Humanities Without Walls Research Challenge
METHODOLOGIES OF RECIPROCITY AND REDISTRIBUTION
Congratulations to the four research teams awarded seed grants from the Humanities Institute to prepare full proposals for the Humanities Without Walls Research Challenge in November 2021.
Amplifying Care on the Margins: Christa Teston (English, OSU), Liz Angeli & Lillian Campbell (Marquette University)
Jennifer Scott (Shawnee State University), Diana Awad Scrocco (Youngstown State University). An exploration of how "care in practice" is performed in systematically devalued and under-resourced contexts.
Archiving Black Performance: Crystal Perkins (Dance) & Valarie Williams (Dance). A three-part project to record, amplify and transmit the work of four influential Black women in dance inter-generationally.
The Ethics of Relation: Urban University Engagement Practices in Black Communities. Simone Drake (English), Kip Curtis (History), Nadine George (Dance), Hasan Jeffries (History), Nick Kawa (Anthropology). A partnership with Denison University and Central State University to examine ethical models for university engagement with Black communities.
El Neuvo Midwest: Inés Valdez (Political Science), Elena Foulis (SPPO), Dinorah Sanchez Loza (Education and Human Ecology). Developing a "counter-archive" of Latinx in Ohio, including oral histories, images and documentation.
Humanities Without Walls Research Challenge
The Humanities Without Walls consortium will make grants of up to $150,000 available for projects exploring methodologies of reciprocity and redistribution. The deadline for applications is November 15, 2021, for projects extending through December 2024.
The Humanities Institute has seed grants of up to $5000 available to fund work on HWW proposals. To apply, submit a 5-6 pp. narrative outlining the Grand Challenge project envisioned, academic collaborators and community partners to be engaged, approaches to questions of reciprocity and redistribution, and work to be undertaken during the seed grant period. Questions? Contact Rick Livingston
Susan Melsop (Design) and Matthew Birkhold (German) participated in a Zoom discussion of approaches to reciprocity and redistribution on Feb 19. A recording of the session is available here.
You can also find a series of HWW-sponsored discussions here.
From the Humanities Without Walls RfP:
Reciprocity and redistribution are methods for engaging collaborators in genuinely equal and ethical partnerships—partnerships that are not one-directional (i.e., only from campus outward) or faculty-centered (i.e., hierarchical in ways that privilege presumptively white western scholarly expertise over other forms of knowing).ΩΩΩΩ
Reciprocity and redistribution are strategies for equity-based change by design. These strategies aim to challenge the academic status quo by enabling community partners to participate on their own terms; to co-design and co-create transformative projects; and to be equitably resourced for their time and contributions.
A commitment to practices of reciprocity and redistribution also opens up possibilities for new forms of collaboration between faculty and graduate students and staff; between HWW partner universities and regional and community colleges; between HWW projects and Predominantly White Institutions and Minority Serving Institutions, Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Tribal Colleges; and/or between each campus and its variety of public and community stakeholders.
Taken together, reciprocal and redistributive methods are aimed at attracting a diverse set of HWW intellectual leaders and cultivating socially and racially equitable methods for sustaining their vision and their work.
Through modes of research partnership that are reciprocal and redistributive, collaborators will demonstrate that “humanities without walls” is not only a metaphor but also a strategic commitment to imagining and doing academic work more inclusively—with universal access, social equity and racial diversity always front of mind.