College awards Interdisciplinary Initiatives grants

The College of Arts and Sciences has awarded more than $50,000 in grants for the following Interdisciplinary Initiatives in 2012-13:

  • Speaking Naturally: The Production and Comprehension of Prosody in Individuals With and Without Autism.  This project will identify specific language mechanisms that are impaired in children and adolescents with autism. This experiment will support a broader proposal to be submitted to NIH$10,000, Jennifer Arnold (Psychology), Mark Klinger (Health Sciences)
  • Health Inequalities and Justice: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue.  This involves an interdisciplinary conference that will explore the insights availed by anthropology, bioethics, philosophy, public health, and medicine on questions related to justice and inequality in health, and the contributions that may arise from a dialogue between these approaches. $10,000, Mara Buchbinder (Anthropology), Michele Rivkin-Fish (Social Medicine), Rebecca Walker (Social Medicine)
  • Gender, War and the Western World, 1600-2000: An Interdisciplinary and Transatlantic Collaboration in Gender Studies, Cultural Studies and Military History. The goal is to establish research collaboration between an international, interdisciplinary group of scholars with the purpose of developing a wide-ranging project that analyses gender, war, and military culture form 1600 to the present. The three-year project will consist of a research group, seminar and workshop series, exchange meetings, and the formulation of a significant Handbook to be published by OUP. $5,000, Karen Hagemann (History), Annegret Fauser (Music), Ariana Vigil (Women’s and Gender Studies)
  • The Triangle Film Salon Lecture Series and Symposium. This project  will present the upcoming year’s Triangle Film Salon as a continuing lecture series focusing on international theory and history of film, followed by a symposium highlighting the role of German cinema and film theory in Film Studies. $9,500, Priscilla Layne (Germanic and Slavic Languages), Inga Pollman (Germanic and Slavic Languages), Inger Brodey (English and Comparative Literature), Konrad Jarausch (History)
  • Mathematical Statistics of Computer Representations of Multi-Object Complexes. This  will support medical imaging research that will influence the planning of cancer treatment by radiation. This research will attempt to develop computer representations suited for understanding the relationships between anatomical objects and for calculating variation of these objects in patients.  $10,000 Stephen Pizer (Computer Science), James Damon (Mathematics), James Marron (Statistics), Julian Rosenman (Radiation Oncology)
  • Documenting End-of-Life Experiences: A Multi-Media Approach. This interdisciplinary seminar will prepare teams of students to create five-minute multi-media narratives about end-of-life care experiences. Professors, advanced undergraduates, and graduate students will use narrative, visual media, and other creative forms to acquire an understanding of how patients and clinicians express their experiences with illness, disability, and death.  $5,000 Chad Stevens (Journalism), Jane Thrailkill (English and Comparative Literature)
  • Rethinking Israel/Palestine Through the Arts. This conference will bring together scholars of Israel and Palestine to explore the possibility of developing a new form of scholarship that will attempt to situate Israel/Palestine within global, cultural, and political trends while remaining sensitive to regional particularities.  $3,000, Nadia Yaqub (Asian Studies)