Arts and Humanities Microgrants

A collage of images representing the Arts and Humanities Microgrants program at Pitt with studio arts, linguistics and composition

As part of the Pitt Momentum Funds, these $3,000 one-year microgrants are supporting high-quality, smaller-scale research, scholarly, creative and artistic endeavors for faculty in the arts and humanities.

In the Spring 2024 cycle, additional $2,000 supplements for projects that involve sustainability research were included through collaborative joint funding with the Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation.

“The grants are intended to enhance and expand internal funding opportunities for arts and humanities faculty, as a resource to support existing projects, works-in-progress, or to test concepts where a smaller grant with fast decision-making could be transformative,” said Shelome Gooden, assistant vice chancellor for research in the humanities, arts, social sciences and related fields.

The Arts and Humanities Microgrants program runs twice per academic year (Fall and Spring). The deadline for Fall 2024 has not yet been announced. 

Visit the Arts and Humanities Microgrants Competition Space >>

Apply for the Arts and Humanities Microgrants >>

Spring 2024 Cohort

Zachary Horton, Department of English

Player Computer: Gameplay, AI, and the Birth of Computational Media

Zachary Horton, Department of English

Michael Meyer, Department of English

The Beautiful Island Beyond the Seas

Michael Meyer, Department of English

Sarah Moore, Department of Film and Media Studies

Greenways

Sarah MooreDepartment of Film and Media Studies

Received additional funding through the Mascaro Sustainability collaboration.

Elizabeth Monasterios, Department of Hispanic Languages & Literatures

El Alto: An Aymara City Where Literature and Architecture Meet at 13,313 Feet Above Sea Level

Elizabeth Monasterios, Department of Hispanic Languages & Literatures

Alex Taylor, Department of History of Art & Architecture

Beyond the Rust Belt: Reinterpreting Labor and Land in the UAG Collection

Alex Taylor, Department of History of Art & Architecture

Sylvia Rhor, Department of History of Art & Architecture

Received additional funding through the Mascaro Sustainability collaboration.

Drew Armstrong, Department of History of Art & Architecture

The Cathedral of Learning: A New Vision for the American University

Drew Armstrong, Department of History of Art & Architecture

Omid Shekari, Department of Studio Arts

Beyond the Institution

Omid Shekari, Department of Studio Arts

Aaron Henderson, Department of Studio Arts

Future Studio - Regional Environmental Justice Interventions

Aaron Henderson, Department of Studio Arts

Michelle Granshaw, Department of Theatre Arts

The Fight for Desegregation: Race, Freedom, and the Theatre After the Civil War

Michelle Granshaw, Department of Theatre Arts

Peng Hai, Department of History

“Greater Japan Muslim League” and the Making of the Modern “Muslim World

Peng Hai, Department of History

Fall 2023 Cohort

David Tenorio Gonzalez, Department Hispanic Languages and Literatures

The Queer Underground

David Tenorio GonzalezDepartment Hispanic Languages and Literatures

Michael Sawyer, Department of English

Reclaiming: 5 x (00:08:46 of Ju Ju)

Michael SawyerDepartment of English

Kaline Ung, Department of French & Italian Languages & Literatures

Authoring Autism in France

Kaline UngDepartment of French & Italian Languages & Literatures

Dela Kuma, Department of Anthropology

Africanizing Tastes and Consumer Power in 19th – 20th Century Southeastern Ghana

Dela KumaDepartment of Anthropology

Rachel Love, Department of French & Italian Languages & Literatures

Black Power and the Italian Radical Left

Rachel LoveDepartment of French & Italian Languages & Literatures

Lidong Xiang, Department of English

Cruel Girlhood: Violent Practices in Imagining Chinese Schoolgirls

Lidong XiangDepartment of English

Elfriede Fursich, Department of Communications

The Business of Media Diversity

Elfriede FursichDepartment of Communications

Calum Matheson, Department of Communications

Snakes and Psychology in the Archives

Calum MathesonDepartment of Communications

Joy Priest, Department of English

YODD: A Black Surrealism

Joy Priest, Department of English

This is a Year of Discourse and Dialogue project.

