s e m e s t e r

REPORTfall

2012

2012 Book Award WinnerRob Nixon, University of Wisconsin-MadisonThe IHR’s 2012 Transdisciplinary Book Award winner, Rob Nixon, challenges readers to rethink assumptions of violence with his innovative book Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Nixon, who holds the Rachel Carson Professorship in English and Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has three main aims in Slow Violence. First, to challenge the conventional ways of thinking about violence; second, to dramatize the challenges facing environmental justice movements among the poor, particularly in the global South; and third, to celebrate the creativity and tenacity shown by writer-activists who have testified to the urgency of these environmental struggles.

“I felt that redefining violence was a critical first step,” Nixon says. “Most environmental crises--like climate chaos, toxic drift, oil spills, deforestation and the poisonous aftermaths of wars--are characterized by a slow-motion urgency. In an age that reveres speed and spectacle, how do we take seriously the forms of environmental slow violence that are deficient in instant drama but high in long-term catastrophic effects?”

“My focus, then, is on the representational challenges posed by slow violence, the challenges of devising stories and images adequate to the pervasive but elusive violence of delayed effects. Such emergencies of the long term disproportionately jeopardize the livelihoods and life prospects of the global poor.”

The IHR’s annual Transdisciplinary Book Award recognizes and celebrates humanities faculty authors from ASU and around the U.S. and the substantial body of transdisciplinary humanistic research reflected in their publications.

“All power to the IHR for supporting transdisciplinary work in this way,” Nixon says. “These are exciting times for scholars and writers who are open to exploring the borderlands between disciplines. That’s where much of the most energetic 21st century thinking can--and will--be found.”

On September 18, the IHR and CLAS honored Nixon and his book at the 2012 Humanities Faculty Authors’ Reception. Nixon opened the event with a talk titled, “Mind the Gap: Slow Violence and the Environmental

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“The violence wrought by climate change, toxic drift, deforestation, oil spills, and the environmental aftermath of war takes place gradually and often invisibly.” - Rob Nixon

Humanities,” in which he discussed transdisciplinary research and Slow Violence.

The reception also gave guests the opportunity to peruse the substantial body of research reflected in recent publications by humanities faculty at ASU. Thirty-six books published by ASU faculty in the past year, representing departments from English to the School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies, were available for guests to browse.

A graduate seminar on environmental humanities was also offered during Nixon’s visit to ASU’s Tempe campus.

Sarah Grieve, a graduate student of literature in the Department of English, felt empowered by Nixon’s discussions.

“I found that Nixon’s presentations encouraged us as scholars and citizens to be what he calls ‘writer-activists’--those who incite global change through any form of writing that brings attention to under-represented and under-recognized issues,” Grieve says.

Nixon’s visit planted a seed for exploration in currently working and upcoming writer-activists at ASU.

He asks, “How can we convert into image and narrative the disasters that are slow moving and long in the making, disasters that are anonymous and that star nobody, disasters that are attritional and of indifferent interest to the sensation-driven technologies of our image-world?”

Nixon is the author of three additional books: London Calling: V.S. Naipual, Postcolonial Mandarin; Homelands, Harlem and Hollywood: South African Culture and the World Beyond; and Dreambirds: The Strange History of the Ostrich in Fashion, Food, and Fortune. In addition to the IHR award for transdisciplinary humanities scholarship, Slow violence received the 2011 prize for best book published in the field of international environmental studies from the International Studies Association (ISA).

Nixon is the past recipient of a Guggenheim, an NEH, and the MacArthur Foundation Peace and Security Award. He has published more than 100 journal articles, essays and book chapters and is a frequent contributor to the New York Times. His writing has also appeared in publications including The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, Village Voice, and The Nation.

director’s messageStepping in as Acting Director of the Institute for Humanities Research while Dr. Sally Kitch is on sabbatical has been an incredible experience, filled with numerous opportunities and many learning curves! What makes this position so compelling are the many opportunities for conversation and collaboration with faculty across the humanities, learning about and supporting their research, and engaging their innovative ideas in the form of public research programming. These are the elements that drive the IHR’s endeavors, and they are the crucial components that lie at the heart of the best academic enterprises.

