Humanities

Erica Kanesaka, PhD

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, EMORY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES, ENGLISH

Tender Objects: Cute Culture and Infantile Fantasies of Asian America

This book project positions the contemporary fetishization of Japanese kawaii (“cute”) culture in longer histories of American racism and the alignment of Asian Americans with cute objects. Drawing on archival research in late nineteenth and early twentieth century children’s literature and material culture, the project illustrates how seemingly innocent objects such as picture books, dolls, and teddy bears have underpinned notions of Asian cuteness, associating Asian people with toys and children in the American imagination in ways that have disguised racial, sexual, and imperial violence as forms of love and care. In tracing the transpacific circulation of children’s books and toys between Japan and the United States from the late nineteenth century to the present day, this project exposes the importance of childhood’s lost objects—items that were quite literally “loved to pieces” before being discarded—to how we understand Japanophilia and its longstanding relationship with the gendered racialization of Asian Americans.

While most of the research on kawaii has focused on the context of postwar Japan, this book will be the first to place kawaii in a larger historical and transnational frame and to focus explicitly on how kawaii’s globalization has shaped Asian American culture and politics. A URC grant will support the completion of this book project through a course release and travel funding.

Yun Kim, PhD

SENIOR LECTURER, EMORY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES, LINGUISTICS

Decoding Morphology Through Sound: A Cross-Linguistic Study of Acoustic and Articulatory Cues in Language Learning

This project examines how acoustic and articulatory cues aid in acquiring morphological information in language, with a focus on English and Korean. While morphological understanding—essential for interpreting word meaning and sentence grammar—has been thoroughly studied in written contexts, the role of phonetic cues in spoken language needs more exploration.

Building on existing research, this study has two main goals: (1) to expand English experiments comparing morphologically simple and complex forms, and (2) to extend these findings through analysis of Korean, a morphologically rich language. Our initial results show that native English speakers utilize acoustic cues like vowel and consonant durations to distinguish morphological structures. In Korean, our preliminary data reveals more subtle phonetic distinctions, leading us to investigate articulatory gestures for further insights.

Through the Gorilla online platform, we will study diverse learner populations, addressing gaps in second language acquisition research. By identifying both universal and language-specific strategies, this research will enhance linguistic theory, improve second language teaching methods, and strengthen AI speech processing systems. The funding will also support undergraduate research involvement, enriching both our research outcomes and educational goals. This project will lay groundwork for future collaborative grants and broader applications in language learning and technology, supporting the URC's mission to advance knowledge and benefit society.

Jinyu Liu, PhD

PROFESSOR, EMORY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES, HISTORY

Outsiders in Town: Mobility, Exclusion, and Negotiation in the Roman West  (First – Third Centuries CE)

The proposed book project investigates the less favorable aspects of the experiences of (im)migrants in the early Roman Empire, challenging the overly optimistic views prevalent in contemporary scholarship concerning the interaction between (im)migrants and the local populace in the Roman world. In particular, I focus on six areas of inquiry: 1. the (im)migrants’ limited access to local benefits; 2. ethnic profiling; 3. various forms of exclusion in the occupational sphere; 4. marriage options; 5. spatial experiences of the (im)migrants; 6. (im)migrants and their religious practices. This project serves as a necessary corrective to the existing disproportionate emphasis on integration and connectivity within the ancient world. By centering on individual identities and the challenges encountered by individuals who moved around or permanently relocated within the Roman Empire, my research highlights the tangible and intangible costs associated with navigating rights, obligations, and necessities in their new environments. It is certainly not my intention to negate the importance of integration or to dismiss migration as a catalyst for change, nor to discount the agency of (im)migrants. However, it is essential to emphasize that the process of integration was neither straightforward nor universally positive. Structural barriers and exclusionary phenomena complicated integration efforts, resulting in inclusion through exclusion in certain instances. Ultimately, by examining the structural barriers that elevated negotiation costs for immigrants from diverse backgrounds in the Roman Empire, my research contributes to a broader dialogue regarding whether empires generally manage ethnic diversity more effectively than nation-states, presenting counterarguments to this notion.