Sean DiLeonardi, Department of English Literature

The International Bestsellers Data Project

Sean DiLeonardiDepartment of English Literature

John Teacher, Department of Marketing

UPJ Theatre Combat Education Initiative

John TeacherDepartment of Marketing

Spring 2023 Cohort

Angie Cruz, Department of English

Il Palazzo, A Novel

Angie CruzDepartment of English

Abstract: Il Palazzo is a novel that works as a fictional translation from an Italian who confesses his wish for a “morte bianca” (a workplace death) so he can leave his son an inheritance. The novel reveals the tensions between the new immigrants in Italy and the impact on the global economy on small businesses and families.

Pilar Herr et al., Humanities Division, Greensburg

Chilean Parlamentos: Expanding the Pedagogical Profile of a Digital Humanities Project

Pilar HerrHumanities Division, Greensburg
William CampbellHumanities Division, Greensburg
Sean DiLeonardiHumanities Division, Greensburg
Elizabeth ContrerasHumanities Division, Greensburg

Abstract: This Digital Humanities project will provide scholarly English translations of and bilingual commentary on colonial Spanish treaties with Indigenous peoples of Chile. To position the team to leverage their current one-year NEH Translations Planning Grant to a proposal for the full three-year NEH Translations Grant for the main part of the project, the team will expand their vision for what they can do with their materials in a digital environment. They seek to take greater advantage of digital media to create a website that is more accessible and attractive to college students in general, and to engage their own students’ creativity in creating it. However, identifying the tools, content, design, and strategies best suited to their material and their team is a significant challenge. Momentum funding will enable the team to spend a week in July at the Institute for Liberal Arts Digital Scholarship (ILiADS) to workshop the project with other Digital Humanities scholars and teams.

William Lychack, Department of English

The Burma Trilogy: An Account of the Monkhood and Other Sorrows in the Golden Land

William LychackDepartment of English

Abstract: This year’s Pitt Momentum Funds will support the final research and writing of a series of general audience novels set in contemporary Burma (Myanmar). The purpose and goal will be a completed book manuscript consisting of three companion novels based on Lychack’s experiences in Burma as a Buddhist monk. The deliverable will be a finished submission to publishers by the spring of 2024.

Edward (SpearIt) Madonado, School of Law

Muslim Prison Litigation: Advancing the Rule of Law through Litigation Praxis

Edward (SpearIt) MadonadoSchool of Law

Abstract: This project examines Muslim prison litigation through the lens of Outcrit Jurisprudence. At its core, the work is about racial and religious repression and the difficulties of incarcerated people to access justice. The work lays a foundation for the Muslim contribution to prison law jurisprudence, which includes some monumental achievements; from the early days when Muslims played a central role in the evolution of the prisoners' rights movement to the present, where they are undoubtedly the most litigious religious group in prison. Muslims have expanded the rights of all people in prison and have impacted prison culture positively by importing more law and accountability into prison administration. The primary focus of this project is to underscore this legacy in litigation and recognize the immense influence of Muslims on the development of prison law and policy.

Patrick McKelvey, Department of Theatre Arts

Supporting Actors: A Disability History of Theatrical Welfare in the United States

Patrick McKelveyDepartment of Theatre Arts

Abstract: This award funds the first phase of archival research for McKelvey’s second book, Supporting Actors: A Disability History of Theatrical Welfare in the United States. This book will offer a history of social services for disabled actors since the late nineteenth century. At the center of this history is The Actors’ Fund of America, an organization that has financed an impressive range of disability supports, including a retirement home, health clinics, addiction recovery programs, assistive technology grants, and supportive housing for people with HIV/AIDS. Supporting Actors is grounded in the archives of the Fund and allied organizations. These include the Edwin Forrest Home for Retired Actors (1873-1986); the Katharine Cornell Foundation (1931-1962); the Negro Actors Guild of America (1938-1982); and Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS (1988-Present). A series of questions animate the book: what ideas about care, dependence, and deservingness did these organizations institutionalize, and how did they change over time? What racial, gender, sexual, and class norms did they propagate? How did they interact with institutions of public welfare? To what extent have these organizations fomented disability activism? Throughout, McKelvey is especially interested in querying the relationship between theatrical welfare and Black, queer, and feminist disability history.

