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Faculty Research Collaboratives and Projects

Archives of Bodies/Embodied Archives brings together experts from multiple fields (Dance, Study of Religion, Black Study, and Hispanic Studies) in shared and sustained conversation at the intersection of bodies and archives. One theme among our collaborative team will be to think innovatively with others who are probing the edges of conventional archival work to imagine ways to invoke the bodiliness of the archive. A second theme of this working group considers these embodied archives, investigating how bodies hold dense layers of memory shaped by specific belief systems and social norms. Probing the embodied archive that bodies carry in their musculature, habits, and sensorial dispositions enables our interdisciplinary cohort to understand how aesthetic “refinement” continue to define what counts as proper, classical, or legitimate.

Faculty Coordinators and Participants
Amanda Lucia (Study of Religion)
Imani Kai Johnson (Dance)
Maria Fermino-Castillo (Dance)
El/yse Ambrose (Study of Religion)
Sriradha Paul (Dance)
Johanna Nieto (Hispanic Studies)

Over 6 meetings spread across Fall 2025, Winter 2026, and Spring 2026, a working group of four assistant professors in CHASS will convene at UC Riverside to workshop chapters from their in-progress monographs. The goal of these sessions will be to provide in-depth manuscript feedback from fellow pre-tenure scholars not in their immediate fields, thereby allowing them to refine their individual interventions in Abolitionist studies, Critical Filipinx Studies, Asian American Studies, Chicanx Studies, Queer and Trans Latinx Studies, Critical Refugee Studies, and more. While workshopping chapters intended for publication with a university press, the group will also discuss the following questions: what does it mean to write for an “interdisciplinary” audience? How does an author develop their books’ interdisciplinary (and interaudience) commitments while learning about the expectations of a departmental discipline? Through this series, the working group aims to bring the values of praxis and collective care to the writing and review process.

Faculty Coordinators
Trisha Remetir (Comparative Literatures and Languages)
Cecilia Vasquez (Anthropology)
Liz Rubio (Gender & Sexuality Studies)
Jack Caraves (Gender & Sexuality Studies)

Climate change is acknowledged as one of the most pressing concerns in human health today; climate­related heat, air pollution, wildfires, and other effects are associated with negative changes to cardiovascular, respiratory, reproductive, mental, and occupational health. Climate impacts and related health outcomes in the Inland Empire have increasingly gained research attention, however these analyses often lack attention to the ways low income communities and BIPOC communities are differentially harmed. The proposed working group draws together faculty from CHASS, CNAS, SOM, and staff from the Inland Empire Labor and Community Center to address the intersections of climate change, human health, and social justice in the Inland Empire. Through monthly meetings, community expert talks, and the development of a new podcast, we aim to develop faculty expertise, build the capacity to apply for extramural grant funding opportunities, and provide accessible and engaging information on climate, health, and justice to the broader community.

Faculty Coordinator
Jade Sasser (Gender & Sexuality Studies; Society, Environment, & Health Equity)

Participants
Dana Simmons (Society, Environment, & Health Equity)
Ellen Reese (Society, Environment, & Health Equity)
Cristina Gomez­Vidal (Society, Environment, & Health Equity)
Kim Yi Dionne (Political Science)
Kalina Michalska (Psychology)
Lisa Fortuna (Psychiatry & Neuroscience)
Mario Sims (Social Medicine, Population & Public Health)
Francesca Hopkins (Environmental Sciences)
Chuy Flores (Inland Empire Labor and Community Center)

What do Duchamp’s readymades, synthesizer sounds, and microwave popcorn settings have in common? They are presets – default settings that facilitate ready-to-hand use. Our uses of presets consent to norms designed for “standard” users; from Al content generators to Photoshop editing filters, presets on technology often replicate cultural biases of whiteness, sexism, ableism, and Western privilege. But artists can also recontextualize presets to interrogate entrenched conventions otherwise known as cultural presets. In this working group, UCR scholar-practitioners across art/art history, media and cultural studies, music, philosophy, and environmental humanities will host public roundtables and DJ and synthesizer workshops. Across these forums, participants will question: how have linguistic, technological, and cultural presets driven capitalism, colonialism, and state sovereignty? When climate disaster and political extremism threaten how we typically engage with our environments, can we program new presets? How can critics and creators produce multi modal forms of knowledge to disentangle presets from their deepseated norms?

