Come see an exhibit featuring highlights from the Collaboratory’s work over the last ten year including team posters, event programs, and a picture slideshow of our teams. Exhibit is located in the Hatcher Graduate Library Gallery and is available during normal library operating hours through May 16.
Category: News
HUMANITIES ASSESSMENT HUB
The Collaboratory for the past year has been working to build the Humanities Assessment Hub: Resources to Support Scholars Producing Engaged, Public-Facing, Collaborative, and/or Experimental Humanities Scholarship Through the Promotion and Tenure Process, a website with documents and resources to support collaborative, engaged researchers as they engage with the tenure and promotion process. To that…
Being Human in the Academy: Celebrating 10 Years of Experiments in Collaborative Humanities
April 17, 2025 bore witness to ‘Humanities Prom’ – what the Collaboratory staff have referred to the Collaboratory’s final celebratory event: Being Human in the Academy: Celebrating 10 Years of Experiments in Collaborative Humanities. Like high school senior’s prepare for prom by putting on their finest clothes at the close of their high school careers…
New 5×5 Team – Anthropology Across Four Subfields
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…
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 LIFESPAN PROJECT: STORIES OF WASTE AND MEMORY
The Lifespan Project, one of our four 2024 Proposal Development Grant teams, interrogates the concept of lifespan in things material and immaterial as it looks at the used, rotten, and obsolete; death and grief through three intersecting stories. Composed of undergraduate students in Architecture and English, graduate students from Comparative Literature, and three faculty members from Architecture; AfroAmerican andAfrican Studies; English;…
Thinking Through Election Overload: Patriotism and Country Music
Thinking Through Election Overload: Patriotism and Country Music: Who Owns What? Remember the Olympics? Just a few months ago, Americans from across the political spectrum came together in a three-week ritual of raucous flag waving, chanting, and cheering. But those good feelings barely survived the Closing Ceremonies. Also immediately after the Olympics, a wave of…
Collaboratory Announces Second Annual Research Orientation Series
The Humanities Collaboratory is offering its second annual Research Orientation Series beginning in September 2024. This is a series of four events created for new humanities faculty at the University of Michigan. Participants will leave each event with a clearer understanding of the landscape of humanities scholarship funding and armed with contacts to provide help…
Thinking Through Election Overload: Olympic Patriotism V. Election Patriotism
Thinking Through Election Overload: Olympic Patriotism V. Election Patriotism? Remember the Olympics? Just a few months ago, Americans from across the political spectrum came together in a three-week ritual of raucous flag waving, chanting, and cheering. But those good feelings barely survived the Closing Ceremonies. Also immediately after the Olympics, a wave of memes announced…
I Walk Under the Earth; Lightly in a Cloud of 300,000 Points. A Portal to the Ancient City of Teotihuacán Through LiDAR Surveys, Digital Preservation, and Immersive Storytelling
The center of the Mesoamerican universe lies twenty kilometers northeast of Mexico City in the ancient city of Teotihuacán. Designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987, the site receives 4.5 million visitors annually. The Aztecs called it the place where the gods were created, and it remains Mesoamerica’s cosmological and spiritual heart. As…
Collaboratory Presents Work at New Directions in the Humanities Conference
The Collaboratory took its work on the assessment of non-traditional forms of humanities scholarship on the road to present a workshop at the New Directions in the Humanities Conference hosted by La Sapienza University in Rome, Italy, June 26-28. The Collaboratory, in its current iteration, has been tasked with creating tools and sharing resources to support and promote collaborative,…
Nishnaabeg Team Celebrates Learning Opportunities
Two members of the From Revitalization to Reclamation: Reinforcing Nishnaabeg Language Pedagogy and Indigenous Epistemologies at the University and Beyond Proposal Development Grant team attended The Institute on Collaborative Language Research (CoLang) conference in early June. Kayla Gonyon (Lecturer in American Culture, Ojibwe Language) and Skyelar Raiti (Undergraduate Research Assistant) traveled to Phoenix, Arizona, where the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community (SRPMIC)…
Do Androids Study Electric Humanities?
AI is everywhere you look these days. What used to only be a part of science fiction books and movies is now helping write papers, draft invitations, produce fanciful images, and even streamline our google searches. However, while AI has shown itself to be a helpful taskmaster, it is not without cause that many of us are ambivalent…
Nubian Lives Animated Film Celebrates Film Festival Acceptances
Hanina/Homesick, an animated film produced by The Narrating Nubia project led by Yasmin Moll, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, has been selected by the Annecy International Animation Film Festival to compete in the Perspectives category, the Arab American National Museum’s Film Festival in Dearborn, and the Margaret Mead Film Festival. The short film follows a young Nubian girl as she embarks on a journey…
New Proposal Development Grant Teams
The Humanities Collaboratory welcomes four Proposal Development Grant teams for our current grant cycle! I Walk Under the Earth; Lightly, in a Cloud of 300,000 Points. A Portal to the Ancient City of Teotihuacán through LiDAR Surveys, Digital Preservation, and Immersive Storytelling is led by PI Robert Adams from the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Design. This project seeks 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…