Office of the Vice Provost for Research
New Frontiers Grants in the Arts and Humanities, 2006-07
New Frontiers Grants
David Bodenhamer, The Polis Center, IUPUI
Developing Methods and Tools for Humanities GIS
This project will advance a conceptual framework for managing and visualizing complex
quantitative and temporal humanities data in a GIS environment and test solutions using the
North American Religion Atlas, a historical GIS developed by The Polis Center at IUPUI.
Annie Gilbert Coleman, History, IUPUI
Where Wilderness Meets Consumer Culture: A Western History of Professional Guides
Professional outdoor guides have known, interpreted, and commodified the American West
through their labor from the 19th to the 21st centuries. This historical research project seeks to
explain the development of process and its impact upon guides, their clients, the environment,
and American consumer culture.
Kevin Cramer, History, IUPUI
Expanding the Boundaries of Europe: The Gustavus Adolphus Association and Diasporic
Nationalism in Germany, 1832-1945
The Gustavus Adolphus Association, founded in 1832 to support German Protestants living
under Catholic rule in Europe, the so-called "Protestant Diaspora," evolved into a prominent
nationalist pressure group supporting the expansionist foreign policies in Wilhelmine and Nazi
Germany.
Margaret Dolinsky, Fine Arts, IUB
Wendy Gillespie, Early Music Institute, IUB
Paul Elliott, Music, IUB
Interfectio Puerorum: Digital Projections and the 12th Century Fleury Manuscript Massacre
IU School of Music, Early Music Institute and Hope School of Fine Arts seeks to produce the
liturgical drama "Interfectio Purerorum" or "Massacre of the Innocents." The free public
performance situates 12th century French Medieval Latin music and vocal composition in a
provocative modern architectural space with digital visual projections.
Michelle Facos, Fine Arts, IUB
Innovation on the Periphery: Danish and German Art and the Reevaluation of Art History's
Master Narrative
German and Danish artists working 1760 to 1840 anticipated innovations attributed to French
artists working decades later. Evidence suggests the influence of contact with scientists. This
project is to examine this phenomenon and offer a new paradigm for understanding of artistic
innovation in the 19th century.
Don Freund, Music, IUB
Composition of Act 3 of Romeo and Juliet, a Shakespearean Music-Drama
This project is the composition of the third act of a three act music-drama of Romeo and Juliet,
using Shakespeare's text abridged by the composer. This will complete a setting of the play to
music appropriate for the voices of young singing actors and piano.
Adelheid Gealt, Fine Arts, IUB
Robert Shakespeare, Theatre & Drama, IUB
Art Museum Light Totem
Lighting designer Rob Shakespeare re-imagines the façade of the Art Museum building in this
collaborative project celebrating the 25th anniversary of the I.M. Pei-designed campus landmark
in the fall of 2007. Arrayed along a 70-foot-tall, searchlight-topped tower, LEDs will wash the
building in an ever-changing rainbow of light.
Elizabeth Goering, Communication Studies, IUPUI
And Justice for All?: A Themantic Analysis of Representations of Legal Discourse on Popular
Television Programs in the United States and Germany
The project, using thematic content analytical methods, provides a critical analysis of
representations of legal discourse in courtroom television programming in the United States and
Germany. The analysis focuses specifically on assumptions related to justice, the rules typifying
courtroom interaction, and the roles characterizing legal discourse presented in these programs.
Christiane Gruber, Fine Arts, IUB
Judy Stubbs, Art Museum, IUB
From Pen to Paper: The Islamic Manuscript Tradition
The exhibition "From Pen to Paper" will present approximately fifty objects belonging to a
number of Islamic traditions of producing papers, manuscripts, and paintings from the ninth
century to today. The exhibition will yield a scholarly book and a permanent website of the
Islamic works on paper held in the Lilly Library and the Indiana University Art Museum.
David Hoegberg, English, IUPUI
J.M. Coetzee and the Critics
The project will be the first-ever book-length study of the criticism about South African author
J.M. Coetzee. It will cover a crucial period in South African history (1974 to the present) with
the goal of clarifying the relations between literature, literary criticism, and political and social
struggle.
Brian Jones, Fine Arts, IU Southeast
Tradition and Innovation in Studio Art: A Hybrid
This project embraces centuries old tradition: graphite on paper, oil on canvas, etchings printed
by hand. Multiple overlaps between traditional studio practice and digital technology have
infinitely expanded possibilities in all studio media. Within those overlaps is a hybrid I must
explore for innovative developments in my creative work.