Faculty Coordinator
Amy Skjerseth (Music)

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Conferences sponsored by the Center for Ideas and Society

The “Black Beings in Water” symposium will feature a panel of working group members discussing both individual and group projects, an experimental “collective keynote” which would put into conversation two thinkers from different disciplines, and the debut of a small popup gallery exhibiting working group members’ artwork, photos, and artifacts of Black beings and doings in water. Working group members include literary and cultural critics, geographers, and archaeologists from UCs and private institutions who also consider ourselves to be public intellectuals and/or artist intellectuals. The symposium is interdisciplinary, multimedia, and public-facing, with conversations anchored not only in the academic intervention of theorizing blackness and water, but in the belief that working with and being in water as Black people is healing ancestral work.

Faculty Coordinator
Jalondra Davis (English)

The focus of this inaugural symposium, hosted by UC Riverside’s Department of Black Study, takes up cultural theorist and philosopher Jared Sexton’s notion of “dehiscence,” a return to and entering a site – for our purposes, a wound or rupture – to convene Black scholars and artists of many dispositions who think deeply, ethically and divergently from within that long-standing and deepening rupture – what Dionne Brand calls “a tear in the world.” This wound is two-fold: it is the ongoing afterlife spilled forth from the Middle Passage, upon which Brand is meditating, and which disseminated and traded in captive Africans across the Americas and the Caribbean as slaves; and it refers to the discursive and intellectual apertures that have deepened, in some cases, vitriolically, across the terrain more commonly known as “Black Studies.” This symposium aims to address that compound wound by providing a space within which to invite scholars, scholar-artists and members of the Riverside community to examine the many perspectives on blackness together, and to share the questions and reports that are and have been emerging from their multiple (and in some cases, vastly divergent) vantages across the terrain of what the inauguration of our department has framed as a process/practice of Black Study. More precisely, such a convergence would enable us to lean into those fissures (dehiscence as study), without fear of reprisal or harm, precisely because of the many disciplines, fields, geographies with which Black study is in conversation.

Faculty Coordinators
Jaye Austin Williams (Black Study)
Desirée Melonas (Black Study and Political Science)

The field of Game Studies has grown exponentially over the past two decades, emerging as a vital interdisciplinary area that intersects with the humanities, social sciences, arts, and technology. Despite this growth, UC Riverside remains one of the few UC campuses without a formalized program, designated degree, or research hub dedicated to Game Studies. The California Games and Interactive Media Conference seeks to address this gap by positioning UCR as a central node for academic collaboration and innovation in the field. Building on the success of our previous event (Latin American Games Studies Conference), which attracted over 70 attendees-including faculty, graduate students, and international participants -this conference will serve as a platform to map the current state of Game Studies in the region, foster interdisciplinary dialogue, and establish UCR as a key space for this expanding field.

Faculty Coordinator
Ilya Brookwell (Media & Cultural Studies)

The UC Graduate Student Virtual Conference is an annual venue for humanities and humanities-related research from graduate students across the UC system. Hosted online and organized by themes, the gathering amplifies emerging work, connects scholars across campuses and system, and celebrates the varieties of methods and approaches in humanities-based research.

The conference is hosted by the UCR Center for Ideas and Society and supported by a grant from the UC Humanities Network and the UC Office of the President.

For questions or more information: Katharine.Henshaw@ucr.edu

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Programs

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Community Conversations

Academic Book Club awards cover the purchase of books for virtual groups of faculty and/or graduate students who agree to meet up online to discuss sections of the book at least 3 times over the coming quarter. Though we ask that at least half the participants be CHASS faculty and/or graduate students, conveners and other club members may be from any school or college at UCR.

Club leaders convene meetings via Zoom or other online meeting room services. Selected titles should have the potential to engage multiple perspectives, disciplines and methods in critical inquiry. Inclusive, cross-disciplinary groups are encouraged. At the end of the quarter, groups will be asked to provide feedback on their experiences.

Apply Now!

2026 Summer Book Clubs:

Isoke Atiba, convener – “The Typographic Imagination: Reading and Writing in Japan’s Age of Modern Print Media”
Tommy Kegler, convener – “The Labors of Resurrection: Black Women, Necromancy, and Morrisonian Democracy”
Qinyi Luo, convener – “Leibniz: New Essays on Human Understanding”
Daniel Majerowicz, convener – “The Ancient House: Constructing Community in the Seventeenth-Century New York Borderlands”
Mafe Rangel, convener – “The Moral Psychology of Admiration”
Natalie Saffie, convener – “Plurilingual Education in a Monolingualised Nation: Exploring New Frontiers in Language Teaching in Japan”
Rachel Wu, convener – “Crying in H Mart: A Memoir”

Research and Publication

Research Writing Groups encourage sustained writing practices, productivity and networking through regularly scheduled writing sessions.

