Institute for Humanities Research announces 2022 seed, strategy grant recipients

The Institute for Humanities Research at Arizona State University has announced the seed grant and cross-disciplinary seed grant recipients for 2022. Twenty ASU faculty members received a total of $160,210 in seed grant awards.

The institute also awarded a strategy grant for $18,000 to William Hedberg, an associate professor of Japanese in the School of International Letters and Cultures.

The IHR Seed Grant is designed to provide support for humanities projects that advance the institute's mission of boosting the impact of humanities scholarship both within and outside of the academy. The purpose of the program is to enable scholars to develop their research reputation in their field through increased publications, which enables them to be competitive for national grants and major fellowships. The grant also helps enhance the impact of their research by enabling them to disseminate and translate their work to a broader public.

The IHR Cross-Disciplinary Seed Grant is designed to provide support for projects that advance the institute's mission of increasing the impact of humanities scholarship across divisions and/or colleges at ASU. The grant requires two or more faculty principal investigators: one from within a humanities unit and one from another division or college. Applicants should include a cross-disciplinary methodology that includes the humanities.

“We are thrilled to award the IHR seed and strategy grants to 21 members of faculty at ASU,” said Director of the Institute for Humanities Research and Professor of English Nicole Anderson. “Through the dissemination and translation of research to a larger public, these grants will help scholars build a track record, allowing them to apply for other types of external grants to fund their important work.”

The 2022 IHR Seed Grant recipients are:

• Aggie Yellow Horse and Karen Leong, School of Social Transformation, for their project "Revival of Yellow Peril: Investigating the Syndemic of Anti-Asian Racism and Public Health Threat for Asian American Health."

• Alejandro Acierto, School of Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies, for his project "Developing a Foundation for the Archive of Constraint."

• Ileana Orlich, School of International Letters and Cultures, for her project "Redefining Disembodiment: The Body of Woman as Script and Function in the Ukrainian War."

• Ligia Bezerra, School of International Letters and Cultures, for her project "Defending Democracy: 21st Century Brazilian Songs of Protest."

• Malay Firoz, School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, for his project "The Resilience Paradox: Horizons of Humanitarian Ethics in the Syrian Crisis."

• Marcello Di Bello, School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies, for his project "Probability on Trial: Making Sense of Arguments and Stories."

• Marta Tecedor Cabrero, School of International Letters and Cultures, for her project "Deforeignizing the Spanish language curriculum: US-Spanish in lower-level classrooms”

• Robert Tuck, School of International Letters and Cultures, for his project "The Fiction of the Ninja: How Literature Became History in 20th Century Pop Culture."

• Sookja Cho, School of International Letters and Cultures, for her project "Toward Immortality: The Hero Ch'oe Ch'iwŏn and a Sillan Odyssey in a Sinocentric World."

The 2022 IHR Cross-Disciplinary Seed Grant recipients are:

• Alexandrina Agloro, School for the Future of Innovation in Society, and Rudy Guevarra Jr., School of Social Transformation, for their project "The Latinx Pacific Archive: Developing a Video Game about Latinx."

• Christy Spackman, School for the Future of Innovation in Society, and Kevin McHugh, School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning, for their project "Mapping Smell's Shadows."

• Indulata Prasad, School of Social Transformation, and Nancy Godoy, ASU Library,  for their project "Creating an Archive of the 1970s Bodhgaya Land Movement: An Audio-visual Documentation by Bhuiyan Dalit Youth of Rural Bihar"

• Rachel Bowditch, School of Music, Dance and Theatre, and Steven Beschloss, College of Global Futures, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, for their project "Performing the Anthropocene."

• Tracy Perkins, School of Social Transformation, and Alexander Soto, ASU Library, for their project "Environmental Justice Archiving for the Ward Valley Campaign and Beyond."

2022 IHR Research Strategy Grant

The IHR Research Strategy Grant was awarded to William Hedberg, a scholar of early modern Japan (circa 1600–1900) with a special interest in Japan’s literary and cultural connections to China and East Asia, for his current book project “Civilization Remapped: Travel, Cartography, and the Invention of East Asia.” The book builds on his earlier work on transnational Japanese literary studies, but extends focus to a wider array of fiction, drama, maps, geographical treatises and illustrated gazetteers.

“We are extremely pleased to work with Professor William Hedberg,” Anderson said. “This grant will help advance his research focus, and we congratulate him and look forward to our collaboration over the next year!”

The criteria for the strategy grant involves applying for two external grants, including one National Endowment for the Humanities competitive grant, within the year of the application. Further, the grant is designed to facilitate external grant writing and publication outputs that will boost research track record, to enable increased citations, reputation and further external grants. 

To learn more about the Institute for Humanities Research and the grant programs, visit https://ihr.asu.edu/.