Michael Meyer, Department of English

A Dirty, Filthy Book

Michael MeyerDepartment of English

Abstract: This nonfiction book takes readers into Victorian London, where the first great battle over access to birth control played out at the heart of the establishment. In an era of repressed sexuality and sex education, a brave single mother dared to publish an American pamphlet teaching contraception, welcomed her arrest, and defended herself against the Crown in a Westminster Hall trial some four decades before the first woman was allowed to pass the British bar. Newspapers from Devon to Dublin to Edinburgh covered the trial, bringing her message to breakfast tables across the United Kingdom. Sales of the pamphlet itself rocketed to 250,000 in a matter of months. Annie Besant would win her case, but lose custody of her children, as well as her reputation. Today her sacrifice and pioneering campaign is all but forgotten.

Elizabeth Monasterios, Department of Hispanic Languages & Literatures

The Churata Papers

Elizabeth MonasteriosDepartment of Hispanic Languages & Literatures

Abstract: The Churata Papers is a collaborative project aimed to transcribing and publishing critical and annotated editions of two unpublished manuscripts by Andean writer Gamaliel Churata (Arequipa 1897-Lima 1969). This is a literary corpus written over the first half of the twentieth century in a literary style that can be nearly impenetrable without critical annotation. The participants are Andean scholars Riccardo Badini (University of Cagliary, Italy) and Elizabeth Monasterios (University of Pittsburgh). The project has three major phases: planning, preparation of critical and annotated editions, and publication. The planning phase has been completed and the project is entering its second phase, which involves: (a) transcription of manuscripts, identifying ambiguous linguistic structures, odd expressions, and problems with the logical coherence of the text, (b) workshops to discuss progress and solve difficulties understanding Andean thinking, (c) archival research, and (c) writing of introductory essays. An Arts & Humanities Microgrant will allow me to conduct 7-day research at the Centro Interdipartimentale di Studi sull'America Pluriversale, University of Cagliary, which holds a collection of letters, notes, and other primary sources crucial to complete the annotated edition of the manuscript assigned to me. To date, no comprehensive scholarly examination has been undertaken of these materials.

Mrinalini Rajagopalan, Department of History of Art & Architecture

Marks She Made: The Art and Architecture of Begum Samru

Mrinalini RajagopalanDepartment of History of Art & Architecture

Abstract: Rajagopalan’s forthcoming book, Marks She Made: The Art and Architecture of Begum Samru, 1803-1836, offers a creative biography of an Indian woman ruler whose choreography of art and architecture were key to her elevated social, political, and financial station. Marks She Made will be the first full-length monograph on a South Asian female patron of art and architecture. The begum (title for a noblewoman in India) rose from modest beginnings as a courtesan in Mughal Delhi, to become the commander of her own mercenary army, and later the ruler of her independent territory of Sardhana (60 km northwest of Delhi). She was a trusted ally to the Mughal emperor and the English East India Company (two dominant political powers in north India at the time) and maintained diplomatic relations with two popes and King Louis Philippe of France by exchanging portraits, architectural drawings, and letters with these powerful men. Her patronage of art and architecture played a key role in establishing the begum as a powerful but non-threatening ruler, as an upholder and patron of the Catholic faith in India, a political ally to several European and Indian factions, and as a woman of great wealth coupled with remarkable charity.

