Category: Recent Grants

Sonja Anderson, Assistant Professor of Religion, has been awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Summer Stipend for her project, “Idolatry and Biblical Religion.” During the summer of 2020, Professor Anderson will continue to research and write her first book, studying biblical, early Christian, and rabbinic texts to investigate the construction of idols and idolatry in the early Christian era, and the assumptions and discussions that surround them.

Catherine Licata, Assistant Professor of Cinema and Media Studies, received a Metro Regional Arts Council Next Step Grant for work that may eventually benefit her fictional film, The Lobby. The Next Step Fund, sponsored by the McKnight Foundation, provides project grants to professional artists in any discipline for the purpose of career development and artistic achievement. Professor Licata will use the award to conduct a workshop and further her directorial artistry. She was one of 72 finalists from a record-high 519 proposals.

Gao Hong, Director of the Chinese Music Ensemble and Senior Lecturer in Chinese Musical Instruments, is the recipient of two grants:

• Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation USArtists International (USAI) grant in support of performances at the Harbin Summer Music Festival in China, as a duo with Linda Chatterton. USAI grants, in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, encourage international cultural exchange and enhance the creative and professional development of U.S. based artists by providing connections with presenters, curators, and artists around the world. (2/28/20, $4,890)
• Ordway Knight Foundation Cultural Opportunity Fund that provides artists with a subsidy towards renting the Ordway’s Concert Hall. The performance at the Ordway is made possible in part by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

Thabiti Willis, Associate Professor of History and Director of Africana Studies, has been awarded the prestigious New Directions Fellowship from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The Fellowship will support Willis’ three-year research project, “Slaves and Singers: Race, Work and Heritage in a Gulf Country.” The substantial fellowship, in the amount of $300,000, will enable Willis to address social, cultural, and historical factors that shaped the experiences of Africans and their descendants in the Indian Ocean World, and their place in contemporary public depictions of the history of the Gulf states. The funding primarily supports summer and sabbatical leave time, along with fellow’s training programs.

New Direction Fellowships are awarded to highly accomplished faculty members in the humanities and humanistic social sciences who seek to acquire systematic training outside their own areas of special interest. Since 2002, the program has enabled strong scholars to conduct serious cross-disciplinary research in an academic field other than their primary area of specialization. Among all grants available to humanities scholars, New Directions Fellowships are among the largest in size and longest in duration. Eligible candidates include faculty members who have been awarded a doctorate in the humanities or humanistic social sciences within the last six to twelve years. 

Project Pericles awarded “Up to Us Voting Modules” mini-grants to Jeff Snyder and Debby Walser-Kuntz that enabled them to incorporate discussions about pressing civic and economic issues and the importance of voting into their spring term 2020 courses:

Jeff Snyder, Associate Professor of Educational Studies, for the Educational Studies senior seminar, “Controversy, Politics and Intellectual Freedom in Schools, from Kindergarten to College” (EDUC 395)

Debby Walser-Kuntz, Herman and Gertrude Mosier Stark Professor of Biology and the Natural Sciences, for “Virology” (BIO 370)

Alex Knodell, Assistant Professor of Classics and Co-Director of Archaeology, is the recipient of two significant awards to support the Small Cycladic Islands Project (SCIP), a multidisciplinary archaeological survey of several small Aegean islands. The Loeb Classical Library Foundation and the Archaeological Institute of America’s AIA-NEH grants will support fieldwork in summer 2020 on currently uninhabited islets in the Cycladic archipelago.

While such places are currently devoid of much human activity or settlement, we know that such places served as cemeteries, sanctuaries, hideaways, pasturage, or stepping-stones to more sizable landforms at various points in the past. Dr. Knodell co-directs the project with colleagues from the Ephorate of Antiquities of the Cyclades and the Norwegian Institute at Athens. SCIP also provides an opportunity for Carleton students to participate in an international research project. More information can be found on the project website: www.smallcycladicislandsproject.org.

Wes Markofski, Assistant Professor of Sociology, has received a major grant for his new research project, “Protecting Sacred Waters: Mobilizing Indigenous and Western Meanings of Science and Spirituality in the Battle over Line 3.” The project is part of a re-granting initiative originating at Rice University (Elaine Howard Ecklund) and the University of California, San Diego (John H. Evans), “The Sociology of Science and Religion: Identity and Belief Formation,” funded by the Templeton Religion Trust. 

Noah Salomon, Associate Professor of Religion, has been awarded a Bayreuth Academy of Advanced African Studies fellowship for the Winter of 2021. During his residency at the University of Bayreuth, Prof. Salomon will advance his effort to understand how Muslim organizations are thinking through diversity in order to create solidarity with communities across the globe. The project not only looks at diverse individuals—Africans, Arabs, and others in plural interconfessional states across the region—but seeks nothing less than an unpacking of an Islamic methodology for grappling with difference. The project builds on Prof. Salomon’s ongoing Mellon New Directions Fellowship.

The Clare Boothe Luce Program of the Henry Luce Foundation has awarded Carleton College a $495,341 grant to support the hiring of a Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professor of Mathematics. The professorship will enable the Carleton Department of Mathematics and Statistics to advance further its role as a leader in the education of women mathematicians. Read more in this Carleton Now article.

Juliane Shibata, Visiting Assistant Professor of Art, was awarded a 2020 Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative grant for two public art projects. Juliane will investigate ideas of plant life, ephemerality, and environmentalism through site-specific ceramics installations at the University of Minnesota Conservatory and in Northfield.