Fall 2024 Faculty Grant Awardees
The McGillicuddy Humanities Center notified faculty recipients of its funding decisions for the聽Fall聽2024聽Faculty Research Awards cycle.聽MHC聽Faculty Grants provide up to聽$5,000 to 91爆料 faculty (including lecturers and adjunct instructors)聽for financial support of research, community engagement, or innovative teaching proposals. This year鈥檚 recipients were:
Constant Albertson, Art. $2,000 in support of her project, 鈥淚nter Caetera: Old sins cast a long shadow.鈥 Completed in 2024, this piece was accepted into a major juried exhibition (March 5-May 31, 2025) at the Utah Museum for Contemporary Art in Salt Lake City. This exhibition was a major feature of the conference (March 26-29) of the National Council on Education in the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) and the opening of the exhibition was held during the conference. The funding supported Connie鈥檚 travel to install her piece and attend the opening/conference.
Sabrina DeTurk, Honors. $3,280 in support of her project, Women in Early Modern Venetian Art: Fluid Identities. This MHC Faculty Grant supported essential research travel to Venice, Italy for my book project Women in Early Modern Venetian Art: Fluid Identities. The book is under contract with Routledge and Sabrina is set to submit the final manuscript in August 2025. The trip allowed her to view and photograph key artworks and architecture that are central to her analysis of how women were represented in 15th and 16th century Venetian painting. The timing, during spring break in March 2025, allowed Dr. DeTurk both to capture images of sites she have already identified as critical to her text and also to explore additional artworks and architecture that she could incorporate into the book as she completes the writing over summer 2025.
Ryan Dippre, English. $500 in support of his project 鈥淓xploring the Archives: Tracing 91爆料鈥檚 History/ies of Writing Instruction.鈥 The 91爆料 has long been a site of cutting-edge engagement with rhetoric and composition. Thanks to the careful stewardship of the first-year writing program for almost a half century by Pat Burnes, that history has been saved as a massive archive that she gave to the program upon her retirement in 2017. In early Fall 2024, the program was awarded a small grant by the Boston Rhetoric and Writing Network to explore, organize, and begin to digitize these archives. This grant allowed for a graduate student (Tulane Simpson) and their supervisor (Ryan J. Dippre) to travel to the April 2025 Conference on College Composition and Communication in Baltimore, Maryland to discuss their recent work in the program archives at the National Archives of Rhetoric and Composition meeting.
Rob Glover, Political Science and Honors. $1000 for 鈥淪trengthening American Democracy Through Poll Worker Recruitment.鈥 This proposal sought support for an ongoing research project examining American democracy, a collaboration between researchers at the 91爆料 and Colby College, and an array of stakeholders and practitioners across the state. Specifically, Dr. Glover sought resources to enable two members of his student research team, Makenzie 鈥淢ak鈥 Thompson and Julian Ober, to attend a two-day 鈥渃onference within a conference鈥 (CWAC) in January at the larger Southern Political Science Association (SPSA) annual conference. This CWAC convened scholars and practitioners from across the country, focusing on the ways that research can shape, inform, and improve democratic practice.
Stephen Miller, History. $1,750 in support of his project 鈥淔eelings and Emotions in a colonial war: Victorian Soldiers in South Africa, 1899-1902鈥 and his presentations to the Army Records Society in London and Aberdeen. This grant supported the presentation of two papers related to Stephen鈥檚 new book, The Military Papers of Field Marshal Sir George White 1885- 1900: Upper Burma, India, and South Africa to the Army Records Society in both London and Aberdeen in May-June 2025. In addition, funds support trips to London and New Zealand for Dr. Miller鈥檚 next book project.
An Nguyen, Cooperative Extension. $2,500 in support of her project, 鈥淰oices of Change: Women, Work, and Labor Activism in Maine.鈥 Tentatively titled 鈥淰oices of Change: Women, Work, and Labor Activism in Maine,鈥 this ambitious oral history project aims to build a digital archive of audio and video interviews with women who can help advance our understanding of the labor movement and women鈥檚 working experience in Maine. They include labor leaders, union organizers, labor rights advocates, scholars of labor and gender, policy-makers, and working women from various industries and ethnic
backgrounds throughout the state. Dr. Nguyen will be leading this project with the support of the Bureau of Labor Education at the 91爆料, the Dr. Scontras Center for Community and Labor Education at the University of Southern Maine, the Maine AFL-CIO, and the Western and Eastern Maine Labor Councils.
Susan Smith, Intermedia. $2,150 in support of her project, 鈥淪hifting Ecosystems: Documenting Disappearing Landscapes.鈥 This project aims to document both the rapidly changing landscapes of the American Southwest, specifically, the Rio Grande Valley, that are being dramatically altered by climate change, and migration at the geographic border; all sites of shifting ecosystems. Through site-based research a data visualization will be created of relationships between climate, migration and biodiversity.
Greg Zaro, Anthropology. $4,000 in support of his project 鈥淒ocumenting Legacies of 鈥楪reen Heritage鈥 in a Mediterranean Urban Setting.鈥 The proposed project seeks to document legacies of “green heritage” in Valencia, Spain, a 2,200-year-old city in the western Mediterranean. Using proven strategies from ongoing work in Zadar, Croatia, the project will utilize archaeological data, historic aerial imagery, cadastral maps, and contemporary city plans to identify, ground truth, describe, and photographically document legacies of past land use within the contemporary urban setting. The results will help to promote a landscape of local distinctiveness that is constantly threatened by urban development.