The IHR has been busy on several fronts in the support of transdisciplinary research in the humanities at Arizona State University. From our series of core research funding programs; our innovative, research-based and humanities-focused events; to our collaborative partnerships with other campus-based research centers, institutes and initiatives, we are firing on all cylinders this academic year. At the heart of the IHR’s mission is the cultivation and support of faculty research in the humanities. Key to these efforts are our continued commitment to our IHR Fellows

our visionHumanities research is not just about whether human beings can do something, but also about whether we should do it;

not just about where we are, but also about how we got here; not just about what people do, but also about what human activity means; not just about what to call something, but also about the importance of labels, language, art, and music as symbolic systems. Humanities research does not just identify what is real, but it also explores where ideas of reality come from. IHR scholars explore such issues and concepts as sustainability, human origins, immigration, and natural disasters, and utilize historical, philosophical, and creative perspectives to achieve a deeper understanding of their causes, effects, and cultural meanings.

Major IHR programs include:• IHR Fellows Program• IHR Competitive Seed Grant Program

• Events including lectures, seminars, and research workshops• Research Clusters• IHR Annual Distinguished Lecturer

Dan Gilfillan, Acting Director

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and seed grant opportunities, both of which provide seed funds to develop innovative research ideas and attract external funding dollars. In addition, our initiatives in Humanities and Sustainability, and the Digital Humanities, have produced important partnerships across the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences, and will help us leverage additional external funding opportunities, as well as build important research infrastructure capacity at the University.

Please take a look at the IHR highlights provided in this newsletter and let me encourage each of you to participate in the events and programs on the horizon. I look forward to meeting many of you, and engaging you in conversation about your work and the work of the IHR.

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women’s rights, race and reproductionthe research of IHR Director Dr. Sally Kitch

In many societies, women have long been viewed as less than fully human.

What are the roots of gender inequality? How have the challenges faced by women changed over time? Sally Kitch, an ASU Regents’ Professor of Women and Gender Studies and the director of the IHR, has spent many years exploring the reasons why the world sees men and women so differently. To find answers, she has examined topics ranging from the gendered origins of race to American utopian communities.

the intersection of race and genderKitch covered 300 years of history tracing the

connection between gender and race in her book, The Specter of Sex: Gendered Foundations of Racial Formation in the United States (State University of New York Press, 2009). She discovered that gender inequities have been central to societies for centuries, but race is a very modern idea.

“The Europeans thought that cultures in which men and women weren’t that different in terms of their behavior or appearance were uncivilized,” Kitch says. “That gave me the insight that racial characteristics really evolved on the basis of comparative gender characteristics.”

utopian solutionsThroughout history, and especially in the 19th century,

the U.S. witnessed the formation of several “utopian” communities that attempted to overcome gender inequality. Kitch has written three books on the subject of utopianism and gender, including Higher Ground: From Utopianism to Realism In American Feminist Thought and Theory (University of Chicago Press, 2000). She wanted to explore whether these communal societies could achieve gender neutrality, and what it would look like.

“What I discovered was that the only communities that managed to achieve gender equity of any kind were celibate societies in which sex and reproduction were just taken out of the equation,” Kitch says.

One such community was the Shakers, a religious group that came to the U.S. from England. Officially called the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing, they advocated for gender equality more than a century-and-a-half before American women were granted the right to vote.

“Reproduction, as these people rightly saw, was a way that women were kept subordinated and kept from achieving other things in their lives. So they would prohibit sex and raise children collectively,” Kitch says.

The community often took in orphaned and homeless children in lieu of bearing their own.

modern challengesWhile the Shakers and other experimental utopian

communities lost traction over the years, their idea about women’s freedoms and social status eventually caught on. Today, women vote, own property, have custody rights, and pursue careers. However, holding down a high-powered job usually involves sacrifices to family life.

“We do see women empowered, but when we start studying who these women are and what their lives have been like, you discover that marriage and family and high-powered careers are still extremely difficult to navigate,” Kitch says.

In addition, political debates over access to family planning services are raising fears that women in the U.S. may face increased obstacles to balancing work and family. An example of this is the Blunt Amendment, which was narrowly defeated in the U.S. Senate, but would have allowed any employer or health insurance company to deny coverage for contraception.

“We’ve been reminded again recently about how sex and reproduction work in terms of social status in the U.S.,” Kitch says. “It certainly feels right now like we’re back to the place where some men in power are willing and eager to make decisions about women’s bodies and reproductive rights, without women’s consent or participation. It’s coming out in some pretty aggressive ways.”

Written by Allie Nicodemo, Office of Knowledge Enterprise Development. This article first appeared on ASU Research Matters (http://researchmatters.asu.edu).

This coming March, the IHR will welcome its 2013 Di s t ingu i shed Lec turer, Donna Haraway, Distinguished Professor Emerita of the History of Consciousness Program at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and author of Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. In the lecture, Haraway will call upon her audience to work, play and think in terms of multispecies cosmopolitics, a new approach to recuperating the Terrapolis on which we live.

