Research Development

Piloted in AY 2021-22 with six faculty members from history, communication and rhetorical studies, geography, and information science, this writing circle is primarily designed to support faculty planning to submit proposals for the NEH Fellowship or Summer Stipend programs. Depending on the number of participants, faculty meet weekly or bi-weekly from February to April to discuss works in progress with a faculty facilitator. Last year's sign-up form, which contains more information, is available online. Previous participants credit the circle with prompting "major breakthroughs," pushing past writing impasses, making timely progress towards a second project need for P&T file, as well as polishing and submitting reserach proposals to NEH.

Piloted in Summer 2022 with five faculty members, Give and Get Feedback Sessions invite faculty to set and share a reasonable, achievable goal over the summer to reach a full draft of a piece of writing to workshop with peers. A piece of writing could be (but is not limited to) a chapter or manuscript excerpt, journal article, grant proposal, book proposal of no more than 20 – 25 pgs (or shorter). In summer 2023, registration will allow for multiple groups that may select different formats, e.g. a two-day session or weekly/bi-weekly meetings over the summer.

Each fall, The College of Arts and Sciences and the Syracuse University Humanities Center invite proposals for Humanities Book Manuscript Workshop grants. Typically, grants are awarded in two categories--pre-tenure assistant professors and tenured associate professors--and the deadline falls in December. Applicants should be close to completing a book-length manuscript and interested in hosting a virtual discussion of their project by three senior, external scholars in their field. More information may be found in the most recent call for proposals archived on the Syracuse University Application Portal. Currently, the program is open to faculty in The College of Arts and Sciences and Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs.

Previous awardees include:

2023-2024

• Shira Schwartz (Religion), Yeshiva Quirls: A Textual Ethnography of Jewish Reproduction
• Margaret Innes (Art History), Collective Forms: Photography in the Era of American Communism
• Ethan Madarieta (English), The Body is (Not) the Land: Memory, Translation, and Territorial Aporias
• Verena Erlenbusch-Anderson (Philosophy), Traitors to Forgetting: Counter-Memories of U.S. Domestic Terrorism
• Gail Bulman (Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics), The Artistic, Social, and Economic Impact of the Microteatro Transnational Theater Network
• Ana Mendez-Oliver (Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics), Frontier Identities: From Confessional to Racial Subjects in the Iberian World
• Tanisha Jackson (African American Studies), The Art of Self-care: Black Women Art Ecosystems as Sites for Wellness

2022-2023

• Mariaelena Huambachano (Religion), Recovering Our Ancestral Foodways: Indigenous Traditions as a Recipe for Living Well
• Jeanette Jouili (Religion), Islam on Stage: British Muslim Culture in the Age of Counterterrorism
• Ruth Opara (Art and Music Histories), Music, Motherhood, and Transnationalism

2021-2022

• Carol Fadda (English), Dissident Citizenships: Arab and Muslim Narratives in an Age of ‘Terror’
• Gareth Fisher (Religion), Temples and Teahouses: Buddhism and Secularity in Xi Jinping’s China. The book explores how Buddhist monastics and laypersons negotiate and reshape the boundaries between the secular and the religious in China today through the construction and expansion of both authorized Buddhist temples and Buddhist-themed teahouses. It examines how these religious entrepreneurs carve temples and teahouses into spaces of otherwise where social roles and values outside of the secular mainstream can be fostered.
• Danika Medak-Saltzman (Women’s and Gender Studies), Specters of Colonialism: Native People, Visual Culture and Colonial Projects in the U.S. and Japan
• Patricia Roylance (English), The Textures of Time in Nineteenth-Century U.S. Media. This project investigates the role of media in connecting people to the past and the future, by tracking the varying temporal experiences offered by the different media formats in which particular texts—John Winthrop’s journal, Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the story of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy’s founding—appeared.