Stanford Report, June 3, 2009

Presidential Fund for Innovation in the Humanities announces 2009 grants

BY CYNTHIA HAVEN

Three projects, involving China, Eurasian languages and pottery, have been awarded multi-year grants through the Stanford Presidential Fund for Innovation in the Humanities.

Aron Rodrigue, Stanford Humanities Center director and co-chair of the selection committee, said the committee was seeking intensively collaborative projects in its 2009 grants; hence, each of the projects will involve the work of multiple scholars across a range of disciplines and each represents a new mode of research and scholarship in the humanities.

"What these projects have in common is also what makes them unique: They undertake research that no individual scholar could attempt alone," said Rodrigue.

Project descriptions follow:

Moral Order, Cultural Exchange and the Multi-State System: Rethinking Chinese Perceptions of World Order in the Age of Geopolitical Tension. As China rises to a position of global economic and political power, thinkers and writers are rediscovering and debating the theoretical implications and practical values of the traditional Chinese vision of world order. Instead of using force to exercise authority over a territory and establish boundaries, classical Confucianism defended the idea of tianxia ("the world under heaven") as a harmonious world order. The project will bring together scholars from Stanford and China to better understand the relation of Chinese philosophy to China's political role in an increasingly globalized world.

Principal investigator: Ban Wang, Asian Languages and Comparative Literature.

Noun-Modifying Constructions in Languages of Eurasia: Reshaping Theoretical and Geographical Boundaries. This project will bring together experts in Central and East Asian languages to investigate grammar. The findings from the project will have wide-ranging implications for linguistic theory and will advance knowledge of these important languages. The experts, some focusing on languages nearing the brink of extinction, will challenge leading theories of grammatical construction based largely on European languages. Principal investigator: Yoshiko Matsumoto, Asian Languages.

Evoking Humanity Through Clay: A Replication Experience. This study will investigate the development and transmission of pottery technology with a series of events and also an ethnographic study of the learning experience of making pottery. The project will bring together scholars, artists and craftspeople to replicate the manufacture of ancient pottery in order to understand better the technology of prehistoric pottery creation. Using video, questionnaires and observation, the project will document indigenous and community potters using traditional methods to teach Stanford students to mold clay. It also will study firsthand the intersection of practical and discursive knowledge in action and will shed new light on an ancient technology. Principal investigators: Ian Hodder, Anthropology; Jody Maxmin, Art and Art History; Michael Shanks, Classics.

The grants were awarded by a multidisciplinary committee, co-chaired by Rodrigue and Stephen Hinton, senior associate dean for the humanities.

The Office of the President announced in 2007 the three-year, $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, and two projects received grants in 2008.