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Office of the Vice Provost for Research
New Frontiers in the Arts and Humanities, 2005-06
New Frontiers Grants
Colin Allen, Cognitive Science, IUB
Automatic Metacontent Management for Dynamic Reference Works
This project will develop automated methods for identifying meaningful relationships
among the entries in a widely used dynamic reference work in the humanities. The
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (http://plato.stanford.edu/) is continually updated
on a voluntary basis by more than 1,000 academic philosophers, and its entries are
downloaded well over half a million times weekly. A framework for digitally
representing the major concepts in the Encyclopedia will be implemented, immediately
supporting enhanced functionality for readers, authors, and editors, such as improved
cross-referencing and systematic presentation of metadata relationships among the
entries. The framework to be developed will be capable of supporting a variety of
technological enhancements of scholarly and public interest.
Tony Ardizzone, English, IUB
The Calling of Saint Matthew: Stories of Rome (a collection of short stories)
"The Calling of Saint Matthew" is an interconnected collection of short stories that
presents ten churches, synagogues, and temples in Rome as thematic springboards for
individual stories of history, identity, and personal conscience. The book's central
organizing principle involves foregrounding a key element of physical setting (i.e., a
work of art present in the church or synagogue) and allowing aspects of that work to
mirror or contrast and conflict with the ongoing lives of various fictional characters, both
North American and native Italian, who visit or frequent the church or synagogue.
Richard Baumann, Folklore & Ethnomusicology, IUB
Representation of Dialect on Early Commercial Sound Recordings
This project is a pilot effort in the content analysis of a large collection of early sound
recordings. It looks in particular at a genre of “dialect skits” recorded as early as the
1890s, for insight into the introduction of a purely aural form to an audio-visualizing
audience. Special areas of interest will be the development of dialect skits as
technological and commercial products, dialect mimicry as oral performance and as aural
stereotype, and recorded speech as the object of perception. The goal of the project is to
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fill out accounts of early phonographic history with information available only through
close analysis of recorded content by considering the recorded dialogues on various
levels, using various analytical techniques.
Timothy Brothers, Geography, IUPUI
Jeffrey Wilson, Geography, IUPUI
Owen Dwyer, Geography, IUPUI
Space and Place: Integrating Satellite Imagery and Field Experience to Create a New
Atlas of the Caribbean
Advances in space-borne imagery have opened a new frontier in representation of the
Earth. Satellites can now show people on city streets and the shapes of individual trees in
forest canopies. The proposed project will integrate such novel satellite imagery with
extensive field work to provide a new kind of atlas for the Caribbean, in which the
diversity of the region can be fully appreciated for the first time.
Kari Gade, Germanic Studies, IUB
Skaldic poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages: A New Edition
Funding will employ a research associate for the electronic version of the IU-based part
of the edition. This is the world's largest international project in Scandinavian Studies,
based at the University of Sydney, Australia; the University of Iceland; the University of
Kiel, Germany; the University of Newcastle Upon Tyne; and IU Bloomington. The
edition is the culmination of 10 years of collaborative work by five general editors and 40
contributing editors, to be published by Brepols, Belgium, as a staggered series of nine
volumes (2006-11).
Ch. Didier Gondola, History, IUPUI
Tropical Cowboys: The Young "Bills" of Colonial Kinshasa and the Politics of
Masculinity
This project deals with youth violence, masculinity, and Hollywood cowboy movies in
colonial Congo. In the 1950s, several youth gangs emerged in Kinshasa, Congo. They
styled themselves "bills," as in Buffalo Bill, their eponymous hero, and staged their
fascination with the American cowboy movie genre in the streets of Kinshasa's
townships. In doing so, they ushered new cultural patterns and contributed to the
changing political climate that presided over Congo's decolonization process in the late
1950s.
Jeffrey Gould, History, IUB
Morazan Revisited: A Reinterpretation of the Central American Civil Wars
This project, through the study of grassroots organizations in the department of Morazan
in El Salvador, seeks to offer a reinterpretation of the Central American Civil Wars,
emphasizing the cultural encounter between peasants and outsiders. It will result in a
documentary film, scholarly articles, and a book.