Gwendolynne Reid, PhD

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, OXFORD COLLEGE, HUMANITIES

Routledge Handbook of Humanities and Social Science Communication

Current trends in higher education underscore the crisis in the humanities. And yet humanities disciplines are relied on to teach the “soft” skills employers seek, to fuel the creative economy, and to help society make decisions about urgent and complex crises and opportunities. This contradiction underscores the need to better understand these fields and how they do their work. While much research exists on scientific communication, scholars have spent less time studying disciplinary communication in the humanities or how these disciplines communicate their work publicly. Communication, however, is key to doing that work successfully and to garnering much-needed support. This project, the Routledge Handbook of Humanities and Social Science Communication, addresses this gap with an edited collection that will collect foundational and emerging scholarship on writing, communication, and teaching in humanities and humanistic social science disciplines. The Handbook will serve an agenda-setting function, encouraging more work in this area, and will be written accessibly, with an eye towards stimulating dialogue among scholars, students, and stakeholders with diverse backgrounds, creating a foundation for future scholarship and study. As the lead editor on the project, I am seeking URC support for course releases that will allow me to successfully complete this major undertaking. I currently teach a 2-2 load while also directing Oxford College’s Writing & Communication Program, a role that includes a range of service. While I have the expertise for this project, my teaching and service would make it difficult to successfully complete the project without release time.

Susan Reynolds, PhD

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, CANDLER SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY, CATHOLIC STUDIES

Ways of the Cross: Passion, Performance, and Divine Solidarity

The Stations of the Cross is a traditional Roman Catholic penitential practice. On Good Friday, Christians remember the suffering and death of Jesus Christ by ritually reenacting fourteen moments in the story of the crucifixion. For communities on the edges of the church and society, rehearsing Jesus's execution is more than an act of piety. It is also an unexpected site of divine solidarity, theological agency, and political resistance. The proposed project, Ways of the Cross: Passion, Performance, and Divine Solidarity, explores what it means to perform the passion in the face of war, violence, epidemic, and displacement. With vivid prose and journalistic attention to detail, this book project takes us from migrant camps in Northern Mexico to gentrifying Atlanta neighborhoods, from a Bavarian village to Bay Area communities scarred by the AIDS epidemic. Interweaving theology, ethnography, and social history, Ways of the Cross examines how communities use the narrative and aesthetic template of crucifixion to locate their struggles in the heart of the Christian story while recasting earthly power relationships in sensual, spatial, geographical terms. In so doing, it invites us to rethink what we know about tradition, incarnation, and the transgressive intimacy of bodily performance. I seek URC support for course releases that would facilitate the completion of this book manuscript.

Iliana Rodriguez, PhD

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, EMORY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES, HISTORY

Vans, Trucks, and Ladders: A Migrant History of the US Construction Industry

This project examines five decades of metropolitan development in the nation’s Sunbelt region through the laboring lives of Latinx workers. It explores intersecting questions related to class, race, ethnicity, and migration between 1965 through the initial period of the Covid-19 pandemic. Following World War II, cities across the Sunbelt (which runs from the Southeast to the Southwest) witnessed a development boom as private capital and federal funding afforded the establishment of new industries and the construction of highways, urban centers, and suburban communities. The pro-growth, pro-business Sunbelt ethos was also accompanied by an increase in anti-immigrant politics. I investigate these parallel developments through a focus on the Latinx migrants that worked on the region’s critical infrastructure as they navigated sprawling landscapes where their mobility was subject to increased levels of policing.

While there exists important work on the Sunbelt’s postwar (sub)urban growth, there is little on the laborers who made this possible. I approach to narrating the making (or rather, building) of the region through the lived experiences of Latinx workers. Sitting at the intersection of histories on labor, migration, and postwar political economies, this social history illuminates how Latinx workers have made sense of the built environments that bear evidence of their (invisible) contributions. I hope to illustrate the long historical relationships between migrant labor and regional development that have shaped built environments across the nation.

