Gisabel Leonardo (Spanish and Portuguese) is a 2023–2024 HRI Graduate Fellow. Leonardo’s project, “Melenas Malcriadas: The Black Aesthetics of Hair and Dominicanidad,” uses literature, street art, music, performance, and theory to examine hair as a means of resistance in the contemporary Dominican diaspora. Learn more about HRI’s Campus Fellowship Program, which supports a cohort of faculty and […]
Joe Bowie (Dance) is a member of the 23–24 graduate cohort for “Improvise and Intervene,” the second Interseminars project funded by the Mellon Foundation. He shares about his experiences with Interseminars below. How has your understanding of “improvisational practice” evolved over the course of this fellowship so far? As a third-year Dance MFA graduate student, […]
Jackie Marie Abing (Sociocultural & Linguistic Anthropology) is a member of the 23–24 graduate cohort for “Improvise and Intervene,” the second Interseminars project funded by the Mellon Foundation. They share about their experiences with Interseminars below. The Interseminars Initiative is gearing up for the third round of the grant in 24–25! Learn more about Interseminars. View […]
Marina Moscoso Arabía (Human Geography and GRID Interdisciplinary Minor) 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. The Interseminars Initiative is gearing up for the third round of the grant in 24–25! Learn more […]
Hermann von Hesse (Art History, Art & Design) is a 2023–2024 HRI Campus Faculty Fellow. Von Hesse’s research focuses on the nexus between the material cultures of the African Atlantic world, the Black Diaspora and early modern European imperial and capitalist expansion and the contemporary legacies of these historical processes. Learn more about HRI’s Campus Fellowship […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]