Summary of 2019–2020 Awards
32 grants to 23 individual awardees: $1,230,840 total
- $529,159 for 18 arts & literature and humanities grants
- $701,681 for 14 science, social science, and math grants
Dan Hernandez, Associate Professor of Biology
Adaptive management project to study the control of smooth brome invasion in native prairies
Funder: Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR)
Award date: 7/24/19
Award amount: $5,000
Project period: 7/1/19-6/30/21
This two-year contract with the MN DNR will support Prof. Hernandez in measuring nutrients and microbial activity in soils of upland prairie dominated by native and non-native species at five sites managed by the Scientific and Natural Areas (SNA) and Minnesota Prairie Bank program in southwestern Minnesota.
Doris Duke Conservation Scholars Program at UC Santa Cruz
Funder: Doris Duke Charitable Foundation
Award date: 7/25/19
Award amount: $48,800
Project period: 7/1/19-6/30/23
The two-year conservation leadership program, led by Erika Zavaleta at UC Santa Cruz and 10 program staff, exposes early-career college students to the field of environmental conservation through field research, leadership, and professional training. As a faculty instructor, Prof. Hernández will work closely with the students to help design and conduct research projects in a variety of California’s spectacular landscapes.
Julia Strand, Assistant Professor of Psychology
Evaluating the listening effort associated with audiovisual speech
Funder: National Institutes of Health (NIH)
Award date: 8/10/19
Award amount: $404,634
Project period: 9/1/19-8/31/22
This Academic Research Enhancement Award (AREA) funds research to assess how visual information about speech affects the cognitive effort necessary to understand spoken language. The three-year grant supports undergraduate research assistants and an educational associate in each year. The results of Prof. Strand’s research team will inform the design of devices that generate visual stimuli to accompany spoken language in difficult listening situations, which may be particularly useful for the elderly or hard of hearing.
Aaron Swoboda, Associate Professor of Environmental Studies and Economics
Ecosystem Services of Golf
Funder: United States Golf Association (USGA)
Award date: 8/31/19
Award amount: $25,306
Project period: 7/1/19-8/31/19
Working with researchers at the University of Minnesota, Prof. Swoboda contributed to the project, “Community Values of Golf Courses: From the Minneapolis-St. Paul Region to US cities,” researching and analyzing economic valuation of ecosystem services in urban areas provided by golf courses.
Ahmed Ibrahim, Assistant Professor of Sociology
CODESRIA’s African Academic Diaspora Support to African Universities Programme
Funder: Carnegie Corporation of New York, CODESRIA
Award date: 9/1/19
Award amount: $20,000
Project period: 9/1/19-11/30/19
As a Visiting Fellow, selected by the 2019 Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) “African Academic Diaspora Support to African Universities Programme” (supported by the Carnegie Corporation of New York), Prof. Ibrahim aids African academics in the Diaspora to undertake activities aimed at strengthening teaching and research in the social sciences, humanities, and higher education studies at universities throughout Africa. During fall 2019, Prof. Ibrahim’s fellowship at the University of Dar Es Salaam in Tanzania will enable him to work with Department of Sociology colleagues in reviewing the curriculum as well as deliver lectures and supervise post graduate students.
Gao Hong, Director of the Chinese Music Ensemble and Senior Lecturer in Chinese Musical Instruments
2020 Folk and Traditional Arts grant
Funder: Minnesota State Arts Board
Award date: 9/4/19
Award amount: $20,211
Project period: 1/1/20-12/31/20
With this MSAB funding, Gao Hong will teach traditional Chinese music and ensemble playing in three Twin Cities locations, culminating in final ensemble performances.
Rika Anderson, Assistant Professor of Biology
Microbial and viral mediation of biogeochemical cycles from source to sink in hydrothermal vent systems
Funder: U.S. Department of Energy’s Joint Genome Institute (JGI)
Award date: 9/17/19
Award amount: $53,000
Project period: 9/17/19-9/16/22
This support for no-cost gene-sequencing of microbial and viral fluid samples by the US DE’s JGI in Walnut Creek, California enables Prof. Anderson to investigate how microbes and viruses are involved in the cycling of nutrients that are produced by deep-sea hydrothermal vents and released into the broader biosphere. As lead investigator, Prof. Anderson will work with Karthik Anantharaman (Assistant Prof. of Bacteriology, University of Wisconsin-Madison) and Elizabeth Trembath-Reichert (Assistant Prof., School of Earth and Space Exploration, Arizona State University) on the project.