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Kelly Hayes, Religious Studies, IUPUI
Magic and Spirits on the Urban Periphery: Macumba in Rio de Janeiro
The project documents on video the process of spirit possession and healing in Rio de
Janeiro, Brazil. The project will use video in two ways: as the primary research tool for
data collection and analysis, and as the format for presenting the results of this research at
conferences, colloquia and professional meetings.
J. Arthur Liou, Fine Arts, IUB
Plasma: Blood Work Series
"Blood Work" is a series of video installations about my daughter Vivian's leukemia.
The imagery depicts hundreds and thousands of cell-like creatures that are rendered
digitally from my daughter's body, expressing the horror she faces from both the disease
and the treatment. I plan to expand the existing work and create a film titled "Plasma" to
bridge the performance between gallery exhibits and film screenings. The series will be
shown in Asian Contemporary Art Week in New York City (2006-07), Poissant Gallery
in Houston (2006, 2008), and promoted to film and video art venues internationally.
John McDowell, Folklore & Ethnomusicology, IUB
Phillip Bantin, Folklore & Ethnomusicology, IUB
Inta Carpenter, Folklore & Ethnomusicology, IUB
Pioneer Village Virtual Outdoor Museum and Warren E. Roberts Website
This project is to create a virtual outdoor museum and website from the extensive
ethnographic materials gathered in the 1970s and 1980s by Professor Warren E. Roberts
and his students in south-central Indiana. The virtual museum and associated website will
feature traditional architecture and the old-time traditional way of life once characteristic
of south-central Indiana. Our goal is to create a website that will be useful to researchers
and educators, and to make the entire Roberts Collection accessible for on-site research in
the Folklore Archives, an integral part of the IU Archives.
William Royall Newman, History and Philosophy of Science, IUB
Research on Newton's Alchemy
Isaac Newton is known above all as a mathematical physicist, indeed as the founder of
modern physics. At the same time as he was composing his famous foundational work of
physics, the "Principia", Newton was busily carrying out alchemical experiments in his
laboratory. My proposal is to carry out historical research in order to ascertain what
Newton was up to and how it fit with his science as a whole. This project is part of the
digital "Chymistry of Isaac Newton" project, and will also lead to a book.
John Nieto-Phillips, Latino Studies, IUB
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Latinos on the Digital Frontier: Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans in Print Media,
1890s-1940s
The digitization of historical text is opening vast frontiers for scholarly inquiry. Thanks
to new library and Internet technologies available at Indiana University, it is now possible
for historians to scan thousands of issues of historical newspapers for clues about the
past. This project will examine decades of The New York Times, Washington Post,
Chicago Tribune, and Los Angeles Times to understand how these newspapers reported
on Mexican and Puerto Rican migration to the United States from the 1890s through the
1940s. Among other things, this project will help us gauge how English-reading
audiences came to “know” Latino immigrants by way of print media.
Eric Nordgulen (with Andrew Hsu), Fine Arts, IUPUI
Public Art as Renewable Energy
The team will research and build a public sculpture which will utilize solar panels and a
hydrogen fuel cell as materials for art. They will collaborate with the School of
Engineering to build this artwork in order to promote issues relating to our energy
reserves, environmental concerns, and the future of energy technology. This sculpture
will be exhibited and serve as a prototype for a large scale art/energy system to be
installed at the Boulevard Plaza Project, a cultural community center to be developed in
Indianapolis.
George Pinney, Theatre and Drama, IUB
Robert Bovard, Theatre and Drama, IUB
Dance-scape: a symbiotic approach to set design and choreography
Pushing the boundaries of the symbiotic relationship between set design and
choreography, the study will focus on the development of an organic approach to set
design using human singers as the structural foundation. To enhance the design of the set
and dancers, wireless lighting technology will be investigated. Costumes and set pieces
will be wired for lighting effects with the lights being triggered from the lighting control
board via wireless connections. The result will be a contemporary dance piece to be
performed in the Faculty Contemporary Dance Concert in January 2007.