Omid Shekari, Department of Studio Arts

In Between

Omid ShekariDepartment of Studio Arts

Abstract: The core research of this project is to create a series of artworks to examine the in-between status of people of Iran, trapped between a duality in the formation and perpetuation of the politics in the Middle East where the post-colonial politics bounce back and forth between pseudo-democracy supported by the imperial West, specifically the US and a super nationalist dictator that justifies his failures by portraying himself as a hero of anti-imperialism and anti-west. The forms of the pieces start form the portraits of Pahlavi, the last monarch before the 1979 revolution and Khamenei, the current supreme leader. Shekari plans to create a few relief sculptures where the pieces wouldn’t be connected but juxtaposed next to each other something like a puzzle to create the whole image. The pieces would be a combination of 2D and 3D. The main materials would be plaster, concrete, paper and clay in addition to a few large paintings and drawings.

David Tenorio, Department of Hispanic Languages & Literatures

Queer Nightscapes: Performance and Afterglow of Queer Mexicanidad

David TenorioDepartment of Hispanic Languages & Literatures

Abstract: Queer Nightscapes: Performance and the Afterglow of Queer Mexicanidad, examines how queer and trans cultural practices of relajo (i.e., playfulness), dancing, cruising, and longing shape underground material infrastructures that enable queer and trans worldmaking during nighttime and beyond. Queer Nightscapes illustrates how performance and play enable circuits of queer and trans contact between affects, spaces, and bodies. By focusing on queer affective economies in the Global South, Tenorio decenters the U.S.-based queer optic and the geopolitical configurations of queer epistemology in the Americas. In conversation with queer and trans cultural workers and producers, Queer Nightscapes contributes to a nuanced understanding of the everyday affective negotiations with bodily consumption. In doing so, Tenorio’s book traces alternative modes of consumption and affective networks of joy and care amidst capitalist extraction.

Christian Wildberg, Department of Classics

New Edition and Translation of the Corpus Hermeticum

Christian WildbergDepartment of Classics

Abstract: Seventeen Hermetic tractates, most of them complete, are preserved in approximately 28 medieval manuscripts, of the so-called Corpus Hermeticum. The publication proposed here offers a substantially revised text and new English translation of all tractates. The traditional order of the treatises is quite clearly random, and in Wildberg’s translation, the tractates are ordered in a different way so as to make the entire collection, and the remarkable thoughts it contains, more accessible to readers. This project will help to bring out the overall cultural and philosophical significance to this body of text. The aim of the publication is to show that scholars must depart from the traditional approach to the Hermetica which reads them as poor derivatives of Western Greco-Roman philosophy. Appreciating the non-Greek character of core commitments Hermetic doctrine allows them to be assigned to an ancient Egyptian provenance.

Fall 2022 Cohort

Christopher Nygren, Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences
Alison Langmead, Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences

Art History in the Age of Artificial Image Generation

Christopher NygrenDietrich School of Arts and Sciences
Alison Langmead, Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences

Abstract: Over the last few months, the state-of-field has changed dramatically with the release of new techniques for advanced computing. Certain forms of artificial intelligence and machine learning have begun producing images with recognizable artistic "styles." These image-generation algorithms raise serious questions for the discipline of art history, which has spent more than two centuries studying the question of "style" from diverse angles. We aim to convene a group of scholars at the University of Pittsburgh for a day-long workshop who are willing and able to think openly and generously about how art history can participate in these culture-critical conversations about artificial image generation and the humanities. The workshop will take place on Friday, December 16th on site at the Visual Media Workshop, on which date we offer breakfast, lunch, and dinner to fuel the conversation. We are also seeking funding to reimburse travel and lodging expenses. Each participant will prepare a short presentation that responds to, and extends upon, the theme of the workshop (circulated to participants). To foster a free exchange of ideas, this workshop will be closed and only include the convenors, participants, and a select few members of our local technologists and members of the DH community.

