URI Center for the Humanities

Board

Peter Covino is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing, Avant-garde and Contemporary Poetry and Poetics; Italian American, Translation, and Ethnic Studies at the University of Rhode Island English Department. His work has been published in many journals, including Quarterly West, The American Poetry Review, The Cimarron Review, The Yale Review, and The Paris Review, among others.

Leslie Kealhofer-Kemp is an Assistant Professor of French in the University of Rhode Island's English Department. Her research focuses on representations of minorities, in particular North African women, in France in documentaries, short films, téléfilms, and feature-length films, as well as the treatment of female friendship and childhood in Francophone cinemas and literatures and Immigration and Postcolonial Cultures in France. Her most recent book is titled Muslim Women in French Cinema: Voices of Maghrebi Migrants in France. ISBN 9781781381984

Erik Loomis is an Assistant Professor of History and Acting Director of Graduate Studies at the University of Rhode Island. His research interests include labor and environmental history of the United States, and global capitalism. His most recent book, Empire of Timber: Labor Unions and the Pacific Northwest Forests was published by Cambridge University Press in March of 2016.

Karen Markin is the director of the University of Rhode Island's Office of Research Development.

Annu Palakunnathu Matthew is currently the director of the Center for the Humanities. She is a Professor of Art (Photography) in the University of Rhode Island's Department of Art and Art History. Matthew’s photo-based work draws for her experience of having lived between cultures and about being an immigrant in the USA. Among other notable awards, Matthew won a 2012 Fulbright Fellowship and was artist in residence at the MacDowell Colony in 2010.

Evelyn Sterne is an Associate Professor of History and director of Graduate Studies for the History Department at the University of Rhode Island. Her research interests include the Twentieth-century United States, religion, immigration, politics and labor. She has been published by Cornell University Press and in Social Science History.

Ryan Trimm is a Professor of English Literature at the University of Rhode Island. His interests include 20th Century and Contemporary British Literature and Culture; Film; Postcolonial Theory and Literature; Cultural studies, Theory, and Philosophy. His work has appeared in the journals Novel, Literature-Interpretation-Theory, Comparative Literature and Culture, and Politics and Culture, as well as in the collections Postcolonial Whiteness and Culture and the State. Trimm also appeared on the MLA radio program What’s the Word.

Alan Verskin is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Rhode Island. His research interests include Islamic law, the intellectual and social interaction between Muslims, Christians and Jews in the pre-modern Middle East; women, gender, and family dynamics. He has been published in Der Islam: Journal of the History and Culture of the Middle East, and La Revue des Etudes Juives, among others.

Selected Notable Speakers

Each year the URI Center for the Humanities sponsors a Humanities Festival which brings distinguished humanities scholars from around the country to give talks which are free and open to faculty, students, and the community at large. Previous keynotes of this event include author and historian Dr. Peniel Joseph of Tufts University, author and historian Dr. Denise Spellberg, and Jim Leach, chairman for the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Notable Award Winners

The URI Center for the Humanities has granted over 150 awards to support the advanced research and publication of scholarship in the Humanities. Notable recipients include:

Faculty Research Grant

Faculty Research Grants are designed "to assist faculty and lectures in the humanities who expect to incur specific research costs, such as costs associated with travel to archives, the purchase of technology, payment for translations, and obtaining documents for study." Proposals for these grants are accepted twice each academic year: once in the Fall and once in the Spring. The primary criteria by which the executive board evaluates the proposals include: "The significance of the project to knowledge in the applicant's specific field, the significance of the project to knowledge of the humanities in general, the quality of the project, including its originality, independence, initiative, and clarity, and the feasibility of the proposal and the likelihood of timely completion."

Faculty Subvention Grant

The Faculty Subvention Grant is meant "to assist in the publication and exhibition of faculty research in the Humanities who are working with a scholarly press, an article in a peer reviewed journal or exhibitor that requires the author to share in the cost of translation, publication, or exhibition. Subvention grants are awarded for amounts up to a maximum of $1,000 per faculty member per project to assist with such costs as obtaining permissions, reproducing photographs, indexing books, and framing artwork." Proposals for these grants are accepted twice each academic year: once in the Fall and once in the Spring. The primary criteria by which the executive board evaluates the proposals include: "The significance of the publication to knowledge in the specific field; the significance of the publication to knowledge of the humanities in general; the quality of the publication, including its originality, independence, and clarity."

Visiting Scholar Grants

Visiting Scholar Grants are designed to encourage and support Humanities scholars to speak at the University of Rhode Island campus. All of the events sponsored by this grant are free and open to the public, and preference is given to events which engage the student body by inviting one or more classes. Winners are awarded up $500. The board has a rolling admissions for this grant throughout the academic year. The criteria upon which they base their decision to fund the visit of a particular scholar include: "the value of the event for enhancing the humanities at URI and its surrounding community, the number of students/courses involved with the event, the importance of the visiting scholar to course content (if applicable),the availability of funding, the clarity of the proposal." Speakers who have visited the campus with sponsorship for this award include Lisa Norling, Albert Chong, Chris Cleave, Antonia Arslan Hasan Elahi Robert Coover Arnold Mesches, Martha Vicinus Barrie Jean Borich, Ann Blair, and Horacio Castellanos.

Graduate Research Grants

Graduate Research Grants are designed to the support students working toward the completion of a Master's Theses or Doctoral Dissertation within the traditional Humanities disciplines. Grants may also be awarded to students studying outside the traditional Humanities if their research is clearly grounded in the Humanities. Winners are awarded up to $1000. Applicants are accepted twice an academic year, once during the Spring, and once during the Fall. The primary criteria by which the board evaluates applications include: "the significance of the project to knowledge in the specific field, the significance of the project to knowledge of the humanities in general, the quality of the project, including its originality, independence, initiative, and clarity, the feasibility of the proposal and the likelihood of timely completion of the project."

Student Excellence Awards

As part of the annual Humanities Festival each Spring, the Center for Humanities acknowledges two students who have demonstrated excellence in Humanities related study throughout their academic careers at the University of Rhode Island. Students are nominated by faculty members who recognize the high quality of the student’s academic rigor and passion for the Humanities. Such excellence can be interpreted in terms of high grade point average in Humanities courses, an exceptional research or artistic prevention, the student’s professional promise in a Humanities related career, or any combination thereof. Winners are awarded $500.