Collaborative Research

The Institute promotes faculty collaboration through a variety of programs and projects:

Working Groups

The Institute provides faculty working groups with funding, meeting space at Knight House, publicity, and organizational support. Such groups design two-year collaborative programs, which may take distinctive shapes but should include at least three public presentations a year and eventually find embodiment in a conference, publication, course, digital production, or appropriate other form. Working group proposals may be submitted at any time. In 2009-10, the Institute will sponsor the following groups:

Local Worlds

Led by: Morgan Liu (Near Eastern Languages and Cultures) and Joel Wainwright (Geography)

This working group proposes to build an interdisciplinary discussion at OSU around disciplines across the humanities and social sciences that have rendered and analyzed what we refer to as the "local worlds" of human endeavor – distinct, particular forms of socio-spatial human knowledge and practice – through a variety of modes of writing, including ethnography, historiography, biography, and fiction. These local worlds are manifest in sites as diverse as everyday routines, oral narratives, official documents, images, ritual, performance, and architecture. The group will consider how to talk about and make sense of local worlds of knowledge and practice and how to think theoretically about human endeavor in a way that yields insightful, empirically-grounded scholarship on the ways of being human.
More information about Local Worlds

Lusoglobe

Led by: Pedro Pereira (Spanish and Portuguese) and Antoinette Errante (School of Educational Policy and Leadership)

Portuguese is the language of 25 percent of Southern Hemisphere countries and 40 percent of the countries bordering the southern Atlantic rim region, around which eight metropolitan areas use Portuguese. The purpose of the working group is to enhance our understanding of cultural texts and dynamics that have resulted from the centuries-long networks of exchange among and beyond Portuguese-speaking regions in Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas. We are interested in what this inquiry can teach us about present-day cultural and political realities in the Lusophone world, as well as the role of Lusophone societies in the global milieu. Issues to be explored include domestic and transnational negotiations between “high” and “low” culture and the impact of audiovisual culture (e.g., music, television, cinema) and diverse forms of expressive culture (e.g., folklore and folklife, religious and ritual traditions, festival practices) on contemporary national and global politics, economic systems, and discourses of identity.
More information about Lusoglobe

Migration, Transnationalism, and Border Politics

Led by: Jeffrey H. Cohen (Anthropology) and Ignacio Corona (Spanish and Portuguese)

This working group fosters a dialogue between the social sciences and the humanities and invites participation from the College of Agriculture and the Fisher School of Business with the goal of advancing interdisciplinary scholarship and research. Globalization is responsible for much of current migratory trends as well as for destabilizing local identities and rearticulating them in new environments and contexts. This working group integrates cultural, economic, social and humanistic perspectives in the discussion of transnationalism. The interrelationship of these concepts articulates a continuum of social, cultural and political processes that contextualize the impact of transnationalism throughout the Americas. Our dialogue invites comparative approaches and interregional studies.
More information about Migration, Transnationalism, and Border Politics

Narrative and Cognition

Led by: Frederick Aldama (English) and James Phelan (English)

The aim of this working group is to explore how narrative shapes the experience of time (memory) and space (place) as well as how it informs our holographic capacity to determine our existence within time and space. The working group will grapple with how the mind and its stories inform our capacity to know and make sense of the world. The intersections among cognitive approaches to narrative with those of other approaches, both traditional and emerging, will be considered.
More information about Narrative and Cognition

The Neighborhood Institute

Led by: Steven Conn (History) and David Staley (Goldberg Center, History)

The Neighborhood Institute is a multi-year undertaking in civic engagement, involving Ohio State faculty and students as well as neighborhood leaders and residents in the area east of the Ohio State campus. This working group treats the University Area as a subject of academic inquiry. Our goals are to provide research and place-based learning opportunities for undergraduate members of the group, to improve the quality of life of the University area community, to breach the wall between the University and the neighborhood, to create data and information useful to neighborhood organizations, local non-profits, urban policy makers and other external entities like Campus Partners; and to become a (national) model for university/community partnerships.
More information about The Neighborhood Institute

The Public Sphere and Modern Social Imaginaries

Led by: Bernd Fischer (Germanic Languages and Literatures) and Alan Beyerchen (History)

The aim of this group's interdisciplinary research initiative is to explore the historical and contemporary significance of the public sphere and modern social imaginaries – the discourses, norms, and ideas shared by members of a given society. The motivation for such an investigation arises from the growing interdependence of different nations, regions, and communities that demands and generates new ways of political, legal, economic, strategic, and cultural forms of cooperation. What kind of public spaces facilitate and what kind of shared imaginaries support such cooperation and how do they emerge? What aspects in society hinder productive communication and interaction? Does productive social cooperation presuppose certain governmental, in particular democratic structures? Answering these and related questions will require the collaboration of a variety of disciplines, including, but not limited to social and political sciences, cultural theory, religious studies, philosophy, anthropology, economic theory, linguistics, history, art history, and education.
More information about The Public Sphere and Modern Social Imaginaries

