Decolonizing anthropology has become a rallying cry across the four subfields of Anthropology–Socio-Cultural, Biological, Archaeological, and Linguistic. At the University of Michigan Department of Anthropology, one among the few remaining programs in the country that expresses a commitment to a four-field education, efforts to critique and re-envision the anthropological canon have taken diverse but disparate…
Category: 5×5 Incubator Grants
Designed to spark compelling conversations, 5×5 Incubator Grants bring together small groups of faculty, lecturers, research scientists, librarians, curators, post-docs and other university scholars from a range of fields for a short-term engagement in exploring common research interests. These grants are supported by a generous collaboration with the Institute for the Humanities.
New 5×5 Team – Ancient Theories of Love and Friendship
This project will bring together ethicists, classicists, and scholars of ancient Greek philosophy to discuss ancient Greek theories of love and friendship. The sessions, each lead by a different faculty member, will center on a close philosophical, linguistic, and historical examination of ancient Greek source material concerning love and friendship. Team members (5) bring a…
New 5×5 Team – Historicizing the Public/Private Distinction
This 5×5 convenes a group of scholars broadly interested in interrogating the historical origins of the public/private distinction in economic and political life. They are interested in understanding how the divide between private and public life is understood, how that divide has changed historically and fed into evolving conceptions of the common good, and how…
New 5×5 Team – Critical Approaches to Sound
This 5×5 cohort consists of scholars interested in critical approaches to sound more broadly, and music, more specifically. They come from a range of disciplinary backgrounds (History, English, American Studies, Musicology), but share an interest in how sound and music provide a critical lens into a global histories of race and empire. They intend to…
The Future is Human/e: Preservationists, Afterlives, and Longevities
The Future is Human/e is one of three 5×5 teams the Collaboratory accepted in April. This team is led by Sarah Murray, Assistant Professor in the department of Film, TV, Media, and Digital Studies. This team will investigate the meanings of longevity, death, and speculative futures in a post-digital, post-capitalist, and post-eco-crisis world. Their investigation includes discussions…
Using the Tools of the Future to Find Patterns in the Past
Tools of the Future/ Patterns of the past is one of three new 5x5s the Collaboratory has accepted in April. This team is led by Giulia Saltini Semerari, Assistant Professor of Anthropology. This team will reflect on the power, risks, and limitations of deploying AI in the context of navigating academic publications in the humanities, utilizing work…
Music and AI
Music and AI is one of three new 5×5 teams we have accepted in April. This team is led by Julie Zhu, Assistant Professor in the Department of Performing Arts and Technology. This team will explore how the impact of AI on composers and musicians, as well as how it can be utilized for creation and research in…
New 5×5 Team, Public Facing Studies of Religion
The Public Facing Studies of Religion team is comprised of faculty members with backgrounds in a variety of religious scholarly studies. They will meet to share and analyze techniques for disseminating public facing versions of research on religion. Topics they will discuss include the phenomena of scholarship on religion being mistaken as proselytizing and the complications of pressures inherent to religious…
Media, Technology, Geopolitics and Social Change in the BRICS+ Countries
We welcome Media, Technology, Geopolitics and Social Change in the BRICS+ Countries team to the Collaboratory with a 5×5 Incubator grant. With an interdisciplinary approach to media, this team will focus on BRICS+ countries – namely India, China, Russia and Nigeria – to assess how uses, practices, and understandings of media, art, and technology reproduce…
Documenting Endangered Languages
The team, as a recent recipient of a 5×5 Incubator grant, will focus on language documentation, especially endangered languages, which includes over 90% of the languages in the world today. The team’s goal is to create a critical mass of synergy and brainstorm on major issues in language documentation, such as a practical protocol for language…
Anti-Colonial Global South Studies: Research, Learning, and Community Engagement
A new team joins the Collaboratory with a 5×5 Incubator grant. This team will discuss alternative frameworks rooted in anti-colonial histories of the Global South to rethink mainstream knowledge production practices in the Global North drawing from different research, learning, and community engagement traditions. Motivating questions include: What does it mean to practice anti-colonial research, pedagogy,…
Critical Pedagogy in Romance Languages and German
We are happy to announce the award of a new 5×5 team. This project unites scholars in Romance Languages and Literatures and Germanic Languages and Literatures who teach upper-division, interdisciplinary courses on race, class, gender, and sexuality through literature, film, history, and critical theory. The team hopes to lay the foundation to conduct research on the topic of…
From Revitalization to Decolonization: Nishnaabeg Language Pedagogy and Indigenous Epistemologies
A 5×5 Incubator Grant has been awarded to From Revitalization to Decolonization; Nishnaabeg Language Pedagogy and Indigenous Epistemologies. This team’s members will engage in research to improve language pedagogy and build members awareness of issues relevant to understudied languages and more specifically for documenting and sustaining the Ojibwe dialect historically spoken in the area. They also…
Apply for Collaboratory 5×5 Grants
The Collaboratory is excited to continue funding 5×5 Incubator Grants in its new phase, and we are currently accepting applications. The 5×5 Incubator Grants are intended to encourage faculty and research specialists from a variety of fields to organize around a theme or topic of shared interest, an approach to work in the humanities, an experimental form of dissemination,…
Narrative Cartographies of Migration
A 5×5 Incubator Grant has been awarded to Narrative Cartographies of Migration. This 5×5 project, which bridges cultural studies and humanistic legal studies, will investigate new methodological approaches to the team members’ shared research interests in migration, mobility, and movement.
Environmental Activism and Minoritized Languages on Social Media
A 5×5 Incubator Grant has been awarded to Environmental Activism and Minoritized Languages on Social Media. This 5×5 project investigates how environmental activism and marginalized languages intersect in three distinct geographic sites–Cabo Verde islands, Nigeria, and Japan.
Illuminating a Manuscript in the Age of Print
A 5×5 Incubator Grant has been awarded to Illuminating a Manuscript in the Age of Print, a team which has formed to study an impressive new manuscript acquired by U-M Library.
The Art of Democracy
The Art of Democracy 5×5 grant team will “expose and critique the ways in which the arts (literature, painting, poetry, music, etc.) and performance (dance, theater, political speech, street protest, etc.) have intervened in American civic discourse.”
Northern Frontiers of the Mongol Empire
Northern Frontiers of the Mongol Empire, an interdisciplinary project with a focus on the Mongol Empire circa 1162-1367, receives 5×5 Incubator Grant.
Connecting Communities and Collections: Exploring Reciprocal Access to Philippine Indigenous Archives at Michigan
The Humanities Collaboratory is pleased to announce a new 5×5 Incubator Grant team, Exploring Reciprocal Access to Philippine Indigenous Archives at Michigan, which aims to increase ethical and culturally-informed plans for shared stewardship.