Indiana University has selected eight faculty members who have been awarded the IU Presidential Arts and Humanities Fellowship for 2023. The program supports stellar IU faculty with an academic year fellowship that accelerates and amplifies their research and advances their professional standing as national and international leaders in their various disciplines.
Sarah Imhoff, professor of Religious Studies in the IU Bloomington College of Arts and Sciences is one of the eight 2023 IU Presidential Arts and Humanities Fellows. Imhoff’s interests are religion and the body, bodies’ attributes like gender, race, ability, shape and how they are shaped by religion. Imhoff will use the funding for her new book, “American Judaisms,” which will focus on the history of Jewish people and Judaism throughout North America.
The award serves multiple campuses and disciplines as well as faculty in all ranks. The program directors seek to balance junior and senior colleagues, as well as various disciplinary strengths, as a way of generating intellectual sparks between fellows and natural mentoring opportunities within the group. Their areas of research and expertise spans a variety of disciplines, from decoding medieval manuscripts to the history of the elephant ivory trade.
“Congratulations to the 2023 Presidential Arts and Humanities fellows on their groundbreaking work and steadfast dedication to the arts,” IU President Pamela Whitten said. “The pursuit of transformative research and creativity is central to our IU 2030 strategic plan and this fellowship brings this pillar of our mission to life with a clear example of the incredible creative and artistic excellence of our faculty. The university is proud to recognize the experts of our arts and humanities community through this well-deserved spotlight.”
Each of the eight fellows will receive $50,000 in flexible funding to support a mix of course releases, travel and other research needs. These faculty members are expected to make significant strides in the scholarly and creative advancements of their individual fields, advance IU’s reputation in these areas by cultivating rich scholarly networks and promote the methods and values of the arts and humanities by sharing their work broadly with faculty, students, staff and the general public.
“We are very eager to begin working with next year’s group of fellows,” said Ed Dallis-Comentale, associate vice provost of arts and humanities at IU Bloomington. “They are each engaged in exciting projects with vast field-changing potential and significant public impact. Looking at the final roster, I know that this is exactly the kind of forward-thinking research and creative activity for which IU should be known.”
The College of Arts