Elisabeth Lloyd, History & Philosophy of Science, IUB
Philosophical Analysis of Climate Change Models
This project is to examine the confirmation and testing of climate change models from a
philosophical perspective in the two-summer project. The project will investigate an apparent
philosophical divide between the skeptical scientists and the modelers in their views scientific
confirmations, which seems to drive their differing conclusions regarding global warming.
Marissa Moorman, History, IUB
Tuning in to Nation: Radio Technolgy and Politics in Angola, 1961-2002
This proposal describes research for a new book project: a study of radio, nation and the Cold
War in Angola. The research takes radio, a cultural technology, and investigates its use in the
anti-colonial politics and postcolonial nation-building in the context of regional and global geopolitics.
Ron Osgood, Telecommunications, IUB
My Vietnam Your Iraq"" The creation of a hi-definition television documentary
This proposal requests support for the creative activities associated with the production of a hidefinition television documentary that will tell the stories of Vietnam veterans whose children
have served in Iraq. This documentary will look at the pride, challenges, fears and possible
bitterness that families are faced with when a child is active in an unpopular war.
Elizabeth Shea, Kinesiology, IUB
Jeffrey Hass, Music, IUB
Robert Shakespeare, Theatre & Drama, IUB
Gathering the Light: An Interactive Work for Dance, Video Projection and Computer Music
The investigators seek to create a 15-20 minute choreographic work which will break new artistic
and technological bounds through interactivity of video tracking and sensor data from the
dancers. This interactivity will feature 3D video projection synchronized and triggered by
dancers and sound and music equally triggered by the dancer’s movements and the interaction
with projection. Real-time manipulation of the projected video images of the dancers will be a
significant component of the work.
Ruth Stone, Folklore & Ethnomusicology, IUB
Structuring Space in Kpelle Musical Performance: Post-Conflict Liberia
This project examines spatial structuring of Kpelle musical performances in post-conflict Liberia,
West Africa. Digital video recordings will be annotated using an experimental computer
interface. The ethnographic research will result in both a published article, and the interface
research will yield a grant proposal to an outside agency for further development.
Carmen Tellez, Music, IUB
Marianne Kielian-Gilbert, Music, IUB
Unicamente la Verdad/Only the Truth: A Workshop and Premiere of a New Video-Opera by
Gabriela Ortiz (Spring 2008)
Workshop reading and premiere of internationally recognized composer Gabriela Oritz’s videoopera “Unicamente la Verdad,” with the IU contemporary Vocal Ensemble. Professors Tellez
and Kielian-Gilbert will collaborate with the composer in the final creative stages of the work.
This opera constructs and deconstructs representations of reality through mass media,
transforming them into resources for artistic expression.
Richard Weiner, History, IPFW
Legends of Wealth and Poverty: A Cultural History of the Mexican Economy
Alexander von Humboldt's independence-era “Political Essay” made Mexico’s riches legendary.
Over the course of the 19th century the legend’s fame increased, but 20th century critics
disagreed with their predecessors’ assessments and concluded Mexico was poor. This study--the
first in-depth investigation of Mexico’s legendary wealth—will trace this lively debate from
independence to the mid 20th century (1800-1950).
New Perspectives Grants
Colin Allen, Cognitive Science, IUB
Karola Stotz, Cognitive Science, IUB
Reconciling Nature and Nurture in Behavior and Cognition Research
A symposium with several of the most influential and innovative people of the field will explore
interdisciplinary frontiers in the Nature-Nurture controversy that promise new insights into the
human condition. The speakers will reflect on the empirical, semantic, conceptual, and
metaphysical issues that will help to resolve the unhealthy dichotomy.
David Bodenhamer, The Polis Center, IUPUI
Humanities GIS: A Foundational Workshop
This workshop will bring together experts in Historical GIS, religion in the Atlantic World,
cultural mapping, and GISci to explore areas of convergence and to provide a conceptual
framework and research agenda for Humanities GIS.
Fritz Breithaupt, Germanic Studies, IUB
Claudia Breger, Germanic Studies, IUB
Narrative Identification
This international collaboration of humanities scholars seeks to investigate the ways narrative
fiction and identification imply each other and to connect approaches from narratology, cognitive
science, and psychoanalysis. Specifically, we are interested in how narrative texts initiate,
provoke, discourage, channel, block, control, and manage forms of identification.
Deborah Cohn, American Studies, IUB
Matthew Guterl, American Studies, IUB
Weekend-long workshop on "Globalizing American Studies"
This project is a workshop that will address the implications of the recent movement in American
Studies towards a transnational approach. This movement reflects the questioning of nationalism
as a basis for defining the field and the growing recognition of international forces and agents in
shaping U.S. culture and society.
