Four faculty members from San Diego State’s College of Arts and Letters are among 260 recipients nationwide who have been awarded National Endowment for the Humanities grants.
The funding, totaling $33.8 million, includes grants for Walter Penrose Jr., associate professor of history, Amira Jarmakani, professor of women’s studies, Erika Robb Larkins, director of the Behner Stiefel Center for Brazilian Studies, and Kristal Bivona, the center’s co-director.
Penrose and Jarmakani each received $60,000 Division of Research Awards for Faculty intended to strengthen “the humanities at Hispanic-Serving Institutions by encouraging and expanding humanities research opportunities for individual faculty and staff members.”
Larkins and Bivona, co-director, received a three-year grant of nearly $150,000 from the Division of Education Humanities Initiatives at Hispanic-Serving Institutions program. It funds educational resources, curricula and other projects to enhance teaching and learning.
The college’s Interim Dean Ronnee Schreiber said the grants will support “crucial investigations of history and race” while supporting “programming of the already flourishing” Center for Brazilian Studies.
Penrose will use his grant to continue research on his forthcoming book on Artemisia II, celebrated as one of the most virtuous of women from antiquity to the early modern period.
“In looking at the Amazons in ‘Wonder Woman’ for a 2019 article that I wrote, I noted that the history of feminism was understood by U.S. historians to have begun in the 19th century,” Penrose said. “Looking further afield, my investigations revealed a different picture: feminism in Europe had roots going back to the 15th century Renaissance …”
Jarmakani will work on her forthcoming book, “Weapons of Mass Dissemination: Apprehending Digital Anti-Muslim Racism,” which investigates how viral memes, images and stories that portray Muslims as a dangerous threat to the U.S. can perpetuate gendered, anti-Muslim racism.
“I have long been interested in, and especially troubled by, the way that racist representations can have material, and even deadly, ramifications for those who are associated with them,” Jarmakani said.
In her new project, Jarmakani will examine how big data technologies weaponize and fuel hate to spread disinformation on the internet.
Robb Larkins’ and Bivona’s project, “Building the Humanities through Brazilian Studies,” includes curriculum development and public engagement regarding the study of Brazil, with a focus on the cultural production of underrepresented authors, artists, filmmakers and scholars.
“Funding from the NEH will enable us to advance our humanities curriculum through three main project components,” Bivona said, noting planned collaborations with colleagues to create core classes focused on cultural productions by Black and Indigenous Brazilians, among other courses. The duo also plans to promote engagement that fosters the development of critical Brazilian studies via scholarly and creative events at SDSU.
“We will disseminate project outcomes to the public through the expansion of the Center for Brazilian Studies’ award-winning digital humanities platform, the Digital Brazil Project,” she added.