Laura Scheiber, Anthropology, IUB
Crafting Identities on the Western Frontier
Historic cultures on the western frontier of North America reinvented and redefined their
identities in the context of the westward expansion of Euro Americans. By examining
the archaeological and ethno-historical evidence of changes in material technologies at
Shoshone campsites in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem of northwestern Wyoming,
we can see the complexities of culture contact and change that challenge the assumption
of a unidirectional acculturation. For this project, I examine how people responded
strategically to rapidly changing contexts, taking advantage of new items for their
material culture repertory while maintaining continuity with past traditions.
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David Shorter, Folklore & Ethnomusicology, IUB
Digitizing Native Culture: Crossing the Digital Divide with an Indigenous Community
This project is to develop digital models that represent tribal histories and cultures, to
archive filmed rituals and assist social scientists in the field. The project’s websites
bridge three converging interests: providing world wide educational access to
ethnographic data; helping scholars collaborate more effectively; and providing
indigenous communities a new resource for linguistic and cultural revitalization.
Paul Sokol, Cyclotron, IUB
Nicole Jacquard, Fine Arts, IUB
Stretching Boundaries: Nuclear Physics & Fine Arts
This project is to create a collaboration between the Nuclear Physics and Fine Arts
Department in order to produce a series of artworks. Specifically, we will utilize Nicole's
aesthetic design and the Cyclotron staff’s technical expertise in order to create a series of
works utilizing CAD/CAM and the new Rapid Prototyping machinery at the Cyclotron.
Judith Stubbs, Art Museum, IUB
In the Chinese Tradition: Contemporary Painting from the Guilin Painting Academy
This fall, the IU Art Museum will be the exclusive venue for Conspiring with Tradition:
Contemporary Painting from the Guilin Chinese Painting Academy, the first U.S.
exhibition of new work by 13 masters from China’s Guilin Province. The artists’
explorations have taken them in many directions -- while all are deeply immersed in
traditional Chinese painting techniques, each artist's unique style is the result of
experiments in idioms, themes, and materials drawn from Chinese folk, primitive, and
Western art sources. The exhibit will be curated by Judy Stubbs and co-curated by
Herman Mast.
Marilyn Whitesell, Arts & Letters, IU Southeast
Large Scale Digital Prints
The project will manipulate digital photographs of natural and manmade objects
to create large-scale digital prints to investigate the issue of scale on visual impact
and how images as signs in juxtaposition with other images develop new and
unexpected meanings.
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New Perspectives Grants
Colin Allen, History & Philosophy of Science, IUB
Future Directions in the History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Biology
The International Society for the History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Biology is
sponsoring a graduate student workshop, July 26-30, 2006, at Indiana University
Bloomington. The purpose of this workshop is to encourage new areas of emerging
interest in biology studies and to identify future challenges and opportunities for public
engagement. Themes range from the nature of cross-disciplinary research to the practical
applications of ethical and sociological analyses of biomedical research for public
policy.
John Bean, Education, IUB
Identifying the Acoustical Properties Related to Modifications of the Standard
Dimensions of the Top Plates of Violins
The main objective of the study is to demonstrate for students and the public how the
tone of a violin is affected by modifications to the top plate. We will build a violin for
this project. While this violin will represent a constant, we will carve a series of violin
tops, each altered in a specific way, and will identify how the violin's tone is affected by
the differing characteristics of the tops.
John Bodnar, Center for the Study of History & Memory, IUB
David Ransel, Center for the Study of History & Memory, IUB
Remembering World War II in America, Europe, and Russia: A Workshop
A workshop will be held to explore the meanings and memories of WWII in an
international context.
