This project establishes a vision for the transmission of identity and race through the embodiment of repertory acquisition of four internationally acclaimed Black women performers: Carolyn Adams, Dianne McIntyre, Bebe Miller and Ursula Payne. This project elevates — via performance, oral history, archival research, summer workshops, digital preservation and communication methods and publication — the historic dances of these women as represented through Black lives and Black bodies.

Principal Investigators: Crystal Perkins (Dance) • Valarie Williams (Dance)

Principal Investigators: Dir., Angela Brintlinger (Center for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies) • Yana Hashamova (Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures) • Dir., Dorothy Noyes (Mershon Center for International Security Studies)

Principal Investigators: Program Dir., Pranav Jani (Asian American Studies) • Dir., Namiko Kunimoto (Center for Ethnic Studies) Program Dir., Paloma Martinez-Cruz (Latino/a Studies) • Asso. Dir., Leila Vieira (Center for Ethnic Studies) Program Dir., Elissa Washuta (American Indian Studies)

Principal Investigators: Tracie McCambridge (Director of Art & Resilience, WCA) • Helyn Marshall (Accessibility Manager, WCA)

Principal Investigators: Tanya Calamoneri (Dance) • Dir., Maria Palazzi (ACCAD)

Principal Investigator: Nyama McCarthy-Brown (Dance)

Principal Investigators: Dir., Patricia Sieber (T&I Program) • Dir., Ying Zhang (Institute for Chinese Studies)

Advancing Instructional Redesign (IR) on-Demand
The Michael V. Drake Institute for Teaching and Learning offers eligible university instructors an incentive-based program that encourages the exploration, adoption, implementation and assessment of evidence-based instructional strategies. Instructional Redesign promoted scholarly teaching to support student academic success and to enhance the student experience. It focused on infusing IR with disciplinary pedagogy from the arts and humanities to support inclusive instruction.

Principal Collaborators: Kay Halasek (English), Melinda Rhodes-DiSalvo (Michael V. Drake Institute for Teaching and Learning), David Sovic (Michael V. Drake Institute for Teaching and Learning), Joy Y. Balta (College of Medicine)

Archiving Black Performance: Memory, Embodiment and Stages of Being
This project established a vision for the transmission of identity and race through the embodiment of repertory acquisition of four internationally acclaimed Black women performers: Carolyn Adams, Dianne McIntyre, Bebe Miller and Ursula Payne. This project elevated — via performance, oral history, archival research, summer workshops, digital preservation and communication methods, and publication — the historic dances of these women as represented through Black lives and Black bodies.

Principal Collaborators: Adélékè Adéèḳo (AAAS), Nadine George Graves (Dance), Valarie Williams (Dance), Larry Williamson Jr. (Hale Black Cultural Center), Crystal Perkins (Dance)

Building Capacity for the Internship Program at the Wexner Center for the Arts
This unique, multidisciplinary program attracted a diverse roster of students from across units at the university, as well as students from other colleges and universities, recent college graduates and those taking a gap year. These competitive internships offered real-world experience; exposure to arts-based careers; mentorship by and interaction with professionals across the center (as well as with visiting artists); and opportunities to pursue specialized interests. 

Principal Collaborators: Johanna Burton (Wexner Center for the Arts), Dionne Custer Edwards (Wexner Center for the Arts), Karen Simonian (Wexner Center for the Arts), Alana Ryder (Wexner Center for the Arts)

Environmental and Social Justice Arts and Humanities
This project developed a research agenda and academic programming. It demonstrated that the thematic pairing of social and environmental issues in the focus and development of sustainability efforts represents a high-leverage strategy for environmental humanists. Outcomes included:

1. An arts and humanities research agenda advancing knowledge about the nexus of social justice and ecology as a problem-framing device for community engagement and sustainable development,
2. New arts- and humanities-based courses and engaged coursework developed in the physical and intellectual spaces identified by the nexus of social justice and ecology,
3. A year-long lecture series addressing the major themes and outcomes that emerge at the nexus of social justice and ecology, and
4. A robust program evaluation.