Ahmed Ibrahim, Assistant Professor of Anthropology
The Somali diaspora as agents of state building
Funder: London School of Economics and Political Science
Award date: 10/1/19
Award amount: $17,000
Project period: 10/1/19-8/31/20
This Conflict Research Fellowship (CRF) fellowship offers support to examine how different interventions affect violent conflict and/or the risk of renewed violent conflict; analyze “what works” to counter drivers of conflict; and explore the contextual factors that affect the efficacy of such interventions.
Gao Hong, Director of the Chinese Music Ensemble and Senior Lecturer in Chinese Musical Instruments
2020 Artist Initiative grant in Music
Funder: Minnesota State Arts Board
Award date: 11/11/19
Award amount: $10,000
Project period: 1/1/20-12/31/20
This Artist Initiative grant supports Gao in writing the first double concerto for pipa (Chinese lute) and bassoon with symphony orchestra that will be performed by Hong on pipa, Ye Yu on bassoon, and the Kenwood Symphony Orchestra conducted by Yuri Ivan.
Funder: Minnesota State Arts Board
Award date: 11/11/19
Award amount: $21,968
Project period: 6/1/20-5/31/21
An Arts Tour grant enables Gao to tour small and midsize Minnesota towns, offering a choice of two new pipa music programs.
Catherine Licata, Assistant Professor of Cinema and Media Studies
The Lobby
Funder: Jerome Foundation
Award date: 12/11/19
Award amount: $23,360
Project period: 12/1/19-9/30/20
A 2019 Jerome Foundation Minnesota Film, Video and Digital Production Grant supports Prof. Licata production and post-production costs for her short film, The Lobby. Prof. Licata’s short character-driven drama entwines the issues of economic and class mobility with the contemporary immigrant experience, addressing structural inequalities beyond any one person’s control and playing with audience expectations on class and societal roles.
Dan Maxbauer, Assistant Professor of Geology
Carbon storage and magnetic properties of restored wetlands and prairie soils
Funder: Northfield SHARES
Award date: 12/17/19
Award amount: $7,500
Project period: 9/1/20-6/15/21
A grant from the Engeseth-Rinde Restoration Fund of Northfield SHARES enables Prof. Maxbauer to investigate carbon cycle processes in restored agricultural soils and wetlands in the Prairie Creek Wildlife Management Area. The research, carried out during 2020-2021 by Carleton students in Environmental Studies and Geology courses and by a Geo major as part of their senior comps project, will benefit landscape restoration in Rice County.
Laska Jimsen, Associate Professor of Cinema and Media Studies
Mellon Periclean Faculty Leader (PFL) in the Humanities
Funder: Project Pericles
Award date: 12/17/19
Award amount: $2,000
Project period: 11/1/19-12/31/21
The Mellon Periclean Faculty Leadership (PFL) Program in the Humanities. Mellon PFLs will design new courses across the humanities that incorporate community-based projects addressing the grant challenges of climate change, education access, immigration, mass incarceration, race and inequality, and voter engagement. As a PFL at Carleton, Prof. Jimsen will revise her Nonfiction Media Production course’s ACE community video project to foreground civil dialogue and nurture long-term community relationships. The project is funded by Project Pericles, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Eugene M. Lang Foundation.
Andrea Mazzariello, Assistant Professor of Music
Mellon Periclean Faculty Leader (PFL) in the Humanities
Funder: Project Pericles
Award date: 12/17/19
Award amount: $4,000
Project period: 11/1/19-12/31/21
The Mellon Periclean Faculty Leadership (PFL) Program in the Humanities. Mellon PFLs will design new courses across the humanities that incorporate community-based projects addressing the grant challenges of climate change, education access, immigration, mass incarceration, race and inequality, and voter engagement. Prof. Mazzariello will teach a new ACE co-creative composition course, facilitating collaborative music-making partnerships with youth at The Key in downtown Northfield. The project is funded by Project Pericles, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Eugene M. Lang Foundation.
Charisse Burden-Stelly, Assistant Professor of African Studies and Political Science
Professional Revolutionary: The Political Theory of Doxey Wilkerson
Funder: University of Kansas Kenneth Spencer Research Library
Award date: 1/14/20
Award amount: $1,000
Project period: 8/1/20-8/16/20
An Alyce Hunley Whayne Visiting Researchers Travel Award supports Prof. Burden-Stelly’s travel in August 2020 to research Doxey Wilkerson, an important but overlooked Black radical scholar-activist of the twentieth century.