Michael Dodson, History, IUB
R. Kevin Jaques, Religious Studies, IUB
Traditional Scholarship and Asian National Modernity
This conference will bring together ten scholars of Asian history, religion and nationalism, along
with experts from IU, to explore, in comparative perspective, the negotiation and reinterpretation of Western knowledge and modernity by ‘traditional’ Asian elites, thus deepening
our current understanding of the genealogy of ‘the nation’ in Asia.
Mary Favret, English, IUB
Jonathan Elmer, English, IUB
Romantic Atlantics
In a series of symposia, we aim to spark debate about and research in Transatlantic Studies,
within the English Dept. and other units, in an attempt to move beyond the framework of the
nation and engage some of the most advanced work in the discipline.
Susan Gubar, English, IUB
Mary Favret, English, IUB
Deidre Lynch, English, IUB
The Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century British Women Writers Conference
In March, 2008, an energetic group of graduate students and faculty will host a British Women
Writers Conference on the topic of “Female Marginalia: Annotating Technologies of Empire.”
In addition to attracting multi-disciplinary scholars around the country to Bloomington, the
conference will advance the professionalization of IU graduate students.
Sara Hook, Informatics, IUPUI
Susan Tennant, Informatics, IUPUI
John Brian Ludwick, Informatics, IUPUI
From Tradition to Innovation: A New Media Lecture Series
This project is to sponsor a series of lectures by distinguished artists and scholars who have
previously mastered traditional techniques of creation and now embrace digital ones. The
lectures will serve an audience of Informatics, IUPUI and the metropolitan community of
Indianapolis. The intended outcome of the lectures will be to create an awareness of the ripple
effect New Media has had in the propagation from the traditional to the innovative.
Bill Johnston, Polish Studies Center, IUB
Justyna Beinek, Slavic Languages & Cultures, IUB
Maria Bucur, REEI, IUB
Fritz Breithaupt, Germanic Studies, IUB
Polish-German Post/Memory: Aesthetics, Ethics, Politics
After the fall of the communist government in Poland and the Berlin Wall in Germany,
historians, writers, and memoirists have found new perspectives for the examination of post-war
Polish-German experience. This interdisciplinary conference addresses the public discussion of
this history by defining its contours over the course of the postwar period.
Eileen Julien, Comparative Literature, IUB
Literature and the Arts in Senegal: Birago Diop and Leopold Sedar Senghor, Then and Now
With the support of African Studies, International Programs and other units, the Project on
African Expressive Traditions will host writers, filmmakers and scholars for an international
symposium, March 29-31, 2007, on Senegalese literary and social history, the esthetic legacies of
Birago Diop and Léopold Sédar Senghor, and their impact on Senegalese culture and society
today.
Randy Long, Fine Arts, IUB
Nicole Jacquard, Fine Arts, IUB
Field of Vision Symposium
“Field of Vision Symposium” will reflect the diverse practice and heightened creativity present in
metalsmithing today by individuals who explore diverse interpretations of technologies, concept,
process, and materials. The symposium will include a workshop, international guest lecturers,
two exhibitions, web presence and an extensive color catalogue to document the event.
Visiting Visionary Scholars Grants
Terri Bourus, English, IU Kokomo
The Blackfriars Stage Company of the American Shakespeare Center Residency
IU Kokomo looks forward to building on their 2005 Shakespeare residency experience. The
Blackfriars Stage Tour is a world-class Shakespearean troupe, comprised of an 11-15 member
company that travels to several universities in the United States each year with their unique
educational program. This program would be of immense educational and cultural value to
Indiana University Kokomo and to the local community as well.
Eileen Julien, Comparative Literature, IUB
Jonathan Michaelsen, Theatre & Drama, IUB
Femi Osofisan, Nigerian Dramatist in Residence, IUB, Spring 2008
The Project on African Expressive Traditions and the IU Theatre Department propose to sponsor
a visit by one of Africa’s most prolific and honored living playwrights, Femi Osofisan, who has
agreed to spend part of spring semester 2008 as an artist in residence on the IUB campus.
Malcolm Smith, Art History, IUB
Karen Hanson, Philosophy, IUB
Erik Stolterman, Informatics, IUB
Eli Blevis, Informatics, IUB
Infinite Speed, Zero Errors, & Total Memory: Creativity & Desire in the Digital Age
Anton Reijnders, internationally-acclaimed Dutch ceramic artist/educator/engineer, and Smith
will research the philosophical implications of tool digitalization upon the creative process in
collaboration with IUB’s Philosophy and Informatics Departments. This investigation will
inform their integration of CAD/CAM and RP&M technology into traditional ceramic techniques
to produce a body of artworks.