Center for Arts and Humanities fellowship awards

The WSU Center for Arts and Humanities (CAH) and the Office of Research awarded  2019 fellowships to eight faculty representing fine arts, history, and music, as well as politics, philosophy, and public affairs, and design and construction.

Each award supports faculty professional goals and advances university‑wide arts and humanities initiatives. The fellowships will support exhibitions, music recordings, research travel, and course releases. Many of these activities will lead to publications. In addition to their individual efforts, the Fellows will meet for monthly discussions, hosted by the CAH.

This is the third year in which CAH and the Office of Research have awarded the fellowships. In April 2019, the Board of Regents gave formal approval for the center. With this recognition, the CAH will continue the fellowship program and further expand and advance arts and humanities at WSU through speakers, seminars, and other activities.

“This year’s fellowships reaffirm the vibrancy, relevance, and creativity of the arts and humanities at WSU,” said Todd Butler, director of the CAH. “Particularly impressive is the fact that most if not all of the fellowship winners envision a public component to their projects. This is land‑grant work in action.”

Fellowship recipients for 2019 are:

• Chris Dickey

  School of Music
  Music from the Margins

  Dickey will organize a recital and lecture tour addressing music from composers holding marginalized identities.

• Joe Hedges

  Department of Fine Arts
  “Hypercombines: Solo Exhibitions”

  Hedges will create and exhibit several new art works, combining oil painting with media sculpture.

• Claudia Leeb

  School of Politics, Philosophy, and Public Affairs
  “The Rise of the Far Right in the United States and Europe: A Psychoanalytic and Critical Theory Perspective”

  Leeb will research the rise of the far right in the U.S. and Europe for a book project drawing on critical and psychoanalytic theory.

• Melissa Parkhurst

  School of Music
  “Field Recordings of Nez Perce Native Singers, 2019–2020”

  Parkhurst will create audio and video recordings of the eldest and most capable Nez Perce singers still living today.

• Ayad Rahmani

  School of Design and Construction
  “Frank Lloyd Wright and Ralph Waldo Emerson: Truth Against the World”

  Rahmani will analyze the cultural impact of Frank Lloyd Wright through the lens of Ralph Waldo Emerson in a book project.

• Clif Stratton

  Department of History
  “Race and the Atlanta Braves from Summerhill to Cobb County”

  Stratton will write a book analyzing the context around the historical consequences of the arrival and departure of the Braves baseball franchise to and from its downtown Atlanta site from the late Civil Rights era to the present.

• Ashley Wright

  Department of History
  “Difficult Cases: Governing Marginal Women in Colonial India and Burma, 1855–1915”

  Wright will re‑imagine the history of British imperialism in India and Burma by analyzing five legal conflicts involving marginal women for a book project.

• Greg Yasinitsky

  School of Music
  “Creation of New Orchestrations and Recordings for International Release”

  Yasinitsky will orchestrate, record, publish, and release new little big band pieces.

Top photo: The WSU Fine Arts building will host several CAH projects in 2019-2020.

By Karen Hunt for WSU Insider