Stanford Report, June 29, 2010

Presidential Fund for Innovation in the Humanities announces six awards

Projects range from colonial French Africa to relative clauses and Byzantine acoustics in finale for a "remarkable" program.

The Stanford Presidential Fund for Innovation in the Humanities has announced grant recipients for its final year, including funding for a wide variety of topics, from colonial French Africa to relative clauses and Byzantine acoustics.

Since its inception in 2007, the fund has supported 15 multidisciplinary collaborative projects representing new modes of research in the humanities.

"The results of the projects supported in the early years of the fund have started to emerge, and they are remarkable," said Stephen Hinton, senior associate dean for humanities and arts and co-chair of the fund selection committee with Aron Rodrigue, director of the Stanford Humanities Center.

The six projects awarded in 2010 are:

Colonial Employees, Collective Biography and the Colonial State in French West Africa, 1895-1946. Stanford faculty and graduate students will link with colleagues in Europe and Africa to create a master database of French West African colonial employees. They will publish the results of their research on individual life histories and the collective impact of the data.

Principal investigators: J. P. Daughton, Sean Hanretta and Richard Roberts, history.

Cross-Dialectical Analysis and Comparison of Relativizers in English. Using new modes of statistical analysis employing recent software innovations to examine a large body of linguistic data on relative clauses, the project will shed new light on the evolution of the English language, including the origins of African American Vernacular English.

Principal investigators: Thomas Wasow, linguistics and philosophy; John R. Rickford, linguistics; Ewart A. C. Thomas, psychology.

Icons of Sound: Architectural Psychoacoustics in Byzantium. This project will study the perception of sound in Byzantine architecture, bringing together empirical research on acoustics in domed spaces (including Stanford's Memorial Church and Cantor Arts Center) with historical and aesthetic work on Byzantine churches, including the Hagia Sophia.

Principal investigators: Bissera Pentcheva, art history; Jonathan S. Abel, Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics.

Inventing the Enemy: How Spain and Portugal Became Two Separate Countries. Using historical research and literary and cultural analysis, this project will examine Spain and Portugal to understand how long-united regions or countries separate from one another.

Principal investigators: Tamar Herzog, history; Lisa Surwillo, Iberian and Latin American cultures.

A Literary Lab. This project will create a consulting lab where Stanford faculty and students will discuss, design and pursue literary research involving digital and quantitative data. It will be a hub for collaborative interdisciplinary work in new modes of literary analysis.

Principal investigators: Franco Moretti, English and comparative literature; Matthew Jockers, English and academic computing.

Truth, Objectivity and Constructivism in Mathematics, Science and Politics. Stanford faculty and graduate students from a wide variety of disciplines will develop concepts of knowledge, objectivity and truth that will withstand challenges from constructivist critics, while incorporating insights from those critiques. The overall concern will be how to reconcile the ideal of objective knowledge with the understanding that our ways of evaluating the world are contextual products of practice.

Principal investigators: Joshua Cohen, political science, philosophy and law; Soloman Feferman, mathematics and philosophy; Helen Longino, philosophy.

The Office of the President announced in 2007 the $1.1 million program for collaborative, multidisciplinary projects in the humanities. Grants are awarded to projects that "reshape the scope, nature and methods of research in the humanities." Four projects received grants in the first round of funding in 2007, two projects received grants in 2008 and three in 2009.

More information about the projects supported by the fund is available at http://humanexperience.stanford.edu/innovation.