Humanities faculty members, graduate students receive Hall Center Travel Awards

LAWRENCE — Two humanities faculty members and two graduate students were awarded travel grants by the Hall Center for the Humanities to aid in their research. The Hall Center provides financial support to researchers who require domestic or international travel undertaken as a necessary component of a research or creative project.

Akiko Takeyama, assistant professor of anthropology and women, gender and sexuality studies, received funding to travel to Tokyo. Takeyama’s project, “Affect Economy of Human Trafficking: Vulnerability, Hope and Risky Endeavor in Japan,” explores the interrelation between politico-legal systems and the global economy, focusing on human trafficking in Japan. Japan has one of the world’s most active human trafficking systems, and Takeyama intends to conduct research and interviews at universities, government offices, law enforcement bureaus and sites of activism to expand her research.

Jacob Dorman, assistant professor of history and American studies, received funds to travel to Sarasota, Fla. Dorman’s project, “Black Orientalism: Spiritualists, Muslims, Minstrels, Masons, & the Making of Black Cultures,” examines American culture over the past 150 years, focusing on how blacks transformed images of Muslims in theatres, circuses and religious tracts to create their own representations of the Orient and to form new religions. Dorman will visit the Ringling Archive, the nation’s premier repository of circus-related archival material, in Sarasota to document the prevalence of Orientalism in circus, medicine and minstrel shows.

Amber Roberts, doctoral candidate in history, received the Jim Martin Travel Award to conduct research for her dissertation, “'Graced with Being Good Horse-men’: The Discourse of Horsemanship and the Elite Ideal in Early Modern England” in San Marino, Calif. Roberts will visit the Huntington Library, which contains one of the most extensive collections of early modern British manuscripts outside the United Kingdom, to research horsemanship, politics and the elite ideal.

George Klaeren, doctoral candidate in history, received the Andrew Debicki International Travel Award to conduct research for his dissertation, “Rational Inquisitors: Medical Discourse, Empiricism, and Catholic Epistemology in the Eighteenth-Century Iberian Atlantic,” in Madrid. Klaeren will visit the Archivo Histórico Nacional and the Biblioteca Nacional de España to investigate how medical discourse and empiricism shaped new standards of proof and truth in the Spanish Catholic Church during the 18th century.

For more information, contact the Hall Center by email or call (785) 864-4798.