Qualitative Inquiry

Led by: Candace Stout (Art Education) and Mark Moritz (Anthropology)

This working group is an interdisciplinary initiative dedicated to fostering cross-campus conversation among faculty and graduate students engaged in qualitative inquiry, including mixed methodologies. Scholars working in a variety of disciplines cross-cutting the arts, humanities, and the social, natural, behavioral, and applied sciences are engaging with increasing frequency in the rich variety of research strategies and methods that fall within a complex of domains in qualitative investigation. Committed to the multi-method approach and subscribing to varied conceptions of human experience, researchers engaged in qualitative inquiry, nonetheless, share interests and concerns in epistemology and analytical approaches to solving research problems. Given the size of our university, we are often unaware of the richness of human resources available to us; therefore, one of the central goals of this working group is to tap these resources, connect these departments, schools, and colleges toward sharing investigative strategies that complement, intermesh and illuminate new possibilities for qualitative inquiry. Through informal contacts alone, the interest list for this working group includes over 35 faculty working in departments such as Sociology, Social Work, History, English, African-American Studies, Design, Anthropology, Art Education, Education Policy & Leadership. http://qualinq.wikidot.com
More information about Qualitative Inquiry

LiteracyStudies@OSU

led by Harvey J. Graff (English and History) and colleagues from English, History, Design, Music, Art Education, Architecture, Teaching and Learning, Medicine, Dentistry, Health Science, Law, Chemistry, Biology, Public Affairs, and University Libraries, including among others Mollie Blackburn (Teaching & Learning), Peter Shane (Law), Kay Bea Jones (Architecture), Edward Adelson (Music), Ginny Bumgardner (Medicine), Kathy Sullivan (Public Affairs), Terry Gustafson (Chemistry), and Susan Fisher (Biology)

Literacy Studies began as a small working group in 2004 under the auspices of and with support from the Institute, with additional funds for programming from the College of Humanities. The group aimed to initiate a campus-wide conversation, or set of conversations, about literacy and literacy studies. The response to its wide range of programs and activities was phenomenal. The College of Humanities committed additional support in 2007, for the continuation and expansion of its programs and activities. This added support enabled Literacy Studies to establish offices at the George Wells Knight House, employ an Academic Program Coordinator, and transition from a working group of the Institute to LiteracyStudies@OSU, a university-wide initiative. See the Literacy Studies Web site.

Reading and Study Groups

Space and complimentary refreshments are provided to reading and study groups meeting at the Institute.

The Diversity Enhancement Program Research Working Group provides a supportive environment for junior faculty from under-represented groups to present their work in progress and to receive constructive feedback and encouragement from their peers and from senior faculty across the Colleges of the Arts and Humanities. The goal is to offer these junior faculty members concrete suggestions to improve their research and writing projects, typically a draft of a book chapter or substantial essay. For further information, please contact Chad Allen (allen.559@osu.edu).

The Lacan Study Group is dedicated to reading and discussing the published seminars of the Parisian psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. The text for 2009-2010 is Seminar VIII: Transference (1960-1961). Lacan’s Transference seminar is centrally concerned with the topic of love, which Lacan explores through an extended reading of Plato’s Symposium [aka The Banquet]. This reading group meets every two or three weeks, on a Sunday mid-afternoon for about two hours. For further information, contact Robert Hughes (hughes.1021@osu.edu)

Religious Studies Roundtable is a graduate student group created to provide a forum for interdisciplinary study and informal discussion of a broad range of religion-related topics for OSU graduate students and faculty. The group also fosters mutual understanding and respect among faith traditions, as well as providing collegial advice, support, and stimulation. For information, contact Lee Wiles-Op (wiles-op.1@osu.edu).

The Renaissance Dissertation Seminar meets once or twice a quarter to discuss works-in-progress, a dissertation chapter, dissertation prospectus, or journal article by one or two graduate students specializing in English Renaissance Literature and History. For information, contact Jennifer Higginbotham (higginbotham.37@osu.edu).

The Renaissance Reading Group meets once or twice a quarter (usually on a Thursday at 6:30 pm) to discuss primary or secondary works relevant to the study of Renaissance literature and culture. All are welcome to attend. For further information, please contact Luke Wilson (wilson.501@osu.edu).