Writing Group awards provide $25 gift cards to participants who attend a majority of scheduled meetings. Groups of 4-8 participants agree to meet at least five times over the quarter. Though we ask that at least half the participants be CHASS faculty and/or graduate students, conveners and other group members may be from any school or college at UCR. Group leaders convene meetings via Zoom or other online meeting room services. At the end of the quarter, groups will be asked to provide feedback on their experiences.

Apply Now!

Summer 2026 Groups

Mariam Nadirashvili, convener – 4 members
Jorge Nicolás Leal, convener – 6 members
Claudia Holguin Mendoza, convener – 5 members
Rachel Wu, convener – 11 members
Wenxin Tang, convener – 4 members
Baylee Musie, convener – 6 members
Megan Richardson, convener – 11 members
Liz Przybylski, convener – 5 members
Mafe Rangel, convener – 5 members
Jasmin Salgado, convener – 10 members

Project Development Awards provide funds to help CHASS faculty members substantially move a project (book manuscript, film, play or substantial creative project) toward completion and submission/production (to a press, film festival, theatre, gallery show, etc.) by creating opportunities to receive input and feedback on works-in-progress.

Proposals may include meetings with scholars or subject matter experts for an open discussion of the faculty member’s work, meetings with community partners, workshops, experimental productions, and other collaborative formats for soliciting feedback on a project. Special consideration will be given to projects that have potential to impact tenure and/or promotion. Applicants must clearly identify how the proposal supports the planned completion or production of the next stage of their project.

2025-26 Participants

Samuel Lamontagne (Music) “Leave It For the Children: A Visual History of the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra”
Robin Russin (Theatre, Film, & Digital Production) “Untitled, historical novel” (in development)
Cecilia Vasquez (Anthropology) “Sanctuary Under Siege: Meaning and Future of Sanctuary in the Inland Empire” (in development)

2024-25 Participants

Liz Przybylski (Music) “Creativity and Constraint: Gendered Experiences of Working Artists in the Belgian Popular Music Mainstream” (in development)
Elizabeth Rubio (Gender and Sexuality Studies) “Dreams Beyond Recognition: The Queer Temporality of Asian American Immigrant Justice Activism” (in development)
Amy Skjerseth (Music) “Preprogrammed: How Electronic Presets Changed Music and Media”

2023-24 Participants

Chikako Takeshita (Gender & Sexuality Studies) “Radioactive Speak: The Science and Politics of Radiation Exposure in Fukushima” (in development)

2020-21 Participants

Farah Godrej (Political Science) “Prison Yoga and Meditation: South Asian Text and Practice in the US Carceral System”
Anthony Jerry (Anthropology) “Chasing Blackness: Racial Economies and the Production of Citizenship in Mexico” (in development)
Richard Rodriguez (Media & Cultural Studies) “Undocumented Desires: Fantasies of Latino Male Sexuality” (in development)
Michele Salzman (History) “The ‘Falls’ of Rome: Transformations of the City in Late Antiquity (270-603 CE)”
Dana Simmons (History) “Hungry, Thinking with Animals” (Funded by a a grant from the University of California Office of the President Multi-campus Research Programs and Initiative Funding through the UC Humanities Research Institute.)
Victoria Reyes (Sociology) “Academic Outsider”
Annika Speer (Theatre, Film & Digital Production) “Missing: A Musical Dramedy”
Bronwyn Leebaw (Political Science) “After Slumber: Transformative Justice, Memories of Resistance, and the Lessons of the Past” (in development)

Helpful Resources

Faculty Book Workshop Guide by CISSR
Workshop Planning Guide by Matthew Salganick
How to Plan a Book Manuscript Workshop by Karen Tani

Recently revised to widen eligibility and expand project types, the CHASS Research Forum aims to raise the profile of CHASS research and creative projects.

Research Announcements

Share links and announcements of your new publications, exhibits, grant reports, or other milestones and we will post the information on our CHASS email newsletter and social media channels to bring help attention to your work.

Project or publication “launch” events

Launch events host authors, creatives, and scholars in a “deep dive” conversation into the scholarly process and research behind the project or publication. Suitable for new publications, grant projects, project outcomes and similar research milestones.

For more information: Katharine.henshaw@ucr.edu

Made possible by gifts from Emory’s family and friends, the Emory Elliott Book Award honors the book published by a CHASS faculty member during the previous academic year that, in the judgment of the selection committee, best exemplifies the values that characterized Professor Elliott and his contributions to life and letters.

