SHASS announces 8 Research Fund recipients for 2019
 

The SHASS Research Fund supports MIT research in the humanities, arts, or social sciences that shows promise of making an important contribution to the proposed area of activity.



Congratulations to the 2019 Recipients


Vivek Bald | Associate Professor, Comparative Media Studies
Since 2004, Bald has been researching the histories of two groups of South Asian Muslim immigrants who came to the United States during the Asian Exclusion era and “disappeared” into working class African American and Puerto Rican communities in New York, New Orleans, Detroit, and elsewhere. Bald will use his SHASS research funding on three final production trips to finish his documentary about these communities, The Bengali Harlem, for "The Lost Histories Project."
Vivek Bald's website


David Deveau | Senior Lecturer, Music and Theater Arts
SHASS research funding will support Deveau's third recording project, which will be released worldwide on the Steinway & Sons record label. His first two CDs on this label were released to excellent critical acclaim in the New York TimesGramophone magazine, the Boston Globe (named a recording of the year), the American record Guide, and many other media outlets.
David Deveau's website


Stephanie Frampton | Associate Professor, Literature
Trained as a classicist and a comparatist, Frampton works on the history of the book in antiquity, focusing on the intersections of literary and material culture in the ancient Mediterranean and traditions of reading, writing, and scholarship in the classical tradition. Her current book project, Cicero’s Library, focuses on the rise of book culture in late Republican and early Imperial Rome by looking for books in the hands of readers and on the shelves of their libraries, as engines for the production of literature. Her funding will also go toward bringing Oxford Latinist Don Fowler's significant work Unrolling the Text into print at long last, and will be collaborating with Peta Fowler to co-edit the short volume.
Stephanie Frampton's website


Ian Hattwick | Lecturer, Music and Theater Arts
Social experiences are increasingly mediated by computational systems, both in terms of everyday interactions as well as the formation of social structures. Music is no exception to this, and provides a unique opportunity to gain perspective on how this mediation takes place. Hattwick's funding will support a new multimodal digital musical instrument for computer music performance.
Ian Hattwick's website


Heather Hendershot | Professor of Film and Media
Today, it is taken for granted that most American news coverage is slanted left or right, but in the network era there was still an understanding that news could (and should) be neutral. The tumult of the 1960s tore that notion apart. Hendershot will use the SHASS Research funding to develop my new book project, How the News Became “Fake”: Chicago ’68, TV News, and Conservative Outrage.
Heather Hendershot's website


Clapperton Mavhunga | Associate Professor, Program in Science, Technology, and Society
Mavhunga's funding will go toward the final phase of his research on his third monograph, African Chemistry, a multi-year study of plant- and animal- based, and synthetic poisons and medicines spread over multiple southern and eastern African countries. What does it mean to talk about African technology as imagined and practiced by Africans? 
Clapperton Mavhunga's website


Elena Ruehr | Lecturer, Music and Theater Arts
Ruehr will create new record of previously unrecorded works featuring an internationally known string quartet, The Borromeo String Quartet, along with Cecily Ward, producer, Jon Manasse, clarinet, Donald Berman piano and Sarah Brady, flute. Ruehr will record four new works: The Worlds RevolveIcarusLucy, and it's about time.
Elena Ruehr's website


Bettina Stoetzer | Assistant Professor, Anthropology
When do animals and plants enter the public arena and become visible urban inhabitants? News about the diversity of fauna and flora in many cities have grown in the past decades – despite the endangerment of many species across the planet. Stoetzer will use her funding to complete her research project, “Becoming Urban: Animals, Plants, and the Resilience of Cities in an Era of Environmental Change.”
Bettina Stoetzer's website

 

Suggested Links

MIT's Mission in the Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences 

About the SHASS Research Fund

The Power of the Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences at MIT

 

MIT SHASS Research and Innovation 
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MIT SHASS is home to research that has a global impact, and to graduate programs recognized as among the finest in the world. With 13 academic fields, the School's research portfolio includies international studies, linguistics, economics, poverty alleviation, history, literature, anthropology, digital humanities, philosophy, global studies and languages, music and theater, writing, political science, security studies, women's and gender studies, and comparative media studies.
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