After centuries of genocides, environmental destruction and its unevenly distributed suffering, and rampant killing of species, as well as individuals, Haraway suggests that humans turn to SF - string figures, science fiction, speculative fabulation, speculative feminism - as mechanisms for envisioning the future.

Working homing pigeons provide guidance for SF thinking, especially as seen through the methodologies and theories of practicing zoo-ethno-graphers. Their invest igat ions of mult i species at tachment, detachment, inter- and intra- patience and inter- and intra- action bring together the social sciences,

humanities, arts, and biological and physical sciences and offer crucial tools and knowledge(s). However, these investigations also reveal stunning human ignorance(s) about how to inhabit the world with other animals, rather than to observe and control them.

The lecture will conclude with examples of innovative projects that study both human and nonhuman workers engaged in linked effort in differentiated ways that none of our cosmopolitan knowledge traditions now know how to articulate, but must learn to do so.

Haraway is an internationally recognized feminist theorist and philosopher of science and technology. She has published widely influential works in the fields of cultural and women’s studies, political theory, primatology, literature, and philosophy, including Primate Visions: Race and Nature in the World of Modern Science (1990), Modest_Witness @ Second_Millenium.FemaleMan © _Meets_OncoMouse™: Feminism and Technoscience (1997), and When Species Meet (2008). In September 2008, Haraway was awarded the highest honor given by the Society for Social Studies of Science, the J.D. Bernal Prize, for lifetime contributions to the field.

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2012-13 faculty seminar series: the humanities and the value of performance

This year’s Faculty Seminar Series, “The Humanities and the Value of Performance,” draws faculty, students, and community members together to discuss the concerns and methodologies that characterize and distinguish humanities research.

The ideas, practices, and metaphors of performance form a core foundation in the disciplines that comprise the humanities. From notions of mediated performance within literary, filmic, musical and dramatic discourse, to ideas about the ethics, politics and the rhetoric of performance, and the cultural, historical and religious impact and implication of performance, the humanities contributes important and compelling research for understanding one of the root endeavors that makes us human.

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Not for Sale: Burning Man and the Gift EconomyRachel Bowditch, School of Theatre and Film

September 25, 2012: Kickoff Event“‘The Hydrants are Open:’ Latinos and Broadway in the 21st CenturyDavid Román, University of Southern California

January 29, 2013: Performance and the Text

Performing Product Placement: The iPad Integration in ABC’s ‘Modern Family’Kevin Sandler, Department of English

Non-Rational Thought, Humor and the AcademyRon Broglio, Department of English

Hybrid Place: Interface, Performance, EnvironmentGrisha Coleman, School of Arts, Media and Engineering

Eating Scripts: Imperial Feasts and the Staging of Ritual in 12th Century ChinaStephen West, School of International Letters and Cultures

Translation in Performance/ Translation as PerformanceGitta Honegger, School of Theatre and Film

November 14, 2012: Performance as Emergence

October 2, 2012: Performance and the Ritual of Consumption

In the opening talk to the series, David Román examined Lin Manuel Miranda’s Tony Award-winning musical “In the Heights,” in the context of the shifting cultural politics of race and ethnicity in the 21st century. The talk offered a historical context for the success of the musical and, by extension, the growing opportunities for Latinos on Broadway.

West’s talk will look closely at how performance, food and ritual are intertwined in birthday ceremonies held for the Emperor in the early 12th century.Honegger will discuss widely neglected issues of translations for the theatre, emphasizing the need for the translator to listen to the rhetoric and silences of a text.

Coleman examines the intersections of art, environmental sciences and interface design; information and place; performance and public engagement in the practical realization of the work. Broglio’s presentation explores performances of non-rational thought or thought at the limits of the sensible, as well as the role of humor in thinking.

Bowditch’s talk examines Burning Man as a commodified ritual experience in ‘participatory culture,’ while remaining recognizable as a brand as distinct as any other. Sandler asks, ‘What is the ‘value of performance’ when it becomes market-driven rather than character-driven?’