Principal Collaborators: Beverly Vandiver (Kirwin Institute), Elena Irwin (Sustainability Institute), Casey Hoy (InFACT), Piers Norris Turner (Center for Ethics and Human Values), John Brooke (Center for Historical Research), Rick Livingston (Humanities Institute)

Hiphop Studies in Queer Black Feminism Conference
The Hiphop Literacies Conference and book project explored the Black Lives Matter philosophy and movement begun by three queer feminist women of color. Leading scholars, artists and activists of the post-Civil Rights Hiphop generations — including three Ohio State graduate students — were invited to contribute chapters.

Principal Collaborators: Larry Williamson Jr. (Hale Black Cultural Center), Elaine Richardson (Teaching and Learning)

Intercultural Competence for Global Citizenship
This project supported the Intercultural Competence for Global Citizenship summer camp for middle school children in the Columbus area. In the affiliated service-learning course, undergraduates were trained to teach language, cultural diversity and global issues without essentializing, othering or stereotyping. The course and camp increased awareness among the middle school students, their parents and Ohio State undergraduates of the fundamental necessity of the qualities, skills, attitudes and knowledge associated with intercultural competence in order to function as a global citizen in the twenty-first century.

Principal Collaborators: Center for Languages, Literatures and Cultures (Dir. Janice Aski); Department of French and Italian

K’acha Willaykuna: Andean and Amazonian Indigenous Art and Humanities
This project built on the momentum of the existing K’acha Willaykuna: Andean and Amazonian Indigenous Arts and Humanities Collaboration (funded by GAHDT) focusing on Indigenous material cultural production, oral traditions and performance practices as key sites of Indigenous knowledge, memory and meaning making.

Principal Collaborators: Scott Schwenter (Center for Latin American Studies), Maria Palazzi (AACAD)

Revisioning Folklore Studies in the Academy and the Public Square
This grant funded a year-long series of four multi-day workshops. This project built upon and complemented a number of other important initiatives at Ohio State that are engaged in rethinking graduate education in the humanities to make folklore work more public-facing and engaged and to prepare doctoral students for careers outside the academy. Additionally, the workshops produced curricular materials, models and resources that can be shared with colleagues across the country who are anxious to develop an anti-racist and decolonial perspective in their folklore syllabi, research, public exhibitions and pedagogies.

Principal Collaborators: Katherine Borland (Center for Folklore Studies), American Folklore Society

Toward a Digital Humanities Support Network
This project supported the construct of this network and the implementation of a web-publishing platform for digital collections, drawing upon established expertise in a variety of units — ACCAD, University Libraries, Humanities Institute, TDAI, CURA, etc. — to support both funded and unfunded faculty and graduate-student research through collaboration, consultation, instruction and referrals within the network.

Principal Collaborators: Maria Palazzi (ACCAD), David Staley (Humanities Institute), Leigh Bonds (Digital Humanities Librarian), Matt Lewis (Design/ACCAD/TDAI)

Toward Truth and Reconciliation: Present-Day Indigenous Peoples in Ohio
The release of the Land-Grab Universities Report in March 2020 has been accompanied by mounting calls to bring justice in response to the harm visited upon Native Americans during the establishment of states and land-grant universities. In this project, the Newark Earthworks Center funded a post-doctoral position that created dialogue both within the Ohio State community and among other land-grant institutions on the truth and reconciliation topics as they relate to Indigenous peoples. In partnership with the Humanities Institute, this effort built reciprocity and redistribution methodologies and engaged in other humanities-based scholarship surrounding tribal issues and land-grant universities.

Principal Collaborators : John N. Low (Newark Earthworks Center), Marti Chaatsmith (Newark Earthworks Center), Stephen Gavazzi (Human Sciences), Casey Hoy (InFACT), Brian Snyder (InFACT), Rick Livingston (Humanities Institute)

Asian Futures: A Collaborative Proposal
Asian Futures brought together colleagues and constituencies across campus to develop a forward-looking framework for Asian Studies at Ohio State. The project produced programming driven by key themes at the participating centers, including guest speakers, workshops and community engagement events. 

