More than 20 awards were recently made to support special projects and research through the Faculty in the Arts, Humanities and Lettered Social Sciences (FAHSS) program. The grants support faculty from across departments in the College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) and the Lichtenstein Center, which will soon become part of CAS.
The FAHSS program aims to encourage interdisciplinary research, creative activities and collaboration. It is funded by the Office of the Provost, the Office of the Vice President for Research, and the Office of the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.
“The FAHSS grants support SBU faculty as they initiate bold projects on culture and society, endeavors that deepen our understanding of the past and present, and help change people’s lives for the better,” said Janet Ward, associate provost for arts, humanities and social sciences. “As these incredibly varied projects fully demonstrate, this year’s FAHSS awards transcend boundaries between disciplines and bring the world to Stony Brook.”
This year, 22 projects were funded from among more than 30 applications.
Esteban Agosin, assistant professor, Department of Art
with Rodrigo Viqueira, visiting assistant professor, Department of Hispanic Languages and Literature and Andrew V. Uroskie, associate professor, Department of Art
Agosin, Viqueira and Uroskie will explore intersections between sound, technology, art and culture in art installations, and are planning a symposium with presentations and guest lectures on campus in the spring.
Rosabel Ansari, assistant professor, Department of Philosophy
Ansari will travel to Turkey to examine and compare ancient manuscripts of an influential text by a medieval Muslim philosopher and physician that has not been the subject of much modern scholarship. She plans to create a stemma, similar to a document’s family tree, of the different manuscripts that will form the basis of her future studies of the text.
Brooke Belisle, associate professor, Department of Art
Belisle will study glass-plate photographs and other archival materials at the Royal Astronomical Society in London as research for a book about the aesthetics of astronomical imaging, Seeing Stars.
Lena Burgos-Lafuente, associate professor, Department of Hispanic Languages and Literature
with Valeria Mantilla Morales, assistant professor, Department of History; Cristine Khan, PRODiG+ fellow, Department of Sociology; Tracey Walters, professor, Department of Africana Studies; Eric Zolov, professor, Department of History; Zaida Corniel, lecturer, Department of Hispanic Languages and Literature; and Paul Firbas, associate professor and chair, Department of Hispanic Languages and Literature
The team will host “The Shape of the Caribbean to Come,” a series of events to examine current trends in Caribbean studies and consider how the field may shift in the future. Through the lens of media studies, critical race studies, political history, gender and sexuality studies, literature and cultural anthropology, the group will convene speakers and thinkers from across the region at Stony Brook.
Robert Chase, associate professor, Department of History
Chase will conduct archival research in Alabama and Texas for his ongoing book project about the role of sheriffs in shaping history and current societies and their influence in local and regional politics.
Alix Cooper, associate professor, Department of History
Cooper’s grant will support her efforts to have her book, Inventing the Indigenous: Local Knowledge and Natural History in Early Modern Europe, translated into Russian.
Ana Cortés Lagos, assistant professor, Department of Writing and Rhetoric
Cortés Lagos will travel to Chile for an ongoing book project about the writing and rhetorical practices of vaccine researchers in the country. Her grant will allow her to collect data on long-lasting perceptions and attitudes toward vaccines and vaccine research among volunteers in clinical trials, to understand how communication can impact the success or failure of research and public health policies.
Thomas Graf, associate professor, Department of Linguistics
with Jeffrey Heinz, professor, Department of Linguistics; and Gary Mar, professor, Department of Philosophy
The three researchers will host the Association for Mathematics of Language conference, held every other year. Stony Brook is a top destination for graduate students and researchers interested in the intersection of mathematics, computation, and language, and Graf, Heinz and Mar aim to use that prominence to help make the field more welcoming and inclusive to prospective graduate students and early-career professionals.
Joeva Sean Rock, assistant professor, Department of Anthropology
Rock’s grant will support research for her next book. She aims to explore global efforts to address food insecurity across Africa and why certain top-down solutions continue to be funded, despite lackluster results.
Jason Jeffrey Jones, associate professor, Department of Sociology
Jones will hire student research assistants for an ongoing project to examine recent scholarship about attitudes toward artificial intelligence. He aims to create a comprehensive literature review of existing research and propose new channels of inquiry.
