Humanities faculty, graduate students receive Hall Center Travel Awards


Fri, 02/13/2015

author

Samantha Bishop Simmons

LAWRENCE – Three 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.

Patricia Manning, associate professor of Spanish & Portuguese, received funding to travel to Madrid, Spain. Manning’s project, “Booksellers’ Influence: Marketing and Editing Novella Collections in Early Modern Madrid,” contends that a savvy group of Madrid booksellers created the enduring marketability of the novela cortesana (“courtly novels”) popular during the reign of Philip III (1598-1621) by publishing editions to appeal to new readers beyond the original noble reading public. Manning’s work reassesses, in an interdisciplinary manner, the literary and cultural significance of this genre of fiction that often has been dismissed due to its formulaic plot lines.

Adrian Finucane, assistant professor of history, received funds to travel to London as well as Seville, Spain. Finucanes’ project, “Founding Georgia: Labor, Debt and Science in an American Borderland,” focuses on 18th century experimentation in Anglo-American colonization and argues that even as the metropole began to exercise more control over certain areas, the 18th century British empire remained highly improvisational on the margins, where populations might differ greatly from the imperial ideal and where connections across borders posed both threats and opportunities. Finucane will focus particularly on Georgia, which originally functioned as both a grand social project and as a buffer zone between the established British colonies and Spanish Florida to the south.

Maya Stiller, associate professor of art history, received funding to travel Pyongyang, North Korea. Stiller’s project, “Transformational Visions and Encounters: Pilgrimages to Kŭmgangsan in Early Modern Korea,” is a multidisciplinary study of North Korea’s Kŭmgangsan mountain range, which traditionally has been one of the most important pilgrimage sites on the Korean peninsula. The book stands as the first English language history of a Korean pilgrimage site and thus will make a much-needed contribution to the religious history of Korea and East Asia.

Elizabeth Sallinger, doctoral candidate in musicology, received the Jim Martin Travel Award to conduct research for her dissertation, “Broadway Starts to Rock: Musical Theater Orchestration and Character, 1968-1975” in New York City.  Sallinger will visit the Billy Rose Theatre Collection of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, the Jerome Robbins Dance Division, the Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound, and the Theatre on Film and Tape Archive to conduct research on the appropriation of rock music on Broadway, particularly orchestration and the effect of the change in instrumental timbres on a theatrical audience.

Claire Wolnisty, doctoral candidate in history, received the Andrew Debicki International Travel Award to conduct research for her dissertation, "'Austral Empires’: Southern Investment in Central and Latin America, 1835-1877” in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Wolnisty will visit the Biblioteca Nacional and the interdisciplinary research center, the Núcleo de Estudos de População “Elza Berquó,” at the University of Campinas in São Paulo to include Brazilian voices in her discussion of post-Civil War southern identity formation in Brazil, and to use migration studies to frame her analysis of community cohesion.

For more information, please contact the Hall Center at hallcenter@ku.edu or call (785) 864-4798.

Fri, 02/13/2015

author

Samantha Bishop Simmons

Media Contacts

Samantha Bishop Simmons

Hall Center for the Humanities

785-864-4798