September 25, 2023

The Mellon-funded Humanities Without Walls network has created stronger, lasting institutional connections.

In the beginning, Humanities Without Walls was an untested idea. An experiment. Building HWW’s infrastructure was an evolutionary process, with several of the consortial partners finding ways to map or adapt HWW ideologies onto pre-existing institutional landscapes, while other members of the consortium forged ahead into more uncharted territory.
 

Shaden M. Tageldin is associate professor in the Department of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. She joins the IAS as a residential faculty fellow for Spring 2022.

Since its establishment in 2020, Minnesota Transform, the $5M higher education initiative funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, has undertaken a variety of projects that support decolonial and racial justice across Minnesota, the Twin Cities, and the University. One of these is the the Towards Recognition and University-Tribal Healing (TRUTH) Project.

Ann DuHamel is an associate professor of Music in the Humanities Division at the University of Minnesota at Morris. She joins the IAS as a residential faculty fellow for Fall 2021.

Alexandra Peck is an anthropologist and the Visiting Scholar of Indigenous Studies with the Environmental Stewardship, Place, and Community Initiative at the IAS. She began the two-year appointment in August, and has since joined our community of scholars as she engages in work both with MESPAC and on her own research project. 

Meet the IAS Research and Creative Collaborative “Fostering Understanding and Promoting Inclusion for Individuals with Disabilities.” 

Conveners:
Yue Wu, Rehabilitation Medicine, Medical School
Philip Shorey, Independent Composer

Ricardo Velasco is a documentarian and cultural studies scholar. He earned his PhD in Latin American Studies with Portfolio Certificates in Cultural Studies and Museum Studies from the University of Texas at Austin in 2020. Ricardo joins the IAS community of scholars as the Minnesota Transform Postdoctoral Associate.

We are thrilled to introduce Ricardo and his current project to you, and look forward to sharing a more in-depth interview with him in the spring. 

Cassius Adair joins the IAS as an American Council of Learned Societies Visiting Fellow. He is also an independent audio producer, writer, and researcher, and operates Sylveon Consulting.

Cass is at work on a project titled “The Transgender Internet,” which brings together transgender theory and computer history to understand trans history not just as a genealogy of in-the-streets resistance, but also as enmeshed within dominant political formations, media infrastructures, and information systems.

Read on to learn more about his work in progress.