Cecelia Cornejo, Instructor in Cinema and Media Studies
2020 McKnight Fellowship for Community-Engaged Artists
Funder: McKnight Foundation
Award date: 1/20/20
Award amount: $25,000
Project period: 12/1/19-9/30/20
One of just two inaugural recipients of this fellowship, funded by a grant from the McKnight Foundation and administered by the Pillsbury House Theatre, Cornejo will receive a generous stipend, public recognition, professional development, one-on-one mentorship, and participation in a public discussion about artistic practices that engage relationships aimed at producing social transformation. In work such as her documentary Ways of Being Home and her multidisciplinary, multi-media project The Wandering House, Prof. Cornejo examines notions of belonging and the immigrant experience while exploring the traces of historical trauma on people and places.
Juliane Shibata, Visiting Assistant Professor of Art
2020 Artist Initiative grant in the Visual Arts
Funder: Minnesota State Arts Board
Award date: 1/27/20
Award amount: $10,000
Project period: 1/27/20-1/26/21
This Artist Initiative grant in the Visual Arts supports two public art projects. Prof. Shibata will investigate ideas of plant life, ephemerality, and environmentalism through site-specific ceramics installations displayed at the University of Minnesota Conservatory and in Northfield.
Noah Salomon, Associate Professor of Religion
The Ethics of Islamic Unity in an Age of Discontent: Shi’i Solidarities and the Case of African Seminary Students in Lebanon
Funder: University of Bayreuth
Award date: 2/6/20
Award amount: $21,500
Project period: 1/2/21-4/2/21
During Winter of 2021, a Bayreuth Academy of Advanced African Studies fellowship residency at the University of Bayreuth will enable Prof. Salomon to 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.
Wes Markofski, Assistant Professor of Sociology
Protecting Sacred Waters: Mobilizing Indigenous and Western Meanings of Science and Spirituality in the Battle over Line 3
Funder: Templeton Religion Trust, Subaward with Rice University
Award date: 2/12/20
Award amount: $76,441
Project period: 7/1/20-6/30/22
Funded by the Templeton Religion Trust and led by Elaine Howard Ecklund (Rice U.) and John H. Evans (U. California-San Diego), this project is part of the wider “Sociology of Science and Religion: Identity and Belief Formation” initiative centered at Rice University and the University of California, San Diego. Prof. Markofski and his undergraduate research assistants will advance understanding of how scientific and spiritual beliefs guide social action, as they observe participants, conduct interviews, and analyze digital content related to the ongoing resistance movement of American Indian activists and allies against the construction of an oil pipeline through Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) territory in northern Minnesota.
Alex Knodell, Assistant Professor of Classics and Co-Director of Archaeology
The Small Cycladic Islands Project 2020: Uninhabited Landscapes in the Aegean Sea
Funder: Loeb Classical Library Foundation
Award date: 2/11/20
Award amount: $32,730
Project period: 7/1/20-6/30/21
The Small Cycladic Islands Project 2020: An Archaeology of Marginal Places and In-Between Spaces
Funder: Archaeological Institute of America (AIA)’s AIA-NEH Grants for Archaeological Research
Award date: 2/12/20
Award amount: $34,000
Project period: 7/1/20-6/30/21
The Small Cycladic Islands Project
Funder: The Institute for Aegean Prehistory (INSTAP) Renewal Research Grant 2020
Award date: 2/26/20
Award amount: $2,000
Project period: 6/1/21-8/31/21
The Loeb, AIA, and INSTAP grants will support fieldwork in summer 2020 and 2021 on numerous currently uninhabited islets in the Cycladic archipelago. While such places are currently devoid of much human activity or settlement, 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. Fieldwork began in 2019, and more information can be found on the project website: www.smallcycladicislandsproject.org.
Jeff Snyder, Associate Professor of Educational Studies
Debby Walser-Kuntz, Herman and Gertrude Mosier Stark Professor of Biology and the Natural Sciences
Funder: Project Pericles
Award date: 2/27/20
Award amount: $500 each
Project period: 2/27/20-6/30/20
Project Pericles awarded “Up to Us Voting Modules” mini-grants that enabled Prof. Snyder and Walser-Kuntz to incorporate discussions about pressing civic and economic issues and the importance of voting into their spring term 2020 courses: Jeff Snyder for the Educational Studies senior seminar, “Controversy, Politics and Intellectual Freedom in Schools, from Kindergarten to College” (EDUC 395); and Debby Walser-Kuntz for “Virology” (BIO 370).
