Faculty Research Awards Spring 2021
SMALL GRANT AWARDS
SMALL GRANT AWARDS ARE FOR $6,000 OR LESS.
Professor Laure Katsaros
Department of French
Title: Glass Houses: Charles Fourier's Utopia of Self-Surveillance
Professor Katsaros’s book explores the architectural model of collective housing pioneered by the radical French philosopher Charles Fourier (1772–1837) as a remedy to social injustice and individual misery. Fourier’s dream architecture, the “Phalanstery,” combined the discipline of a Spartan “phalanx” and Christian “monastery” with the luxury of an aristocratic palace. It also enabled a continuous state of self-surveillance that triggered in each member of the community a blissful experience of absolute transparency. The book provides a detailed account of the architectural plans developed by Fourier to achieve this goal, as well as a discussion of the real-life experiments in “transparent housing” conducted by some of Fourier’s disciples in France. Professor Katsaros will use FRAP funding to help offset the some of the expenses associated with the translation and production of the book, under contract with a Paris-based publishing company, Éditions B2, that specializes in books on architecture and design.
LARGE GRANT AWARDS
LARGE GRANT AWARDS ARE FOR MORE THAN $6,000 AND UP TO $30,000.
Professor Tariq Jaffer
Department of Religion
Title: An Annotated Translation of Baqillani's Book on Miracles
Professor Jaffer's principal objective is to produce a complete annotated English translation of a work authored in the late tenth or early eleventh century by Abū Bakr Muḥammad b. al-Ṭayyib b. Muḥammad b. Ja'far b. al-Qāsim al-Bāqillānī (d. 1013)—the celebrated theologian, literary critic, and "judge" of Baghdad. The title of the work is “The Book That Elucidates the Difference Between Prophetic Miracles, Miracles of Grace, Trickery, Divination, Magic, and Spells.” Professor Jaffer's annotated translation opens a window into the way that a leading "orthodox" theologian, literary critic, and judge from medieval times attempted to resolve a riddle—namely, what is a miracle?
Professor Justin Kimball
Department of Art and the History of Art
Title: Who by Fire
“Who By Fire,” Professor Justin Kimball’s long-term photography project, is a body of work that considers contemporary American life as it relates to its complex historical, economic, religious, and political milieus. His photographs of people in their neighborhoods, streets, and yards document moments where the weight of our time is visible on our bodies and surroundings, and also marvel at the resilience and hope we can maintain under that weight. Professor Kimball’s photographs point at how our experience manifests itself in visual terms, both physically and psychologically, as if we are each standing untethered on the precipice; they are about struggle, loss, hope, and what it is to be human. The project will be published by Radius Books, publisher of his monographs Elegy and Pieces of String.
Professor Michael Kunichika
Department of Russian
Title: Archaeology in the Twilight of Utopia Late Socialism and the Rediscovery of the Archaic
“Archaeology in the Twilight of Utopia: Late Socialism and the Rediscovery of the Archaic” considers the appeal, both in the Soviet Union and in Europe, of the archaic, especially of prehistory, from the late 1950s to the early 1980s. Among the many pasts recuperated in the aftermath of Stalinism, the prehistoric was the oldest. It becomes the subject of a range of works, media, and critical theories, from novels and films to Soviet art-historical accounts of prehistory. The project reconstructs discourses around certain objects and texts in order to rethink late Soviet culture through the latter’s engagement with the archaeological past, and with archaeology as a discipline. Drawing on a range of visual and discursive material, Professor Kunichika’s study seeks to answer why, during this period of Soviet culture, deeper subterranean temporalities as old as the Paleolithic, but including various antiquities from the Hellenistic to Islamic artifacts in Central Asia and to Mayan ruins and hieroglyphs, come to the fore in the cultural imagination and compel a reckoning within socialism about its own cultural and philosophical status. The fascination with prehistoric archaeology and deep time sparked debates about the origins of man, of art, and of history itself. They tell us much about this period’s own self-understanding of its particular historical conjuncture. Archaeology, coupled with advances in structuralism and semiotics, was in a privileged position to make singular contributions to the study of world culture and its origins.
Professor Robert Sweeney
Department of Art and the History of Art
Title: Painterly Abstractions of the Connecticut River Valley and Watershed
Professor Sweeney proposes to develop a series of large paintings in his studio that will be abstracted from small on-site landscapes completed during the last eighteen months in the Connecticut River Valley and watershed area. These works will involve the use of memory and imagination to explore on a larger scale the gesture painting approach that he employed as an immediate response to the complex natural sights and sounds in the places he discovered. In the spring of 2021, he intends to return to working on-site in the local watershed area, as well as the length of the Connecticut River Valley. In December, he will return to large-scale explorations evolving from the new small works. His goal is to create a bold and expressive response to the varied and rich landscapes of the river and its environs.