Clark Butler (with 10 others), Philosophy, IPFW
Moral Education, the United Nations and Human Rights
This project is a conference and week-long workshop on moral education as human rights
education in the schools, at home, and in adult education. Defenders of United Nations
children's rights will face off with home schooling advocates. Speakers include human
rights researchers from Kosovo, the Minister for the Promotion of Human Rights in
Burkina Faso (West Africa), plus scholars from Columbia and Canada as well as the
United States. A workshop, scheduled at the request of the Provisional Government of
Kosovo to help implement human rights on the ground in that country, will include
specialized faculty from the Fort Wayne Campus. A book based on the conference is
planned.
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Stuart Davis, Linguistics, IUB
Symposium in Phonology
A symposium in phonology bringing together leading figures in the field is being
organized from June 19-29, 2006, consisting of three parts. The first carries the theme of
current perspectives in phonology; the second part comprises a phonology workshop; and
the third part focuses on the phonology of Germanic languages.
J. Albert Harrill, Religious Studies, IUB
Edward Watts, History, IUB
Bridget Balint, Classical Studies, IUB
The End of Everything: Catastrophe and Community in the Ancient Mediterranean and
Near Eastern Worlds
The Ancient Studies Program proposes a small conference exploring catastrophic
experience in the ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern worlds. We will examine how
discourse about death, the end of the world, and the ultimate destiny of humankind
shaped the social forces of ancient society and, by extension, perhaps our own.
Eva Mendieta-Lombardo, Modern Languages & English, IU Northwest
Robin Hass Birky, Modern Languages & English, IU Northwest
Arts and Urban Renewal: International Perspectives Conference
The purpose of the "Arts and Urban Renewal: International Perspectives" Conference is
to explore the role arts and culture play in urban renewal by examining various
approaches and their debatable effects on the quality of life in the communities they
influence.
Richard Miller, Religious Studies and The Poynter Center, IUB
Privacy in Public: Ethics, Privacy and the Technology of Public Surveillance
Recently, ethicists have begun to rethink conventional views of privacy in light of new
developments in technology. The issue is whether there is a sphere - one that extends
beyond matters of governmental surveillance - that should be protected. Developments
in new surveillance technologies invite us to revisit the public-private distinction. This
project is a series of four seminars to bring in leading scholars to address various ethical
aspects of technology and privacy. Each seminar will begin with a public address
followed by commentaries by campus scholars in the particular area of relevance.
Jean Robertson, Fine Arts, IUPUI
Jennifer Lee, Fine Arts, IUPUI
Regarding Art History in Global Perspectives
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This project is devoted to current issues and new scholarship in non-Western art history
during the Midwest Art History Society conference held in Indianapolis March 28-31,
2007. The conference will be organized by the art history faculty at Herron School of Art
and Design, IUPUI, in collaboration with the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and
Western Art and the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Project activities will include a
roundtable, six conference sessions, and a keynote performance by James Luna, the
distinguished Native American performance and installation artist.
Benjamin Robinson, Germanic Studies, IUB
Michel Chaouli, Germanic Studies, IUB
Living Weimar: Between System and Self (Workshop, 22-23 Sept. 2006)
"Living Weimar" explores, on the salient example of the Weimar Republic, the role of
personal ethos in the technological age. Is there a difference between left and right norms
of conduct, especially in dangerous crises? Are there political consequences to how such
norms are privatized or publicized in a mass society? Visiting Distinguished Professors
Helmut Lethen (Rostock), John Abromeit (Chicago), Brigid Doherty (Princeton), Andrew
Hewitt (UCLA), Julia Roos (History, IU), William Scheuerman (Political Science, IU) as
well as faculty and graduate students from Germanic Studies will participate in this
public workshop.