2012-13 events at-a-glance

september

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A reading by Anya UlinichWednesday, Nov. 28, 4:30-6 p.m., West Hall Room 135

november

Being Human in a Post-human WorldTuesday, Sept. 11, 4-5:30 p.m., Social Sciences Room 109

Faculty Authors’ Reception and Book Award CeremonyTuesday, Sept. 18, 4-5:30 p.m., University Club

Latinos and Broadway in the 21st CenturyTuesday, Sept. 25, 12-1:30 p.m., Social Sciences Room 109

Seed Grant WorkshopThursday, Sept. 27, 12-1 p.m., Social Sciences Room 109

Chunky: The Making of a Social ActivistMonday, Oct. 1, 11 a.m.-3 p.m., Alumni Lounge, Memorial Union

Faculty Seminar Series - “Performance and the Ritual of Consumption”Tuesday, Oct. 2, 12-1:30 p.m., Social Sciences Room 109

Theatre and AttitudesThursday, Oct. 11, 2-3:30 p.m., Social Sciences Room 109

Faculty Seminar Series - “Performance as Emergence”Wednesday, Nov. 14, 12-1:30 p.m., Social Sciences Room 109

Nerd Talk, Geek Speak, and the Challenges of 21st Century Knowledge SilosMonday, Oct. 1, 9-10:30 a.m., Social Sciences Room 109

october

february march

R.S.V.P. for IHR eventsVisit http://ihr.asu.edu/news-events/events.

New events are added regularly, check our website for the most current information.

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Distinguished Lecturer Donna HarawayTuesday, March 5, 4:30 p.m. reception, 5:30 p.m. lecture Carson Ballroom, Old Main

Donna Haraway Reading and Discussion GroupThursday, Jan. 24, 12-1:30 p.m., Social Sciences Room 109

Faculty Seminar Series - “Performance and the Text”Tuesday, Jan. 29, 12-1:30 p.m., Social Sciences Room 109

Donna Haraway Reading and Discussion GroupThursday, Feb. 7, 12-1:30 p.m., Social Sciences Room 109

Donna Haraway Reading and Discussion GroupThursday, Feb. 21, 12-1:30 p.m., Social Sciences Room 109

Donna Haraway Reading and Discussion GroupThursday, Nov. 29, 12-1:30 p.m., Social Sciences Room 109

january

2012-13 highlighted events

theatre & attitudes: a performance study of altering implicit associations

nerd talk, geek speak, and the challenges of 21st century knowledge silosWe use specialized knowledge to communicate expertise, abstract concepts and membership in particular knowledge communities. But we also use it to share certain kinds of enthusiasm; identifying ourselves gleefully, or mournfully, as nerds, geeks, wonks, etc. What does it mean to be a nerd today, and how do we communicate across the barriers of academic disciplines, research areas and fan communities?

On October 1, celebrated author Neal Stephenson was joined by ASU professor Keith Hjelmstad of the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment, and Alice Daer, assistant professor in the Department of English, to explore and discuss the joys and challenges of

communicating, collaborating and nerding out in very different spheres. The event was co-sponsored with the IHR by the newly opened Center for Science and the Imagination, founded to leverage the talent of ASU’s faculty and encourage researchers across disciplinary and institutional boundaries to take creative approaches and create broad public engagement around scientific challenges.

a reading from “petropolis: a novel,” and “magic barrel,” a graphic novel-in-progressAnya Ulinich's debut novel, Petropolis, is a satire and love story about Sasha Goldberg, a biracial, Jewish, socially maladjusted "child of the intelligentsia" from the Siberian town of Asbestos 2. Sasha's father takes off for the U.S., leaving her to navigate adolescence under the shadow of her overbearing mother. When following her heart gets her into trouble, Sasha leaves Russia as a mail-order bride and lands in suburban Arizona. Soon, she escapes and embarks on a misadventure-filled journey across America in search of her father.

Ulinich grew up in Moscow, Russia, and immigrated to Phoenix when she was 17. She holds an MFA in visual arts from the University of California, Davis. Petropolis (penguin 2007) was translated into ten languages and named Best Book of the Year by the Christian Science Monitor and the Village Voice. Ulinich’s short stories and essays have appeared in the New York Times, Newsweek, and Zoetrope: All-Story. Ulinich lives in Brooklyn, New York with her two daughters.

Petropolis will be available for purchase at the reading, from 4:30-6 p.m. on November 29, in West Hall Room 135, and a book signing will follow. The event is sponsored by the IHR, the Center for Jewish Studies, and the Department of English. It is free and open to the public.

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Can the experience of seeing performance alter how we perceive and categorize others?

In October, the IHR held a showing of two versions of Will Eno’s “Middletown” by theatre graduate students Tyler Eglen and Chelsea Pace. The experimental performance tested and challenged audience perceptions of violence and power through gender expectations. The audience was invited to explore their responses to each staging of the scene and complete a survey on their experience.

Theatre and Attitudes is a transdisciplinary study between the Department of Psychology and the School of Theatre and Film designed to gather and analyze empirical data to investigate the role of live and mediated performance in altering implicit associations. The project was conceived by and is directed by Bonnie Eckard, professor in the School of Theatre and Film, and Arthur Glenberg, professor in the Department of Psychology, with the support of an IHR Seed Grant award.

