Melanie Manos, Kelly Murdoch-Kitt Named Summer Faculty Fellows at Institute for the Humanities
The Institute for the Humanities at U‑M has awarded fellowships for the 2020 summer term to eight faculty members, including Stamps Lecturer II, Melanie Manos, and Stamps Assistant Professor, Kelly Murdoch-Kitt.
The Faculty Fellowship Program at the Institute for the Humanities invites faculty members to take up residence at the institute during their respective fellowship periods, forming an intellectual community while pursuing original research and participating in regular, cross-disciplinary fellows’ seminars. The summer 2020 fellowships will take place entirely online, with remote work and weekly video conference seminar sessions.
During Summer 2020, Manos will focus on her multimedia project, “Visualizing Women’s Work,” addressing gendered public monuments in the United States, historical erasure, and seeks to question both the definition and representation of heroism. In collaboration with students, librarians, computer scientists, information designers, local historians, and others, the project will develop viewer participation strategies for breaking through the dominating narrative and expand the imaginary around history-based visual culture in public places. Manos also aims to make evident the support systems that allow select individuals to rise in status and ultimately be recognized in statuary.
“It is an honor to join this cohort and a great opportunity for the advancement of the Visualizing Women’s Work project at a key moment in fine-tuning the questions it seeks to pose,” Manos said. “I’m looking forward to the interdisciplinary exchange that the fellowship affords, which will benefit the multifaceted aspects of the project as we move toward the launch of an interactive website, an augmented reality app for handheld devices, and localized involvement nationwide including — eventually — live art happenings such as Monuments Bingo!”
Murdoch-Kitt will focus on her project, “ORBIT: Designing Intercultural Collaborations,” an experimental online platform that is a companion to her 2020 book, Intercultural Collaboration by Design: Drawing from Differences, Distances, and Disciplines through Visual Thinking, co-authored by Kelly Murdoch-Kitt and Denielle J. Emans. ORBIT (the Online Resource for Building Intercultural Teams) will provide a platform to form diverse collaborations. Users will be paired with individuals with similar interests but from different cultural backgrounds of disciplines. Faculty from all disciplines will be able to join a beta launch of the platform in summer 2020 and can utilize the platform to find interdisciplinary or intercultural teaching and research collaborations. Interested parties can sign up to be part of the beta launch at orbit-project.com.
“I’m excited and honored to be named one of the eight Summer Fellows,” said Murdoch-Kitt. “The Institute for the Humanities provides an opportunity to work with a diverse academic community, which is directly aligned with the spirit of the ORBIT project. I’m certain that this fellowship will grow my research and help the platform achieve its full potential, especially during this time when remote collaborations and international partnerships are more essential than ever.”
Institute for Humanities names faculty, graduate student fellows | University Record