Principal Collaborators: The Humanities Institute (Dir. David Staley), Center for the Study of Religion (Dir. Hugh Urban), Center for Folklore Studies (Dir. Katherine Borland), Center for Ethnic Studies (Dir. Namiko Kunimoto) and the South Asian Studies Initiative (Pranav Jani and Mytheli Sreenivas) in partnership with East Asian Studies Center (Dir. Etsuyo Yuasa), Center for Urban and Regional Analysis (Dir. Harvey Miller), Office of International Affairs

Experimental Archaeology and the Medieval-Renaissance Worlds
CMRS hosted a series of lectures, demonstrations and events around the topic of ‘Experimental Archaeology.’ This year-long investigation expanded the traditional boundaries of ‘Experimental Archaeology’ beyond a focus on the recreation of buildings, technologies, things and environments, to also consider ‘Food Archaeology,’ or the preparation of meals using past recipes; and ‘Digital Archaeology,’ or the reconstruction of aspects of the past with the aid of computer technology.

Principal Collaborator: Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (Dir. Chris Highley)

Living Well, Dying Well: Religion, Health and Healing
This inter- and trans-disciplinary project hosted a series of colloquia on key themes for the year 2020-2021, a major conference as well as a graduate student conference (2022) and a series of faculty workshops on curriculum development for new courses on religion and medicine. The long-term goal was to build stronger connections with the medical and nursing programs and to attract more of their students to classes and majors in religious studies, folklore, English and other fields in the arts and humanities.

Principal Collaborators: Center for the Study of Religion (Dir. Hugh Urban), Center for Folklore Studies (Dir. Katherine Borland), The Humanities Institute (Dir. David Staley)

GAHDT Fellows at the DMAC Institute 
This project embeded three teams of teacher-scholars in the 2021 DMAC Institute by establishing the Global Arts and Humanities Discovery Theme Fellows at the Digital Media and Composition Institute. Collaborators issued a call for proposals from teams of two teacher-scholars to create instructional modules on the broad topic of equity, diversity and inclusion in digital contexts. The instructional modules included assignments, syllabi, curricula, workshops, classroom activities, bibliographies and community-engaged project ideas. Modules became a part of the regular DMAC curriculum and serve as instructional materials that participants can use at their home institutions and within their local communities. Modules are available to Ohio State instructors across disciplines and academic units who wish to use them in their classes and community outreach.  

Principal Investigators: Scott DeWitt (English) • John Jones (English) • Liz Miller (English)

Global and Popular Music Summer Youth Camp 
This grant supported a new youth summer camp program designed to provide school-aged musicians (grades 8-12) and college students with opportunities to create, perform, respond to and connect with a variety of global and popular music styles. This program complemented the camps that are regularly offered at the School of Music, which are Eurocentric in content and method. By focusing on popular and global music, this new camp facilitated the recruitment of students who would rarely consider pursuing music studies in high education, who may not feel represented in music programs in their schools, and whose musical interests and talents would contribute to the mission of the SOM. Furthermore, it allowed for current SOM students to develop and apply a broader scope of culturally-relevant pedagogy that they can use as performers and educators throughout their career upon graduation from Ohio State. 

Principal Investigators: Eugenia Costa-Giomi (Music) • Richard Palese (Music)

Ohio State to Community Dance-Intensive Pipeline
This five-day summer program provided local students (ages 14-18) with insights on what it is like to be an Ohio State dance major. Intensive dancers were chaperoned by upper-class dance majors; graduate students and faculty will provide instruction including but not limited to dance history, movement and repertory classes. The week culminated in a public performance experience in the Barnett Theatre where participants were offered the opportunity for on-site auditions for admission into the department.

Principal Investigators: Nyama McCarthy-Brown (Dance) 

Voices of Franklinton
This Summer Institute in Franklinton facilitated university-community partnerships through co-designing workshops and demonstrate how project-based research and experiential learning can address real world challenges at a local level. It illustrated the use of an ethical framework (based on the Principles of Inclusive and Equitable Civic Engagement).

Principal Investigators: Susan Melsop (Design) • Sébastien Proulx (Design)