn more about HRI’s Summer Faculty Fellowships, which provide an infusion of resources designed to jumpstart or fuel an ongoing research […]

Archival Research Recontextualizes East African Cold War Propaganda

Adam LoBue (History) is a 2023–2024 HRI Graduate Fellow. LoBue’s project, “‘Preventive, Pre-emptive and Educative’: Political Literacy, Anti- Communism, and Cold War Knowledge Production in East Africa, 1948–1975,” examines the intellectual and cultural work of anti/communist print culture in East Africa between 1949–1979. Learn more about HRI’s Campus Fellowship Program, which supports a cohort of faculty and […]