“Current vocabulary to describe the reception of the performance suggests relative passivity: we speak of the spectator (who sees) or the audience (who hears,” Eckard says. “Neither of these terms adequately describes the kinesthetic experience of performance. In theatre, we have a robust tendency to resonate with actors’ behaviors, which in turn can shape our unconscious beliefs about social normalcies.”

Scientific and technological advancements develop at speeds to which we cannot attend. Information develops at an exponential rate. Medicine targets our brain chemistry and our longevity and, from intelligent mechanical prosthetics to xenotransplants, affects who we are. In such a world, do we change what it means to be human?

On Sept. 11 the IHR and Project Humanities co-sponsored a panel discussion that explored what it means to be human in a world that works at a scale and speed beyond human comprehension. The event featured Hava Tirosh-Samuelson, director of Jewish Studies and the Irving and Miriam Lowe Professor of Modern Judaism; Ben Hurlbut, assistant professor of biology and society; Ron Broglio, assistant professor of English; and was moderated by Daniel Gilfillan, associate professor of German and information literacy, and acting director of the IHR.

“This event speaks to the public side of what we do,” says Gilfillan. “It is an example of foundational efforts to showcase, support, share, and engage in the transdisciplinary research being conducted by humanists at ASU.”

The discussion was an extension of the 2010-11 IHR Fellows program, themed “The Humanities and Human Origins.” The program offers participating faculty members the opportunity to engage in a transdisciplinary forum to expand and develop research projects and ideas over the course of a year, as well as the opportunity to create a competitive external research grant application.

Professors Tirosh-Samuelson and Hurlbut, IHR Fellows during 2010-11 and 2012-13 respectively, will

continue exploring the topic of transhumanism with a project titled “The Transhumanist Imagination: Innovation, Secularization, and Eschatology.” The project is funded by Boston University’s “Religion and Innovation in Human Affairs,” a program supported by the John Templeton Foundation.

“The fellows program is a space for rich, interdisciplinary exchange between serious scholars working in a variety of domains,” Hurlbut writes. “It allows for forms of intellectual engagement that make for productive, if unpredictable, cross-fertilization of ideas.”

The theme for this academic year is “The Humanities and the Imagination/Imaginary.” Fellows’ research inquiries surround the human imagination as a double-edged sword now that the Enlightenment dream of generating perfectly rational human persons and utterly transparent social relations has crumbled. This year’s projects include “Whiteness on the Border, or Mapping the U.S. Racial Imaginary in Brown and White,” “Transforming Gender and Imagination: Butterfly Imagery in East Asian Culture,” “From Material to Virtual: The Power of the Imaginary,” and “Biology, Law, and Public Reason.”

being human in a post-human world

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Chunky: The Making of a Social Activist is a documentary film being completed by award-winning filmmaker and ASU Professor of Transborder Studies, Paul Espinosa. The film tells the story of Ramon "Chunky" Sanchez, a southern California musician, composer and community activist. The documentary examines how Sanchez' personal development as an activist is interwoven with the broader history of the Chicana/o community in the U.S. and the unique cultural dynamics of the U.S.-Mexican border. Influenced by the social unrest he witnessed and lived in his youth as both a child of farm working parents and as a student during the turbulent 1960s, Chunky became a central figure in the early days of the Chicano movement and continues to be instrumental in today's immigrant rights protests.

The film presentation featured a panel discussion with Espinosa, as well as Luis Alvarez of the University of California, San Diego; Estevan César Azcona of the University of Houston; and Michelle Tellez with ASU’s New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences. The event was sponsored by the IHR and the School of Transborder Studies.

chunky: the making of a social activist

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The Fellows will present their work in the annual Fellows Symposium event near the end of the spring semester.

spring 2012 highlights

Last spring the IHR launched its new Digital Humanities Initiative that recognizes the continued impact that digital resources, tools, and methodological practices are having on all facets of humanities research and instruction.

“Digital + humanities may seem to some to be an unusual combination,” says Nancy Dallett, academic associate in the School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies. “It is not only a good match, but a transformational one. It can change the questions we ask in the humanities; the way research is conducted and funded; and the way knowledge is shared and accessed.”

“Some universities have taken a leading role in defining and developing digital humanities and we have a lot to learn from their experience and the tools they have developed, says Dallett.

To kickoff the initiative, the IHR hosted a roundtable event on February 23 that explored the challenges and rewards of conducting research using digital humanities approaches, the future of digital humanities at ASU, and the future roles of the IHR in supporting faculty research with a digital humanities focus.