With the support of a URC award, I will make significant progress on this research project which will become my second monograph.

Sarah Rodriguez, PhD

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, EMORY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES, RUSSIAN AND EAST ASIAN LANGUAGES AND CULTURES

Growing Old: A History of Aging in Global China

By 2050, over one-third of China’s population will be at least 60 years old and retired. Yet state efforts to meet the needs of the swelling senior population have not kept pace with demand for eldercare. Since the late 1970s, the rollback of the collective-era social safety net, uneven economic development, and limited healthcare have compounded the challenges senior citizens face. My proposed monograph, “Growing Old: A History of Aging in Global China,” investigates how these shifts have shaped experiences with aging in three Chinese locales with differing social welfare policies and levels of economic development: Shanghai, Chengdu, and Shenyang. Drawing on archival research and interviews with 100 urban and rural retirees, this research considers when old age begins and how gender, ethnicity, and class have influenced the timeline of aging since the 1949 Communist revolution. “Growing Old” also explores how different models for addressing eldercare—the traditional multigenerational household, the Soviet socialist approach, and the privatized American model—have historically informed China’s approach to this issue. Additionally, this research connects Mainland and overseas Chinese diaspora experiences with aging. Focusing on nursing homes for Chinese immigrants in New York City, “Growing Old” compares eldercare in the People’s Republic and the US. This project not only provides a historical framework for interpreting China’s contemporary demographic challenges, but it also positions these findings within global trends.

Thomas Rogers, PhD

PROFESSOR, EMORY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES, HISTORY

Celebration and Crisis: How Brazil Entered the Neoliberal Age

I approach the abstraction of neoliberalism through the concrete realities of working-class experience and business history. Large mobilizations in the 1980s to redemocratize Brazil and secure working-class power stood in tension with ballooning debt and unemployment. Like elsewhere in the world, some Brazilians called for freer markets and reduced state involvement in the economy. My project asks what that looked like, seeking to uncover a story behind the headlines and to understand the roots, impacts, and consequences of Brazil’s potent political and economic transitions in the 1980s. In all, what characterized Brazil’s entrance into the era of neoliberalism and how did people—in this case rank-and-file workers and business executives—experience the period? Concretizing these abstract questions in the detailed study of two companies and their employees will allow for a coherent narrative of the everyday impacts of economic and political change, using archival sources to track the fortunes of an auto manufacturer (Gurgel) and a heavy industry conglomerate (Indústrias Villares), and oral histories to understand the experiences of their workers.

Gary Waters, PhD

LECTURER, EMORY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES, FRENCH AND ITALIAN

Orbecche: A Critical Translation with notes

My project proposal is a translation with critical introduction of Giovan Battista Giraldi Cinzio’s tragedy, Orbecche. Orbecche is one of the most influential tragedies of the Italian Renaissance due to its impact on literary theory and theatrical praxis in the mid-sixteenth century. Currently, there is no published translation of this important tragedy which grapples with social and political issues like female agency and the limits of sovereign power. In the context of our current civic and social climate, tragic literature represents a didactic framework in which we can model our ethico-political responsibilities. Giraldi Cinzio, much like the ancient Greeks, saw tragedy as an intersection of political power and social conscience, and through Orbecche, he explored contemporary social issues which offer us a thought-provoking and stimulating way to address some of the most consequential problems facing society today.

I will further situate Giraldi Cinzio’s poetic practice in relation to other genre theorists of his day. Particularly, I will highlight the ways in which Giraldi Cinzio uses theoretical innovation with the invented plot, the use of horrific spectacle, and character development as precursors for other theorists and writers throughout Europe such as Cervantes, Lope de Vega, and Shakespeare. Giraldi Cinzio’s Orbecche foreshadows the standard of tragic excellence that will appear in both France and England, and it provides one of the clearest throughlines linking these literary traditions.