Annette Vee, Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences

Automating Writing from Androids to AI

Annette VeeDietrich School of Arts and Sciences

Abstract: This application requests funds for two research activities related to a book in progress and to be conducted over the next year: 1) travel to the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia to examine the Maillardet Automaton (~1800) and 2) subscriptions to three of the commercial AI text generation services currently offered online. My book, Automating Writing from Androids to AI, asks: What does it mean to be a human writer in the midst of faster and more prevalent machine writing? How must we change our writing and teaching practices to account for these new forms of computational writing? I connect the recent developments in AI and writing (natural language generation, or NLG) to a longer history of automation. Drawing on histories of 18th automata, 19th century science and fiction, accounts of amanuenses in the 19th and 20th centuries, poetic, business and computing experiments in the 20th century, and contemporary developments in NLG, Automated Writing provides a humanistic and historical context for the quest to automate writing. My interdisciplinary research expertise in computing and writing positions me to carry out this project. Microgrant funding will cover the trip to Philadelphia and the cost of several online subscriptions to explore current NLG technology.

Shaun Myers, Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences

Black Anaesthetics: African American Narrative Beyond Man

Shaun MyersDietrich School of Arts and Sciences

Abstract: My current book project, Black Anaesthetics: African American Narrative Beyond Man, argues that writers such as Toni Morrison, Octavia Butler, and Andrea Lee invented literary techniques of radically obscuring blackness to trouble the racial logics requiring that it always be uttered or seen. In the 1970s and 1980s, Black women writers gained unprecedented visibility in a US cultural marketplace shaped, on the one hand, by the Black Arts Movement’s demand that Black artists represent lived racial experience and, on the other, by the historical white demand that blackness reliably take its appointed form: embodied and spectacular. Yet, even as these contending forces intersected, certain Black women writers refused these expectations. Studying these women’s narrative racial experiments, Black Anaesthetics tells the story of how their integration of the mainstream publishing world conditioned the development of what I term black anaesthetics, narrative practices figuring blackness as indeterminate, but always in the shadow of the racialized world. I contend that this neglected archive of Black women’s experimentalism answered calls to transform humanism. In doing so, I illumine the disavowed Black past of what now goes by the name of “posthumanism.”

Cuilan Liu, Dietrich School or Arts and Sciences

Buddhism in Court: Religion, Law, and Jurisdiction in China

Cuilan Liu, Dietrich School or Arts and Sciences

Abstract: What happens to Buddhist monks or nuns who commit crimes? My book Buddhism in Court explores how Buddhists campaigned for clerical immunity to prevent state courts from prosecuting and punishing ordained Buddhist offenders. This book unveils how Buddhists in China reimagined this Indian campaign and how their reimagination continued to define Buddhism’s place in the Chinese jurisdictional landscape in China from the fourth century to the present. Drawing on archives, court documents, Chinese laws, official histories, law case books, Buddhist monastic codes, institutional announcements, memoirs of retired magistrates, and private writings circulated on social media, this book traces the legacy of the campaign for clerical privilege from its origin in India to its transformation in China and its continuing impact in the Chinese courtroom to the present day. Diverting from the dynasty-centered approach to studying religion, law, and history in China, Buddhism in Court expands our understanding of this legacy of early Chinese Buddhism and challenges the notion that the passage between imperial and post-imperial China was one of disruption.

Song Shi, School of Computing and Information

China and the Internet: Using New Media for Development and Social Change

Song ShiSchool of Computing and Information

Abstract: I am applying for the Arts & Humanities Microgrants to support the editing and publication of my book: China and the Internet: Using New Media for Development and Social Change. The full manuscript of my book has been peer-reviewed and accepted by Rutgers University Press to be published in winter 2023. Broadly, my book analyzes the impacts of new media and Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) on social change and development in contemporary China. Drawing on media coverage, NGO project records, government policy documents, and interactions between activists online, my book investigates how activists, NGOs, and the government have engaged in new media interventions, which have served to bridge the digital divide, to empower NGOs, to promote government accountability, to help alleviate hunger and malnutrition, and to respond to the COVID-19 outbreak. These project and policy interventions—initiated jointly or independently by activists, NGOs, and the government—aim to utilize new media and ICTs to promote development and social change. Second, it explores the complex, multidimensional, and dynamic relations between activists, NGOs, and the government in new media interventions. Third, it examines the role and effects of ICTs, new media, and traditional media in promoting development and social change.