Among these many contributions are the capacity to recognize complexity together with the passion to clarify, the ability to contribute to a conversation rather than to summarize agreements already established, and the intent to further a tradition of creative and scholarly munificence.

Call for Nominations

Award Winners

  • 2025: Dana Simmons (SEHE) – On Hunger: Violence and Craving in America, from Starvation to Ozempic
    Finalists: Allison Benis White (Creative Writing) – A Magnificent Loneliness
    Emily Hue (Ethnic Studies) – Performing Vulnerability: Risking Art and Life in the Burmese Diaspora
  • 2024: Randol Contreras (Media & Cultural Studies) – The Marvelous Ones: Drugs, Gang Violence, and the Resistance in East Los Angeles
    Finalists: Imani Kai Johnson (Dance) – Dark Matter in Breaking Cyphers: The Life of Africanist Aesthetics in Global Hip Hop
    Liz Przybylski (Music) – Sonic Sovereignty: Hip Hop, Indigeneity, and Shifting Popular Music Mainstreams
  • 2023: Alejandra Dubcovsky (History) – Talking Back: Native Women and the Making of the Early South
    Finalists: Philipp Lehmann (History) – Desert Edens: Colonial Climate Engineering in the Age of Anxiety and Jennifer Syvertsen (Anthropology) – Dangerous Love: Sex Work, Drug Use, and the Pursuit of Intimacy in Tijuana, Mexico
  • 2022: Allison Hedge Coke (Creative Writing) – Look at This Blue
    Sherryl Vint (English) – Biopolitical Futures in Twenty-First-Century Speculative Fiction
  • 2021: Anusha Kedhar (Dance) – Flexible Bodies: British South Asian Dancers in an Age of Neoliberalism
    Brandon Robinson (Gender and Sexuality Studies) – Coming Out to the Streets
  • 2020: Victoria Reyes (Sociology) – Global Borderlands: Fantasy, Violence and Empire in Subic Bay, Philippines
  • 2019: Jade Sasser (Gender & Sexuality Studies) – On Infertile Ground: Population Control and Women’s Rights in the Era of Climate Change
    Steven Brint (Sociology) – Two Cheers for Higher Education: Why American Universities Are Stronger Than Ever―and How to Meet the Challenges They Face
  • 2018: Sang-Hee Lee (Anthropology) – Close Encounters with Humankind: A Paleoanthropologist Investigates Our Evolving Species
  • 2017: Charmaine Craig (Creative Writing) – Miss Burma
  • 2016: Anthea Kraut (Dance) – Choreographing Copyright: Race Gender, and Intellectual Property Rights in American Dance
  • 2015: Conrad Rudolph (Art History) – The Mystic Ark: Hugh of Saint Victor, Art, and Thought in the Twelfth Century
  • 2014: Amanda J. Lucia (Religious Studies) – Reflections of Amma: Devotees in a Global Embrace
  • 2013: Maudemarie Clark (Philosophy) – The Soul of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil
    Perry Link (Comparative Literature) – An Anatomy of Chinese: Rhythm, Metaphor, Politics
  • 2012: Priya Srinivasan (Dance) – Sweating Saris: Indian Dance as Transnational Labor
  • 2011: Michelle Raheja (English) – Reservation Reelism: Redfacing, Visual Sovereignty, and Representations of Native Americans in Film

Student Research

Graduate student fellows in this program receive support for summer writing projects and the opportunity to connect with other UC graduate fellows in virtual meetings and workshops. The fellowships are funded through a collaborative grant from the UC Humanities Consortium.

2026 Fellows

Maisam Haider Ali (Comparative Literature and Languages)
Soofia Lateef (Philosophy)
Jovana Isevski (English)

2025 Fellows

Othandwayo Mgqoboka (Anthropology)
Iliana Cuellar (Comparative Literature and Languages)
Allan Zheng (Music)
Sean Keenan (History)

2024 Fellows

Iliana Cuellar, Comparative Literature, Palimpsexts: Autotheory as Worldmaking in Feminist Film and Video
Sean Keenan, History, The Haiphong – Kunming Railroad: The Spaces Between
Othandwayo Mgqoboka, Anthropology, Ways of Dying: Antiblackness, Democracy and the Question of (un)Freedom in South Africa
Allan Zheng, Music, Following The Way: Creativity and the Cosmopolitan in Contemporary Cambodian Performance

2023 Fellows

Nicole Furtado, English, Galaxies like Islands, Islands like Galaxies: Envisioning Futurity in Seascape Technologies
Rotem Herrmann, Philosophy, Body and Memory: An Inquiry into Skill

