Public Humanities Fellowship
The Public Humanities Fellows program is intended to help faculty communicate their scholarship in the humanities to a broad audience and to engage publics in the co-creation of humanistic knowledge.
Each fellowship awarded* comes with:
- funding to pursue professional development opportunities that will enhance their abilities to make their research or creative endeavors accessible and communicable to audiences beyond the academy
- a $2000 budget for relevant professional development expenses
- a $3000 stipend for their time
* in case of joint applications, these funds will be shared.
The fellowship will run through the academic year 2023-24, during which time fellows are expected to share their progress with the other members of their cohort. Fellows are expected to complete their project within 18 months after the fellowship term ends.
The fellowship is open to all Trinity faculty (including part-time faculty) who are working on a project in the arts and humanities, broadly defined.
2023-2024 Fellows
Gillian Lopez
Music | Accompanied Instruction: Literacy Lessons through Music
Gillian Lopez has researched and scripted a multimedia presentation teaching elementary students the story of “The Blind Men and the Elephant.” Using the 2014 composition by Robbie McCarthy, Ms. Lopez’s trio of musicians performs the setting of the John Godfrey Saxe poem and discusses the themes of the work. This presentation is geared to students in second to fourth grade and will be performed at several elementary schools in the greater San Antonio area.
Maxence Leconte
Modern Languages and Literatures | Paris sports: retracing the culture of play and games in the City of Light (1854-2024
Maxence Leconte will research the impact produced by the rise and evolution of sport culture in Paris between the 19th and the 21st centuries. He will present his findings in a retrospective opened to the public both in France (Paris City Hall) and at Trinity, in time to celebrate the next summer Olympics hosted in the French capital. The final stage of this research project will be the publication of an edited volume including various contributions highlighting the ties between sport and social rights, politics, architecture, etc., in the City of Light.
2022-2023 Fellows
Sarah Luginbill
History | The Materiality of Catholic Devotion in the World Wars
Sarah Luginbill will study the mobilization of U.S. Catholics in World War I and II to supply Catholic chaplains with portable Mass kits. This interdisciplinary project emphasizes the overlap between faith, warfare, and material culture, and investigates how this collective endeavor impacted home-front Catholicism and how the need for portable devotional items shaped Catholic identity. Her project will entail archival research throughout San Antonio and will result in an exhibit.
Shaj Mathew, Ph.D
English | Universal Museums in the Middle East
Shaj Mathew will research the rise of “universal museums” in the Middle East. Specifically, he will examine the Louvre Abu Dhabi and the Museum of the Future in the United Arab Emirates. Upon his return to San Antonio, he will deliver a public lecture and produce an academic article about these museums, in addition to publishing a work of literary journalism..
2021-2022 Fellows
Gary Seighman, D.M.A
Music | Music of the Cosmos
Gary Seighman will design, prepare, and record a choral music performance set inspired by astronomical phenomena in collaboration with the Scobee Planetarium at San Antonio College. The program, culminating in Spring 2022, will be integrated into the planetarium’s educational outreach program geared toward school-aged children. Seighman will engage in pre-show talks, guided listening, and the design of printed educational materials.
Katherine Troyer, Ph.D.
The Collaborative| Operation: Unleash Classroom Horror (OUCH)
Intended to bridge the best parts of the horror academic community with the best parts of the larger horror fan community, OUCH is a multifaceted public humanities project that includes, amongst other initiatives, “March Monster Madness.” Katherine will work with a group of Trinity students in Fall 2021 to create a tournament-style way for the horror community to think deeper about the monsters we create and the horror narratives we tell. The first round of March Monster Madness will go live in 2022.
Mel Webb, Ph.D.
Philosophy | Trinity Philosophy and Literature Circle
Through The Philosophy and Literature Circle, a partnership between Trinity, UTSA and two carceral facilities (Torres Unit and Dominguez State Jail), incarcerated scholars and Trinity students together complete an 8-12-week program that sharpens their capacities in critical thinking, ethical reasoning, and creative expression by reading, writing, and discussing a wide range of humanistic texts as they explore enduring questions such as, What does it mean to be human? What is the good life? And, How can I best contribute to the flourishing of my communities?
2020-2021 Fellows
Jenny Browne, M.F.A., English | Belfast Ekphrastic
Jenny will publish and publicly present Belfast Ekphrastic, a sequence of experimental ekphrastic poems, and a companion personal essay. During the Spring 2021 semester, she will also develop a collaborative ekphrastic poetry exchange between poetry students at Trinity and Queens University in Belfast.
Todd Barnett, Ph.D., History | The Career of Adolphus Busch
Todd is creating a traveling exhibit on the career of Adolphus Busch, the cofounder of the Anheuser-Busch Brewing Association. The exhibit will be used in conjunction with public talks at universities, businesses, and public spaces in several cities across the United States.
Andrew Kania, Ph.D., Philosophy | Taking Philosophy of Music to the Community
Andrew will introduce philosophical questions about music to a range of audiences outside the academy, targeting high school music students, music teachers, and classical music audiences by offering a series of classes at Reagan High School and Saint Mary’s Hall.
2019-2020 Fellows
Patrick Keating, Communication
Patrick created a video essay to accompany the release of his book, a close analysis of Alfonso Cuarón’s 2004 film Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. The video was presented to three audiences in the UK and published in Movie: A Journal of Film Criticism.
Habiba Noor, Education
Sarah Beth Kaufman, Sociology
Sarah and Habiba, with collaborators William Christ and Stacey Connelly, turned research into the performance To Be Honest: Voices on Islam in an American City.
Early in the year, just before COVID-19 changed everyone's plans, To Be Honest was presented in Fort Worth and Irving, Texas. The productions took place February 26 at Texas Christian University and February 28 as part of the Southwest Commission on Religious Studies 2020 Meeting.
Kathryn Vomero Santos, English
Kathryn produced a virtual public presentation about the innovative ways in which Latinx writers and theatermakers are translating and transforming the works of William Shakespeare. This roundtable conversation brought together five scholars actively working at the intersections of Shakespeare and borderland studies.