Arts & humanities grants advance creativity, scholarship

Representing five academic units and more than $75,000 in grant support, the Center for Arts and Humanities (CAH) has selected nine faculty to receive their 2021 Fellowships and Catalyst Award.

Funded projects include first-ever recordings of Dutch compositions, research about gendered occupational segregation in the U.S. and Canada, a digital archive of personal narratives from the recent pandemic, and an album of classical works by Indigenous composers.

The CAH fellowships and catalyst awards provide funding to WSU faculty pursuing scholarly and creative projects that have a significant arts or humanities component. The fellowships support larger-scale research, exhibitions, or other major scholarship and creativity efforts that advance the applicant’s professional development, and the catalyst grant supports faculty in the development of extramural funding proposals that represent a new direction, significant advancement, or exceptional value to the applicant’s research and creative work as well as to the arts and humanities at WSU.

Fellowship recipients:

• Avantica Bawa

  Department of Fine Arts

  Bawa will continue an ongoing series of installations reflecting the artist’s interest in responding to the built and natural environment through the language of drawing and construction.

• Troy Bennefield

  School of Music

  Bennefield will explore and publish information on the life and works of Dutch composer Julius Hijman, whose career was interrupted by the Nazi regime. Bennefield will produce the first-ever recordings of Hijman’s compositions.

• Dennis DeHart

  Department of Fine Arts

  DeHart will create a lens-based series of works focused on the Columbia River drainage basin and the Snake River. The exhibition will be in collaboration with the WSU Libraries’ Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections.

• Martin King

  School of Music

  King will commission a new horn, tuba and piano trio, record an album of music for this ensemble, and give performing tours of this music to expand and diversify the repertoire and promote this ensemble.

• Laurie Mercier

  Department of History

  Mercier will conduct research for a book project about gendered occupational segregation in the U.S. and Canadian Wests from 1930-2020.

• Melissa Nicolas

  Department of English

  Nicolas will create an open-access digital archive of personal narratives about living through the COVID‑19 pandemic.

• Jeff Sanders

  Department of History

  Sanders will develop a book proposal for a cultural and environmental history of strontium 90.

• Jacqueline Wilson

  School of Music

  Wilson will create an album of classical works by Indigenous composers for solo bassoon utilizing a decolonized approach.

Catalyst Award:

• Ruth Gregory

  Digital Technology and Culture
  

  Gregory will pursue multiple grant proposals to the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Spencer Foundation, and provide paid internships for community engaged humanities students.

From the WSU Office of Research for WSU Insider.