2022 Fellows

Jeff Chu, History, Thracians among Others: Encounters with Greeks, Macedonians, and the Near East
Xiomara Forbez, Dance, Prima, ‘Olapa, Bachatera – Name Me Dancer: Expanding the Category of Dancer through Ballet, Hula, and Bachata
Deborah Nelson, Philosophy, The Reasoning of Economically-Disadvantaged People
Nattapol Wisuttipat, Music, Spicy: The (Un)making of Queer Presence in Thai Classical Music

2021 Fellows

Stephanie DeMora, Politcal Science, Who Supports Her? The Conditions of Gender Specific Voting
Grecia Perez, Anthropology
Evelyn Pruneda, Sociology, Navigating Multidimensional Borderlands: How Spatial Politics and Inequalities Shape the Working Conditions and Lived Experiences of Women Farmworkers in Rural California

The Humanities Graduate Student Research Grants assist CHASS graduate students involved in original research or creative projects in the humanities. Awarded funds are primarily intended for research proposals related to dissertation or MFA work, though other projects are considered as funds permit.

The award process is competitive. Applications are collected each fall and announced the following spring. Projects are judged according to intellectual merit, faculty support and justification for the proposal as it relates to completion of the dissertation or MFA project.

The Humanities GSR Awards are sponsored by UCR Graduate Division, the College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, and the Center for Ideas and Society.

Apply Now!

We congratulate the following award winners!

2026-27 Winners 2025-26 Winners
Esther Aguayo (Anthropology)
Elizabeth DeWolf (Creative Writing)
Mara De Gregori (Anthropology)
Rory Fewer (Music)
Nico Valdivia Hennig (Hispanic Studies)
Ariel Texis Muñoz (Anthropology)
Cal Plett (Music)
Brenda Rincon (Psychology)
Derly Johanna Nieto Rojas (Hispanic Studies)
Justin Tran (Anthropology)
Jenna M Wilson (English)
 Paula Cucurella (Hispanic Studies Department)
Charlotte Biggs (History)
Sammitha Sreevathsa (Department of Dance Studies)
Jieun Lee (Department of Political Science)
Nicolas Valdivia Hennig (Spanish)
Sarah Grace Faulk (Art History)
Thomas Kegler (Political Science)
Sophia Rodriguez (Anthropology)
Ashley Shults (Anthropology)
Julia Torres (History)
Minhye Joo (Political Science)
Jose Alvarez (Anthropology)
Miriam Villazón Valbuena (Hispanic Studies Department)
Yiwang Li (School of Education)
Rodrigo Arenas (Dance)
Zite Ezeh (CWPA)
Andrés Misnaza (Hispanic Studies Department)
Catherine Wells (Political Science)
Rory Fewer (Music)
Eloy Neira de la Cadena (Music)
Anais Martinez (Psychology)
Maria Aldana Mendoza (Hispanic Studies)

Made possible by her children, one of whom is the third director of CIS, this fund provides support for graduate students seeking travel and dissertation support from the Center for Ideas and Society within the majors of History, Art History, and Political Science in the hope that it will help them realize their ambitions and make a contribution through their research to the world of ideas.

Jean Rowe Warnke raised five children in Washington, D.C. during the Post-WWII era and instilled in them, by word and steely example, a commitment to truth, progressive values and generosity of spirit, along with an aversion to anything that smacked of self-promotion, resting on one’s laurels or conceit. She pushed them, and herself, to make a difference, and she committed her formidable energies to bettering the lives of those less fortunate.

The 2019-20 award recipient was Camilla Querin (History of Art) for the project: Dialectics of Malandragem, When Arts Transform the Outcast into a Hero.

Award Recipients

2026-27: Christella Maldonado (History)
2025-26: Sarah Grace Faulk (History of Art)
2024-25: Ashley McNelis (History of Art)
2022-23: Eun-A Park (Political Science)
2021-22: Molly Bond (History of Art)
2020-21: John Haberstroh (History)
2019-20:  Camilla Querin (History of Art)

The Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship (MMUF) is a two-year program that provides financial support, research mentorship, and assistance with graduate school applications. The Mellon Mays program at UC Riverside is administered by the Center for Ideas and Society and is funded by an annual grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The program is managed by the Center Director (PI) and the CHASS Dean (Co-PI.) Visit UCR’s MMUF website for more information on student eligibility and benefits: mellonmays.ucr.edu

Faculty Program Coordinator: Covadonga Lamar Prieto (Professor, Hispanic Studies; Associate Dean, College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences)
Administrative Program Coordinator: Katharine Henshaw (Executive Director, Center for Ideas and Society)