Amanda Huensch, Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences

Comprehensibility and Accentedness in Second Language Pronunciation

Amanda HuenschDietrich School of Arts and Sciences

Abstract: The recent ‘multilingual turn’ in applied linguistics which rejects dominant monolingual ideologies and ‘the idealized native speaker,’ while prioritizing multilingual competencies and repertoires is in lockstep with broader discussions in the Arts and Humanities focused on social justice and celebrating diversity. Within the field of second language pronunciation, this shift means focusing on goals of intelligibility and comprehensibility rather than accent elimination. A critical line of inquiry has become to differentiate between speech features impeded communication from those that, while potentially salient, do not. This proposed project directly contributes to area by examining how listener perceptions of pronunciation impact their evaluations of second language speech. Recent studies (Huensch & Nagle, 2020, 2021) have suggested that having listeners transcribe learner speech might act as an awareness-raising tool because when they write down what they hear, they can differentiate speech that is difficult to understand from that which is merely accented. The proposed study will test this by collecting listener ratings of learner speech via Amazon Mechanical Turk and comparing it to previously collected ratings of the same speech samples which were also transcribed. The findings have the potential to provide implications for designing training modules to reduce accent discrimination.

Marta Ortega-Llebaria, Dietrich School or Arts and Sciences

Creating a Cross-Linguistic Database to Investigate Speech Rhythm

Marta Ortega-LlebariaDietrich School or Arts and Sciences

Abstract: Rhythm, which refers to the sensation of isochrony conveyed by repeating patterns in speech, is key to add emotion and pragmatic meanings to the dialogues of, for example, voice assistants such as Siri and Alexa. Despite its importance, few papers tested new promising rhythm measures due to the technical challenges involved in this research. The present project aims at ameliorating these challenges by creating a database to study prosody cross-linguistically together with a set of scripts that output over 20 rhythm measures. With the help of undergraduate students majoring in different languages, the database will consist of TED talks in 8 languages, their orthographic transcriptions, and annotated speech wave forms (words, syllables, phonemes, and pauses). Speech annotations will be automatically generated by freely available aligners and sound editing programs. This database will be the input to the scripts that output the 20+ rhythm measures. Both tools, the database and scripts, together with a manual will be made available to the research community worldwide in order to promote international dialogue in this field.

Jeremy Justus, University of Pittsburgh-Johnstown Campus
Mark DiMauro, University of Pittsburgh-Johnstown Campus

Past and Future Tense: Using AI/NLG to Rebuild Sophocles’ The Searchers

Jeremy JustusUniversity of Pittsburgh-Johnstown Campus
Mark DiMauroUniversity of Pittsburgh-Johnstown Campus

Abstract: Dr. Justus and Dr. DiMauro will make use of textual generation software powered by artificial intelligence from openai.org. With Generative Pre-trained Transformer Three (GPT-3) we will amend and repair an ancient text, partially lost to history: Sophocles’ The Searchers. This repaired version of the text will allow current students of classical and world literature, as well as those within Humanities Data Science (a newly proposed class), to read as full a version of the original text as can be reasonably reconstructed, as well as dissect, discuss, and reflect on the AI-generation process.

Aaron Henderson, Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences

Pitt Studio Art Presents: Duos

Aaron HendersonDietrich School of Arts and Sciences

Abstract: Pitt Studio Art Presents: Duos is a curatorial project by the Studio Art Department’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion committee consisting of a screening and an exhibition. Each showcase will present 2 artists from the Pittsburgh community, with a focus on highlighting underrepresented and emerging artists. These events will provide much needed support to these artists and connect the University and its Studio Arts Department with the broader Pittsburgh arts community.