"After decades of scholarly neglect, religion is once more being recognized as a key element of humanistic thought" -Charles LaPorte (English)
In the summer of 2024, the Simpson Center for the Humanities will support faculty fellowships with a thematic emphasis, convening a cohort of faculty actively working on research projects on religious cultures, sacred practices, and spiritual teachings. By gathering scholars together who are working on projects in potentially different disciplinary capacities, historical periods, and languages—to take just these examples—but who share a demonstrated interest in the designated theme, we hope to open new possibilities for deep and sustained crossdisciplinary discussion. Fellows will receive summer salary support of $10,000. The intent of this summer support is to allow fellows to devote themselves full-time to their research projects. Cohort meetings will be held in person weekly, six times, over the course of the early summer, and each fellow will make a presentation of their work.
In establishing this broad theme, Simpson Center Director Kathleen Woodward (English) said she had long felt insufficient attention had been devoted in the academy to matters of religious traditions and sacred practices and was inspired by the collaborative global humanities project sponsored by the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes that resulted in the collection of original essays Religion, Secularism, and Political Belonging, edited by Leerom Medovoi and Elizabeth Bentley (Duke UP, 2021). She was further prompted, she added, by the compelling work of Simpson Center Associate Director Rachel Arteaga whose dissertation explores feelings of faith—ranging from sorrow to joy, from anger to love—in American literature.
Charles LaPorte (English), coeditor of Elements in Religion and Literature since 1500, the new book series from Cambridge University Press, says of this opportunity, "After decades of scholarly neglect, religion is once more being recognized as a key element of humanistic thought (as well as a central feature in the lives of billions of people). Its vital interest can be felt in this exciting array of new scholarly work here at UW." Christopher Tounsel (History), who will be working on a book on an Africana history of the Nativity (what he calls Black Christmas), adds, “what is so exciting about this program is that it will provide a space where fellows can engage with interlocutors who are looking to support the work and move it forward, which will ensure that these emerging projects can be the absolute best that they can be. Fellows will be able to benefit from crossdisciplinary perspectives. And, while research in the humanities is often solitary, the group dynamic will allow something that most academic conferences won’t, which is a truly sustained discussion of ongoing work, in which scholars get feedback throughout the research process.”
Projects being funded range from ritual practices in premodern Japan to the depiction of Rasta in Caribbean fiction, from Iñupiaq Christianity to Islam in the Indian Ocean world.
Fellows
Nazry Bahrawi (Assistant Professor, Asian Languages & Literature)
Islamic Beasts of the Indian Ocean
Bianca Dang (Assistant Professor, History)
Making Meaningful Freedom: Gendered Struggles for Autonomy in the United States and Haiti, 1780-1880
Miriam Chusid (Assistant Professor, School of Art + Art History + Design)
Envisioning the Afterlife: Image, Text, and Ritual Practice in Premodern Japan
Caitlin Earley (Assistant Professor, School of Art + Art History + Design)
Bound in Stone: The Captive Body in Ancient Maya Art
Sara Eccleston (Assistant Professor, UW Tacoma IAS)
Sanctifying Antiracism in a Southern Episcopal Diocese
P. Joshua Griffin (Assistant Professor, American Indian Studies)
Entangled Theologies: Agency, Relation, and Affective Temporality in Iñupiaq Christianity
Hajin Jun (Assistant Professor, Jackson School of International Studies)
Rites of One’s Own: Christianity, Rituals, and the Making of Religious Freedom in Modern Korea
Charles LaPorte (Professor, English)
Editorial Work, Elements in Religion and Literature since 1500
Mark Letteney (Assistant Professor, History)
Sacral Pollution in Late Antiquity
Sudhir Mahadevan (Associate Professor, Comparative History of Ideas)
The Devotional Icon as Special Effect
John-Carlos Perea (Assistant Professor, Ethnomusicology)
The Intertribal Musical and Spiritual Cultures of Jim Pepper’s ‘Pepper’s Pow Wow'
Janelle Rodrigues (Assistant Professor, English)
Spiritual Challenges to Political Power: Reading Rasta’s Refusal in Caribbean Fiction
Christopher Tounsel (Associate Professor, History)
Black Christmas: The Africana History of the Nativity