Phillip Stafford, Indiana Institute of Disability and Community, IUB
Inta Carpenter, Folklore & Ethnomusicology, IUB
Martin Siegel, Informatics, IUB
Erik Stolterman, Informatics, IUB
Putting Memory in its Place
Across the planet, destructive natural and political forces lead to the erasure of memories
associated with places. These processes of forgetting and disappearance must be resisted
for, as Wendell Berry notes, "a community, if it is to last, must exert a kind of centripetal
force, holding local soil and local memory in place". Putting Memory in Place is an
interdisciplinary effort to explore the relationship between memory and place with a
particular focus on the implications for peoples separated by events such as Katrina, and
a goal of rebuilding lost places in memory through the use of new digital technologies. A
New Perspectives conference will bring together both national and local scholars and
citizens to address this topic.
Patricia Steele University Libraries, IUB
David Lewis, University Libraries, IUPUI
New Models of Scholarly Communication in the Humanities: Defining the IU
Perspective
The project proposes engaging humanities-based faculty from the Bloomington and
Indianapolis campuses in a moderated exploration of scholarly communications issues.
The event will take place in Bloomington with a follow-up session for librarians in
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Indianapolis. At the conclusion, librarians will have a better understanding of faculty
needs and expectations in this area and will offer recommendations for actions.
Gregory Waller, Communication & Culture, IUB
Joan Hawkins, Communication & Culture, IUB
Barbara Klinger, Communication & Culture, IUB
Film Indiana
"Film Indiana" is the first of what is planned to be an annual three-day conference
that showcases the film and cinema-related holdings in IUB archives. This multimedia and multi-disciplinary event will focus on short films and will include
keynote lectures, workshops, research presentations, and a series of public film
screenings.
Suzanna Walters, Gender Studies, IUB
Mary Gray, Communication & Culture, IUB
Maria Bucur, History, IUB
Heidi Ross, Education, IUB
Jean Robinson, Political Science, IUB
Homeland Insecurities: Sexuality, Citizenship, and Empire: An interdisciplinary,
international conference
An international conference to be held in April of 2007 to engage scholars and activists to
examine the intersections of sexuality, civic engagement, and global contexts in coming
to terms with current debates and understandings of citizenship from public belonging to
privacy rights and their international implications in a post-September 11th world.
Caleb Weintraub, Fine Arts, IUB
The Gilded Painter
The Gilded Painter combines the tradition of painting with the excitement of the
competitive event. In recognition of the popularity of televised competitions, the Gilded
Painter will be produced as a live event, pitting a master artist against a challenger. A
subject will be revealed and the competitors and a panel of experts will choose either the
master or challenger to carry the title: The Gilded Painter.
Visiting Visionary Scholars Grants
Raymond DeMallie, Anthropology, IUB
Visit of Emmanuel Desvaux
Emmanuel Desveaux, an eminent French anthropologist, is acknowledged for his
innovative descriptive and theoretical contributions to American Indian anthropology.
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Unfortunately, his work is not yet well known outside of France. This project will bring
him and one of his students to Bloomington for a month-long visit.
Elizabeth Shea, HPER/Dance, IUB
Gwendolyn Hamm, HPER/Dance, IUB
Laura Poole, HPER/Dance, IUB
Motion Capture Technology and Modern Dance Choreography: Bringing Indiana
University to the Forefront of Creativity in the Performing & Digital Arts
This project will sponsor an internationally visible choreographer working in the field of
dance technology for a residency at Indiana University. Ben Munisteri and his company
will share their expertise with faculty and students and will create a new work utilizing
Motion Capture technology. The work will be performed in New York City and abroad.
Gregory Steel, David Russick, Ed Thornberg, Ann Fritz, Randal Clark, Debra
Clem, Elizabeth Stirratt, art gallery directors, seven IU campuses
The Contemporary Arts Visitors Program
This idea was first conceived at the initial meeting of the IUEX (Indiana University
Exhibitions), a group made up of all the gallery directors from all of the Indiana
University campuses. Its purpose is to share resources and leverage knowledge to better
serve the entire community of IU students, faculty and staff throughout the state. This
grant would allow us to invite one contemporary artist of some cultural significance to
visit and exhibit work on all of the Indiana University campuses over the course of a
year. Such an opportunity would be especially significant for the culturally marginalized
areas outside of the major city centers.