The Office of the Vice President for Research (OVPR) has selected the winners of the 2022 Arts and Humanities (AHI) grants, which support humanities scholarship and work in the creative, visual, and performing arts.
“The AHI program has been supported by OVPR for almost 25 years,” said Marty Scholtz, vice president for research. “It is an important investment in individual and collaborative scholarship in the arts and humanities disciplines, which face a limited landscape of external funding opportunities.”
Through three funding mechanisms for standard grants, major project grants, and major conference grants, the program provides up to $30,000 for innovative and high-impact work.
The spring 2022 winners are:
Luis Martin-Estudillo, Professor, Spanish and Portuguese, CLAS
Project title: Questioning Monuments: Cervantes, Goya and Beyond
Award: $7,500
Martin-Estudillo’s book in progress, Questioning Monuments: Cervantes, Goya and Beyond, aims to reconstruct a critical tradition of thought and practice on the nature and function of public art which originated in early modern Spain, at the height of its empire.
Julia Anna Morrison, Lecturer, Cinematic Arts, CLAS
Project Title: Moon Charger
Award: $5,000
Morrison’s creative research proposal is a feature-length screenplay exploring sisterhood, mental illness, and the relationship between writing and parenthood with the added socioeconomic pressures faced by single mothers.
E Cram, Assistant Professor, Communication Studies, and Gender, Women’s and Sexuality Studies, CLAS
Project Title: Disability Ecologies of Care and Memory
Award: $6,623
Cram’s AHI project will examine the collaborative community process of restoring the Johnson County Historic Poor Farm (JCHPF), an Iowa public historical site, and how this process reframes discussions of relationships between disability and environmentalism.
Veronica Mraz, Research Specialist, Office of the State Archaeologist
Project Title: Use-wear analysis on precontact stone tools recovered from three archaeological sites to discover daily lifeway practices
Award: $7,500
Mraz will conduct stone tool analysis on artifacts recovered from three archaeological site excavations in Iowa. The purpose of this research is to address the question of how the tools were utilized and what they tell us about daily lifeways of precontact people.
Corey Creekmur, Associate Professor, Cinematic Arts, CLAS
Project title: Anatomy of the American Comic Book
Award: $7,295
Entitled An Anatomy of the American Comic Book, this project will analyze the historical evolution and cultural significance of each of the component parts of this familiar yet easily overlooked object, ranging from eye-catching covers to advertisements and letter columns to changes in paper quality and color printing.
Christopher Harris, Associate Professor, Cinematic Arts, CLAS
Project Title: Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Cinema Symposium
Award: $10,000
This symposium is aimed at the generation of new knowledge regarding the central question of how Black identity is figured in the new Afro-Brazilian cinema and how it resonates with Black cinema globally.
AHI grant applications are evaluated by peer-review teams composed of University of Iowa faculty and professional staff. The funding will support work during the 2022-2023 academic year.