The event featured Nancy Dallett; Edward Finn, University of Innovation Fellow, Office of University Initiatives; Manfred Laubichler, professor, School of Life Sciences; and Mary Whelan, geospatial Data analyst, Cyberinfrastructure Services; and was moderated by IHR Acting Director Dan Gilfillan, associate professor, School of International Letters and Cultures.

new digital humanities initiative at the ihr

2012 ihr distinguished lecturer Coco FuscoImmigration has been at the center of a national debate which suggests that it is primarily a matter or protecting borders and controlling the entry of “aliens.” Other aspects of immigration are typically ignored; the question of who gets in and who we keep out generally remains overlooked. What about those would-be immigrants who try, but never make it to the United States?

Last spring, Coco Fusco, the 2012 IHR Distinguished Lecturer, presented “Migration Interrupted: Rights, Freedom, and the Controversy over U.S. Immigration Policy.” Fusco spoke on the other side of immigration--those who don’t make it to the U.S. because of interference by the U.S. government or their home governments.

Fusco is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, and the Director of Intermedia Initiatives at Parsons The New School for Design in New York. She has performed, lectured, exhibited and curated around the world since 1988.

In her performative lecture, Fusco invited us to consider how U.S. immigration policy can acknowledge our nation’s social ethos, which celebrates the individual’s capacity for self-improvement and personal transformation. She exposed the contradictions implicit in Americans’ moral embrace of the rights of human beings to choose their domiciles and seek a better life, on the one hand, and their political demands for the strict control of borders on the other. Fusco asks, “How much of U.S. policy is opportunistic and starkly political, and how much is moral and logical?”

While “anchor baby” is usually a derogatory term referring to U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants used to “anchor” the parents in the country, Fusco proudly describes herself as an “anchor baby.” Fusco’s Cuban mother came to the U.S. in 1954 and was deported shortly after Fusco was born, but Fusco’s U.S. citizenship allowed her and her mother to return to New York within a matter of weeks.

As she writes in her book English is Broken Here, her identification “as a child of diaspora, of the Cold War, of the Civil Rights movement, of the Black Caribbean, of Cuba, and of the United States” has informed her work as both a scholar and performance artist. She combines electronic media and a variety of formats, from staged multi-media performances incorporating large scale projections and closed-circuit television to live performances streamed from the Internet that invite audiences to take part in a “chat room” and help chart the course of action.

Fusco received her B.A. in Semiotics from Brown University, her M.A. in Modern Thought and Literature from Stanford University and her Ph.D. in Art and Visual Culture from Middlesex University.

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What is new about immigration today? Why is immigration such a politically charged topic? Is it primarily a matter of protecting borders and controlling the entry of “aliens?” What other aspects of immigration need to be examined?

The history of the human race is in some sense a history of movement--of ideas, resources, political and economic activities, as well as of people. Indeed, it may be that migration and movement lie at the core of what it means to be human.

Taken together, [im]migration and movement underpin global debates about nationhood, citizenship and belonging; values and social otherness; questions of social justice; individual, national and cultural identities; and the ways in which people reinvent themselves, their cultures and their worlds in new contexts.

The IHR Fellows Symposium “[Im]migration and Movement: People, Ideas and Social Worlds” held last spring featured Ruth Behar, University of Michigan, and Nancy Foner, City University of New York, as well as ASU participants, including Alexander Henn, Cecilia Menjivar and Lisa Magaña.

“Internet communication and advances in transportation over the last few decades has celebrated contemporary aspects of global mobility of people and ideas,” said IHR Fellow Sujey Vega.

“This progressive notion conceals not only historically situated examples of global movement, but also distracts from current patterns of denied mobility that attempt to restrict certain migrants access to a globalized world. This symposium opens up a space to discuss comparative moments of migration across time and how mobility impacts scholarly work throughout the globe.”

fellows investigate immigration and the movement of people and ideas

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humanities & journalismThe Internet and social media make journalism faster and less expensive than ever to create, share and consume. However, the benefits of digital journalism come with costs: serious audiences are inundated with content, audience attention is increasingly fragmented, and journalists are under increased pressure to produce shorter forms of journalism that are closely linked to the immediate needs of specific communities and consumers.

Under the demands of the 24-hour news cycle, instant global communications and increasingly specialized forms of information, journalism can easily lose contact with deeper sources of understanding of current events, including history, literature, philosophy and other fields within the humanities. How to restore, rebuild and reenergize connections between journalism and the humanities was the focus of a symposium held on February 17, 2012 at the IHR.

To explore these and other questions, the IHR assembled two panels of scholars and practitioners from across communications and the humanities, which focused on the generative side of journalism and the humanities (what gets created, by whom and how), and what’s lost to consumers of journalism because of its current estrangement from the humanities.