Angela Jones, professor, Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Jones will use the funds to support their ongoing book project that contextualizes and explores the societal impact of sex and sexuality, aimed at a general audience.
Sandra So Hee Chi Kim, assistant professor, Department of Asian and Asian American Studies
Kim will conduct field research in South Korea for a project that involves applying what she calls a “trans-indigenous analytic” in the context of peninsular Korean culture and collective memory-making.
Shirley Jennifer Lim, professor, Department of History
Lim is completing a biography (Abrams March 2026) about Anna May Wong, the first Chinese American actress to gain international fame and who is currently featured on 300 million American quarters. Wong’s life dramatizes the centrality of the Asian American experience to American history, including immigration detention, withholding of birthright citizenship, as well as racial housing covenants. The grant will help Lim pay for the rights to reproduce images from Wong’s life.
Fernando Loffredo, assistant professor, Department of Hispanic Languages and Literature
Loffredo will travel to the Philippines for field and archival work to support his current project that will use artifacts and historical sites to explore connections and conflicts of former Spanish territories between the Pacific and the Americas.
April Masten, associate professor, Department of History
Masten’s award will support a book that she has been working on for nearly two decades about two rival jig-dancers, one African-American and one Irish-American, in pre-Civil War society. Through the story of their lives, Masten explores facets of American culture, including race relations, child and adult labor, blackface minstrelsy, and masculinity.
Douglas Pfeiffer, associate professor, Department of English
With his award, Pfeiffer will travel to England to conduct archival research into Renaissance-era texts and, from there, draw comparisons to demonstrate the continued importance of engaging with these texts in the modern classroom. The research will help support a project he is developing about the historical role of fiction in helping inform scholarship from across disciplines.
Benedict Robinson, professor and chair, Department of English, and Richard Gerrig, professor, Department of Psychology
Gerring and Robinson will convene a group of scholars from diverse fields to discuss what a genuinely interdisciplinary study of fictionality might look like. Their long-term aim is to develop an inclusive space to discuss and study the importance of fictionality in different disciplines and foster innovative curriculum development.
Margaret Schedel, professor, Department of Music
Schedel will travel to Australia for a premiere performance with a former student and music colleague at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. In the performance, fabric becomes a means of musical expression for each of three digital instruments: one uses color, one uses weight and one uses texture. This trip is the culmination of a three-part collaboration that investigates historically undervalued women’s labor through music and performance art.
Christopher Sellers, professor, Department of History
with Yongjun Zhang, assistant professor, Department of Sociology; Mark Chambers, lecturer, Departments of Africana Studies and History
The trio of scholars will travel to a majority-minority industrial town in Texas to conduct a survey of residents with an eye toward better understanding the community’s priorities and perceived needs. The researchers’ work has included an historical survey of environmental issues related to petrochemical plants in the town. The team will share the historical information and survey data with residents, the plants’ management, and town council with an eye toward fostering community engagement.
Laura Thompson, Lichtenstein Center
with Julie Sheehan, interim associate provost of the Lichtenstein Center; Michael Rubenstein, associate professor, Department of English and director of the Humanities Institute; Benedict Robinson, professor and chair, Department of English; Patrice Nganang, professor and chair, Department of Africana Studies; Abena Asare, associate professor, Department of Africana Studies; and Tracey Walters, professor, Department of Africana Studies
These Stony Brook researchers will host a symposium about June Jordan, founder of Stony Brook’s Poetry Institute and 1978-1989 faculty member of the Departments of English and Africana Studies. The symposium will draw attention, and parallels to today, to Jordan’s efforts to confront global violence and dehumanizing ideologies with the belief that love is and must be a pedagogical and political force.
Ken Weitzman, associate professor, Department of English
Weitzman will use the grant to be present for the full run of the production of one of his theatrical creations, The Happiness Gym, and to obtain professional photo and video documentation. He will use the images to support efforts to obtain grant funding for future productions of this experiential, interactive event that theatricalizes research on well-being and happiness.
Neisha Terry Young, assistant professor, Department of English
Young’s research examines how immigrants tell their own stories and use digital platforms to disseminate them, as well as how these narratives influence perceptions and attitudes toward those immigrants and what parts of the digital platforms audiences most readily connect with. With the FAHSS grant, she will host a series of conversations with scholars, teachers, and community organizations, and will bring a prominent sociologist to campus for a film screening and discussion.