Thabiti Willis, Associate Professor of History and Director of Africana Studies
Slaves and Singers: Race, Work and Heritage in a Gulf Country
Funder: The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
Award date: 3/9/20
Award amount: $300,000
Project period: 6/1/20-5/31/23
This prestigious Mellon New Directions Fellowship will enable Prof. 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 training in two main areas: GIS tools and the Arabic language. GIS and geo-spatial tools will offer new means for understanding the historical and geographical elements of slavery and the slave trade in the Gulf. In addition to generally facilitating his research in the Gulf, improved Arabic-language skills will help Prof. Willis access, document, and analyze the voices of enslaved and free Africans, their descendants, and others as they appear in the musical heritage of Gulf nations. Together, these new skills will enable Prof. Willis to unearth new ground in understanding the histories of the Gulf communities, the nature and end of slavery, and an under-studied dimension of the African diaspora.
Gao Hong, Director of the Chinese Music Ensemble and Senior Lecturer in Chinese Musical Instruments
Performances at the Harbin Summer Music Festival in China
Funder: Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation USArtists International
Award date: 2/28/20
Award amount: $4,890
Project period: 3/15/20-3/14/21
As a duo with Linda Chatterton, this USAI grant – in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation – encourages 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.
Performances at the Ordway
Funder: Ordway Knight Foundation Cultural Opportunity Fund
Award date: 3/15/20
Award amount: $5,000
Project period: 7/1/20-6/31/21
This subsidy towards renting the Ordway’s Concert Hall supports a performance at the Ordway, made possible in part by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
Barbara Allen, James Woodward Strong Professor of Political Science and the Liberal Arts
Political Theory and Practice: Studying Mediated Governance and Institutional Change in EU and US Contexts
Funder: US Department of State, CIES, Fulbright Program
Award date: 3/16/20
Award amount: $30,000
Project period: 12/1/20-5/31/21
This Fulbright Scholar award for teaching in Luxembourg supports Prof. Allen’s work to advance international understanding and cooperation. She will teach on self-governance grounded in theorists Elinor and Vincent Ostrom; offer a masters course on comparative political communication with a focus on U.S. and other nations’ elections; and deliver public lectures on Alexis de Tocqueville.
Catherine Licata, Assistant Professor of Cinema and Media Studies,
The Lobby
Funder: McKnight Foundation, Metro Regional Arts Council (MRAC)
Award date: 4/2/20
Award amount: $2,500
Project period: 6/1/20-5/31/21
A Metro Regional Arts Council Next Step Grant supports Prof. Licata in work related to 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.
Sonja Anderson, Assistant Professor of Religion
Idolatry and the Invention of Biblical Religion
Funder: National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH)
Award date: 4/9/20
Award amount: $6,000
Project period: 7/1/20-8/31/20
During the summer of 2020, a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Summer Stipend award enables Prof. Anderson to 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.
Palmar Álvarez-Blanco, Professor of Spanish
Mellon Periclean Faculty Leader (PFL) in the Humanities
Funder: Project Pericles
Award date: 5/12/20
Award amount: $4,000
Project period: 6/1/20-7/31/22
This Mellon Periclean Faculty Leadership (PFL) Program in the Humanities supports “Radio and News in Spanish,” an Academic Civic Engagement (ACE) course Prof. Álvarez-Blanco co-teaches with community-partner Mar Valdecanto. In this course, students collaborate with “El Super Barrio Latino,” a radio program conducted by the Latinx community of Northfield. In each program, students explore international and domestic news and interview people in our community. As a Periclean Faculty Leader, Prof. Álvarez-Blanco will join a community of scholars dedicated to incorporating civic engagement into the curriculum while empowering students to use their academic knowledge to tackle real-world problems. The funders of this project are Project Pericles, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Eugene M. Lang Foundation.
Charisse Burden-Stelly, Assistant Professor of African Studies and Political Science
Race and Capitalism Project Postdoctoral Scholar
Funder: University of Chicago
Award date: 5/29/20
Award amount: $65,000
Project period: 9/1/20-8/30/21
A residential fellowship for 2020-2021 in the Race and Capitalism Project and the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago will support Prof. Burden-Stelly’s research and work on a book project “The Radical Horizon of Black Betrayal: Anticommunicsm and Racial Capitalism in the United States, 1917-1954.” This work theorizes anticommunism as a set of policies, practices, and discourses employed by the United States government to preserve and consolidate racial capitalism between the Bolshevik Revolution (1917) and the passage of the Communist Control Act (1954) – but also provides a framework for understanding the reactionary politics that shape our current moment.