Humanities Institute seed grants to archive key works and more

The Humanities Institute seed grant program supports ASU-based humanities projects that engage with social challenges in the past, present or future.

This semester, seven projects were awarded funding, including one in partnership with the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts and another that was recommended to continue as a special project within the institute.

“These projects show the possibilities, ambition and reach of the Humanities,” said Ron Broglio, director of the institute.

Learn how the awarded faculty below are helping to preserve, promote and advance culture in this critical moment.

Chris Hanlon — professor, School of Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies

“Editing Emerson's Natural History of Intellect” will be the first reliable scholarly edition of "Natural History of Intellect," the last lecture series by Ralph Waldo Emerson, American essayist and poet (1803–82).

The seed grant will support the application for a Houghton Library Fellowship, which will supply funding for a one-month residence at Houghton, where the 884-page manuscript resides. The project is under contract for publication with Oxford University Press.

Daniel Gilfillan — associate professor, School of International Letters and Cultures
Steven Zuiker — associate professor, Mary Lou Fulton College for Teaching and Learning Innovation
Michael Compitello — associate professor, School of Music, Dance and Theatre
Rodrigo Meirelles — assistant professor, The Sidney Poitier New American Film School
Bregje van Geffen — grad service assistant, Center for Science and the Imagination

“Soundscape Imaginaries: Exploring across Multispecies Boundaries” investigates how creative responses to field recording generate ecological imagination and multispecies awareness. In partnership with Arizona School for the Arts, youth engage with Phoenix bat recordings that capture sounds beyond human perception, create their own field recordings of environments significant to them, and collaborate through science, music and creative writing to produce musical compositions and speculative narratives exploring urban coexistence futures.

A workshop with biologist David Haskell on sensory awareness in creative writing and science communication extends public engagement. This study demonstrates how sonic practices advance environmental humanities while providing proof of concept for attracting external funding.

Hilde Hoogenboom — associate professor, School of International Letters and Cultures

“Unearthing the Literary Archives of Russia’s Brontë Sisters: The Poetry of Nadezhda Khvoshchinskaya” will scan, transcribe and digitally publish about 200 poems, with English translations for selected poems, by Nadezhda Khvoshchinskaya (1821–89), located in two notebooks in the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art in Moscow. The collection is the last part of an ongoing project with an international team of scholars, archivists and translators that began in collaboration with Arja Rosenholm in 2000 to make the large oeuvre and story of this major nineteenth-century Russian woman writer accessible in the digital age to readers, students, scholars and translators and to rebuild her reputation.

Josh Coleman — assistant professor, Department of English
Jessica Early — professor, Department of English

“Engaging Banned Books: Cultivating Civically Engaged Literacies with Arizona English Teachers in Censored Times” investigates how Arizona English language arts teachers are navigating increasing legislative pressures to remove diverse books from classrooms.

Through a mixed-methods research design, including statewide surveys and in-depth interviews, this study will examine teachers’ perceptions of civic responsibility in the face of book banning policies. Findings will inform the development of professional learning opportunities and public programming focused on teaching literacy as a form of civic engagement. By connecting research to practice, this project aims to support educators, inform public discourse and advance national conversations about intellectual freedom, inclusive education and the role of the humanities in a democratic society.

Julia Sarreal — professor, School of Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies

“Planting the Histories of the Americas” brings together historically minded scholars focusing on the history of native plants of the Americas from the pre-Columbian era to the present.

At the intersection of natural history, histories of science and medicine, environmental history, plant humanities, food history, ethnohistory and cultural history, native plants in the Americas offer multiple vantage points to study the Indigenous past, interethnic relations, regimes of knowledge and medical care, comparative frontiers, economic development and nation-building in the Western Hemisphere. As such, the project promises important synergies and advances in the fields of plant humanities, Latin American studies, American studies and Native American studies.

Dan Collins — professor, School of Art
Matt Bell — professor, Department of English
Jenna N. Hanchey — assistant professor, Hugh Downs School of Human Communication

The Clute Science Fiction Library at the Telluride Institute in Telluride, Colorado, in partnership with Arizona State University, aims to preserve and enhance a unique archive of 14,000 first-edition science fiction books.

“The Clute Science Fiction Library: A Partnership for Preservation, Access, and Visibility” will significantly increase its visibility and accessibility for researchers, students and communities while safeguarding the collection’s integrity, ensuring its longevity for future generations. By elevating this rare collection’s profile, the grant will support scholarly engagement, foster community participation and underscore the enduring importance of physical archives in shaping the future of literary and cultural research.

Marcos Colón — assistant professor, Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication
Erin K. Coyle — associate professor, Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication
Shondiin Silversmith — graduate research assistant, Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication

“Testimony as Resistance: Leonard Peltier, Indigenous Storywork and Intergenerational Trauma” investigates how oral testimonies of Indigenous activists transmit collective memory and intergenerational trauma, with Leonard Peltier serving as a central case study.

Unlike many Indigenous elders whose trauma was shaped by boarding schools, Peltier’s life story is marked by state repression, political imprisonment and the criminalization of Native activism. His nearly 50 years of incarceration, during which he has consistently maintained his innocence for the 1975 killing of two FBI agents, make him one of the longest-held political prisoners in the United States.

Now 81 and serving his sentences under house arrest with the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Nation, Peltier embodies both the deeply personal costs of state violence and the resilience of Indigenous resistance. His testimony is a distinctive site to examine how long-term incarceration shapes individual identity and the collective memory of Native communities. Rooted in respect, reciprocity and relationality, Peltier’s testimony is situated as an intellectual contribution that transmits trauma and resilience and serves as cultural survival and political resistance.

The study will employ in-depth interviews analyzed through "Indigenous Storywork" (Archibald, 2008), Indigenous Standpoint Theory (Moreton-Robinson, 2013) and narrative analysis (Riessman, 2008). These frameworks ensure that Peltier’s testimony is understood not as extractable data but as knowledge-making in its own right (Smith, 2021; Wilson, 2008). Outcomes will include an archive-quality recording of Peltier’s testimony, a preliminary scholarly analysis, and a proof of concept for a comparative oral history archive and documentary film. Scholarly outputs will be paired with community outcomes, including returning findings to Native nations, cocreating educational toolkits and building a digital archive accessible to Indigenous communities.