Food justice involves every human constituency from farm worker and farmer to urban consumer, and involves competition for access to virtually every social and natural resource on Earth. Families and clans, indigenous as well as diasporic cultures, negotiate their identities through select foods, both traditional and transitory. The technical quest to feed nine million people on this planet has focused on stretching the carrying capacity of our food producing systems rather than paying attention to the social issues related to “caring capacity.” This may be particularly true in the borderlands, which feature some of America’s most important food ports of entry at the same time that border counties’ level of poverty and food insecurity are twice the national average. Planning for a more equitable food and water future for Arizona’s rural and urban poor should be at the top of every list for social and environmental activists, for this state’s food supply is among the most vulnerable with respect to water scarcity and climate change.

Last spring, the new IHR Food Initiative presented a Jenny Norton Sustainability Lecture with Gary Nabhan. Nabhan is the Kellogg Endowed Chair in Borderlands Food and Water Security at the University of Arizona Southwest Center.

the future of food: in the desert and beyond with Gary Nabhan

2012 IHR research projects

Beyond Tolerance: Pluralism’s History in IslamYasmin Saikia, Professor of History, School of Historical, Philosophical & Religious StudiesChad Haines, Assistant Professor, School of Historical, Philosophical & Religious Studies

Integrating Personal Narrative with Scholarly Writing: Exploring Strategies in Creative Non-FictionNaomi Jackson, Associate Professor, School of DanceRoxanne Doty, Associate Professor, School of Politics and Global Studies

Local and Global Feminisms and the Politics of KnowledgeKaren Kuo, Assistant Professor, School of Social TransformationAnn Koblitz, Professor, School of Social TransformationHeather Switzer, Assistant Professor, School of Social TransformationCharles Lee, Assistant Professor, School of Social Transformation

Latin America Issues: Material Conditions, Violence, Human Rights and Cultural ProductionsCynthia Tompkins, Associate Professor, School of International Letters and CulturesDaniel Rothenberg, Professor of Practice & Executive Director, Center for Law and Global Affairs

Lived Democracy: Inventing Alternative Public Discourses in a Quintessential Postmodern CityElenore Long, Associate Professor, Department of EnglishThomas Catlaw, Associate Professor, School of Public AffairsShirley Rose, Director of Writing Programs & Professor, Department of English

Premodern Text East and WestMark Cruse, Associate Professor, School of International Letters and CulturesHeather Maring, Assistant Professor, Department of English

Theories of Immigrations: Policymaking, Transnationalism, ReturnClaudia Sadowski-Smith, Associate Professor, Department of EnglishCecilia Menjivar, Professor, School of Social and Family Dynamics

research clusters

jenny norton research cluster

Altering Implicit Stereotypes through Performance: The Role of Motor Resonance in Shaping Unconscious AssociationsBonnie Eckard, Professor, School of Theatre and FilmArthur Glenberg, Professor, Department of Psychology

Exploring Near DeathDan Sarewitz, Center Director & Professor, Consortium for Science, Policy & OutcomesLee Gutkind, Professor, Consortium for Science, Policy & Outcomes

Humanities Behind the Walls (HBW)Alan E. Gomez, Assistant Professor, School of Social TransformationH.L.T. Quan, Assistant Professor, School of Social Transformation

Research System Infrastructure and Informatics Solutions for Digital HumanitiesAyanna Thompson, Associate Dean & Professor, Department of EnglishManfred Laubichler, President’s Professor, School of Life Sciences

The Lucy’s Legacy Project--Institute of Human Origins and Donald C. Johanson Collection: Linking Public Humanities with a Public Understanding of ScienceWilliam Kimbel, Center Director & Professor, Institute of Human Origins, School of Human Evolution and Social ChangeVirginia M. Ullman, Professor, School of Human Evolution and Social ChangeNancy Dallett, Academic Associate, School of Historical, Philosophical & Religious StudiesJulie Russ, Senior Program Coordinator, Institute of Human Origins

seed grants

The Reverend Jenny Norton has provided funding to support an annual Research Cluster at the IHR. The Norton fund is designed to stimulate research on women in any field and on any topic. The Jenny Norton Research Cluster will receive an award up to $1,750 to support their activities and may include partial or full support for a visiting scholar. For additional information on eligibility, procedures, and deadlines, visit http://ihr.asu.edu/funding/research-clusters.

