RPW Fellows
Narrative Nomads: Resistance in the 21st-century African Hispanophone (Equatorial Guinea and the Western Sahara)
Mar. 29, 2023—Caroline Colquhoun is a 2022-23 Graduate Student Fellow from the Department of Spanish and Portuguese For many, the phrase “Spanish Empire” calls up notions of Spain’s colonies in the Americas and the Caribbean—places that were decolonized by the end of the 19th century. In Africa, however, Spain’s imperial influence lingered far longer. Equatorial Guinea and...
Humanities in the Real World Undergraduate Fellowship
Mar. 28, 2023—
On Images
Mar. 22, 2023—Vesna Pavlović is a 2022-2023 RPW Center Faculty Fellow. This year’s group is exploring the theme of “Mending and Transforming.” Images have taken an unprecedented role in our lives. Vast amounts of existing and newly taken photographs, found and computer-generated, are widely and instantaneously disseminated through social media platforms. My photography challenges these conditions by exploring...
Vital Infrastructures: The Affects, Power, and Environments of Infrastructural Media
Mar. 9, 2023—Maren Loveland is a 2022-2023 “Mending and Transforming” Graduate Student Fellow In a 1939 issue of the Daily Worker, a headline reads, “‘Uncle Sam,’ Producer of Vital Films.’” As the brief article explains, in 1939, the United States government began distributing state-produced films to the general public, who could watch federal cinema at their local...
The History of Radical Women in the Cold War Era
Mar. 7, 2023—Allison Schachter is a 2022-2023 RPW Center Faculty Fellow. This year’s group is exploring the theme of “Mending and Transforming.” I am currently working on the history of radical women in the Cold War era. My research focuses on Black and Jewish women intellectuals who were the subjects of censure as leftists, feminists, and Jewish...
Transamazonic Bondage: Violence, Networks, and Race (Brazil, 1688-1798)
Mar. 2, 2023—Alexandre Pelegrino is a 2022-23 Graduate Student Fellow from the Department of History. It is beyond question that the enslavement of Indigenous Americans played a decisive role in the formation of colonial societies in the Americas. Yet, most people assume that it was a practice confined to the early moments of colonization. In other words, Indigenous...
The Trans in “Just Transition”
Feb. 9, 2023—Nicholas Reich is a 2022-23 “Mending and Transforming” Graduate Student Fellow. How to “transition” to a world that isn’t fuel dependent? Maybe this was always a utopic question. Fuel scholar Heidi C. M. Scott explains, “We can’t even see oil because we look through oil glasses…we are, ourselves, petroleum products.” Toothbrushes, lip balms, sex toys, the...
Stories We Tell about Addiction
Dec. 8, 2022—Arleen Tuchman is a 2022-2023 RPW Center Faculty Fellow. This year’s group is exploring the theme of “Mending and Transforming.” The stories we tell matter. They can do harm, as do the stories we tell about addiction in the United States today. They create borders, separating people with addictions and their families from their communities....
“It’s been getting weirder. I can’t wait for next year.”
Nov. 15, 2022—Diana Heney is a 2022-2023 RPW Center Faculty Fellow. This year’s group is exploring the theme of “Mending and Transforming.” “It’s been getting weirder. I can’t wait for next year.” This is the insight a colleague shared with me in the final session of my first trip to Imagining America. They had been to several previous...
“Mending and Transforming” at the 2022 Southern Festival of Books
Oct. 6, 2022—Serenity Gerbman, Director of Literature and Language Programs at Humanities Tennessee. After two years online during the pandemic, Humanities Tennessee welcomes back authors and audiences for an in-person Southern Festival of Books October 14-16. We are back. But we are not the same. And we know you’re not either. We hope you will join us...