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Latina FeminismsLisa M. Anderson, Associate Professor, School of Social TransformationJacqueline M. Martinez, Associate Professor, School of Letters and SciencesVera Lopez, Associate Professor, School of Social Transformation

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Two faculty members in the ASU School of Arts, Media and Engineering in the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts received a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) grant totaling $50,000 in the national arts organization’s latest round of funding. The Arts in Media award funds the creation of an interactive performance and art installation by Grisha Coleman, assistant professor, and Todd Ingalls, associate research professor. The initial project development was supported by a $12,000 seed grant from the Institute for Humanities Research.

Using treadmills and new media, Coleman and Ingalls are developing an art installation, Action Station #2-The Desert, which gives people a sensory experience of an unfamiliar setting so that they can understand their impact on the environment. The grant recognizes the value in exploring new frontiers of interactive performance that move dancers and art from the stage to the parks, streets, gallery floors and life of people, according to Coleman.

“We are pleased that the NEA has recognized the transformative curriculum offered by our School of Dance and the pioneering work by our faculty in the School of Arts, Media and Engineering,” said Kwang-Wu Kim, dean and director of the Herberger Institute. “These grants acknowledge the caliber of research and innovation being undertaken by our faculty to explore new frontiers of the arts and technology.”

The NEA Art Works program supports the “creation of art that meets the highest standards of excellence, public engagement with diverse and excellent art, lifelong learning in the arts, and the strengthening of communities through the arts,” according to the NEA Chairman Rocco Landesman.

Coleman and Ingalls won the only NEA Arts in Media grant awarded in Arizona, which is one of 79 awards nationally.

Written by Susan Felt, Herberger Institute for Design & the Arts

Arts, Media & Engineering awarded NEA grant

advisory board membersDan GilfillanActing Director, IHR

Mark CruseAssociate Professor, School of International Letters and Cultures

Angel (Nestor) PinillosAssistant Professor, School of Historical. Philosophical & Religious Studies

Lisa AndersonAssociate Professor, School of Social Transformation

Bambi HagginsAssociate Professor, Department of English

Patricia HuntingtonProfessor, School of Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies

Aya MatsudaAssociate Professor, Department of English

Kent WrightAssociate Professor, School of Historical, Philosophical & Religious Studies

Marivel DanielsonAssociate Professor, School of Transborder Studies

Lynne AspnesProfessor, School of Music

Leah SaratAssistant Professor, School of Historical. Philosophical & Religious Studies

Eric OberleAssistant Professor, School of Letters and Sciences

February 18 - IHR Visiting FellowsMarch 4 - IHR Fellows (ASU faculty)

March 4 - SubventionApril 1 - Seed GrantsApril 8 - Research Clusters

funding opportunity deadlines

Biology, Law, and Public ReasonJ. Benjamin Hurlbut, Assistant Professor, School of Life Sciences

From Material to Virtual: The Power of the ImaginaryJulie Codell, Professor, School of Art

Transforming Gender and Imagination: Butterfly Imagery in East Asian CultureSookja Cho, Assistant Professor, School of International Letters and Cultures

Whiteness on the Border, or Mapping the U.S. Racial Imaginary in Brown and WhiteLee Bebout, Assistant Professor, Department of English

ihr fellows

The Institute’s vision is to advance and support vital humanities scholarship that makes a difference in the world. Through the Institute’s support of such transdisciplinary research, ASU humanities scholars of art, theatre, literature, film and media studies, history, philosophy and religion collaborate regularly with engineers, biologists, geographers, social scientists and others--applying a humanities perspective to research projects in many fields.

What will private investment make possible?Private funding will open exciting new avenues of

humanities research to the Institute. Moreover, private donations supplement the limited financial awards now available to scholars at the onset of their projects. Investments from donors like you give faculty a competitive advantage when they seek additional federal, state and foundation funding. As a result, your initial support, along with the Institute’s funding, enables scholars to multiply their research resources--and multiply their impact.

Since its inception, the Institute has supported 41 research clusters, 53 seed grants, 32 ASU fellows and 13 visiting fellows. With your help, we can significantly increase those numbers and expand the valuable research taking place at ASU.

Private investment opportunitiesYou may choose to support one of the opportunities

below, or you may prefer to rely on an ASU development officer to guide your gift to the most promising and immediate area of need within the IHR:

• IHR Annual Book Award• Research Clusters• Seed Grant Program

• Fellows Program• Annual Distinguished Lecturer• IHR Faculty Working Groups• Endowed Professorship

For more information on how to support the IHR, visit http://ihr.asu.edu/about/humanities/support, or call our office at 480-965-3000.

support humanities research at ASU

Institute for Humanities ResearchP.O. Box 876505Tempe, AZ 85287-6505

Tempe campus | Social Sciences Room 107 | 480.965.3000 | ihr@asu.edu

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