CLICK HERE FOR READING GROUP APPLICATION GUIDELINES

The IPRH awards financial support to interdisciplinary faculty and graduate student Reading Groups, which meet regularly throughout the year and frequently organize public events on topics of interest to a broad range of disciplines.

IPRH Reading Groups may be formed around any topic or theme; they need not be coordinated with the IPRH theme for this or any other year. Reading Groups should aim to foster collaborative study in the humanities, and to investigate questions of sufficient breadth to draw scholars from a diverse array of intellectual traditions. The IPRH will consider proposals for Reading Groups for the 2008-09 academic year in spring 2008; full application guidelines can be found here, and the proposal deadline will be April 2, 2008.

The following groups have been awarded support by the IPRH for 2007-08. Please contact the Reading Group organizers (listed below) directly for more information about the groups and their activities.

20th Century Radical Traditions in Education

This bi-weekly group welcomes those interested in critical issues in education.  Readings will focus on work by scholars who link the intellectual history of radical traditions with today’s global educational issues. Our preliminary reading list includes Paula Allman, Glenn Rikowski, Diana Coben, Peter McLaren, and Henry Giroux. Ongoing dialogues with those who seek socially just schools will inform discussions.

Organizers: Laura Galicia (galicia@uiuc.edu) and Susan Gregson (gregson@uiuc.edu)

Alternative Economic Systems

This reading group examines well-articulated visions for societal resource allocation that are informeds by an ethical consideration for human well-being. In so doing, we hope to move beyond the false dilemma of capitalism vs. communism. Theorists and activists from all disciplines are encouraged to explore the relation of macro-level principles to micro-level practices. Readings and videos will address anarcho-syndicalism, participatory economics, and market socialism, among other proposed alternatives to mainstream models.

Organizers: Rich Potter (rpotter2@uiuc.edu) and Steven Jug (sjug2@uiuc.edu)

Anthropology and Psychology of the Asian / American Self

This reading group brings together an interdisciplinary group of faculty and graduate students from across the social sciences and humanities around the theme of “the Asian/Asian American Self.”  The group will discuss texts from anthropology and psychology on contemporary scholarship in culture, identity, and selfhood in Asia and Asian America.  Some of the meetings will feature guest scholars who will be invited to the campus to participate in our discussion.

Organizers: Sumie Okazaki (okazaki@uiuc.edu) and Nancy Abelmann (nabelman@uiuc.edu)

Asian American Cultural Studies

This group will explore recent scholarship in Asian American Cultural Studies. As an emerging field of interdisciplinary and intersectional approaches, we will examine how various theories and methodologies are productive to the study of Asian American populations. We will examine how literary, historical, ethnographic, and sociological approaches inform the interdisciplinary methods of cultural studies. Our guiding questions will focus on how these works inform understandings of concepts such as race/racism, gender, religion, sexuality, class, ethnicity, diaspora, community, empire, militarism, etc.

Organizers: Junaid Rana (jrana@uiuc.edu) and Soo Ah Kwon (sakwon@uiuc.edu)

Asian / American Feminisms

This reading group seeks to (a) engage with hi/stories and experiences of Asian American women that center women; (b) explore Asian American feminisms and ask questions such as, “What are Asian American feminisms?” and (c) practice Asian American feminist pedagogy, which has been defined as applying knowledge to serve the community through collective processes. The reading group is open to anyone interested in learning more about any or all of these topics; furthermore, the group will provide a space to discuss how we are affected by these issues in our lived realities in gendered, racialized, and classed spaces.

Organizers: Jennifer Chung (jychung@uiuc.edu) and Genevieve Clutario (gclutar2@uiuc.edu)

British Bodies

The body has become an innovative cornerstone of new trends in theory, literary scholarship, and historiography.  "British Bodies" will allow scholars to explore the problems and potential of foregrounding material bodies in British studies.  We'll examine how notions of "being-in-the-world" operate across historical periods and political and aesthetic fields ranging from the 18th through 21st centuries.  We'll also evaluate the politics of which "bodies" are and are not imagined as "British.

Organizers: Liz Hoiem (hoiem@uiuc.edu) and Brandon Jernigan (jernigan@uiuc.edu)

The reading group ‘The City’ represents a cosmopolitan space where participants read both their own works as well as seminal or emerging texts within the broad field of urban studies.  The reading group’s primary goal is to engage in fulfilling, cross-disciplinary conversations about how to construct scholarly analyses of cities.  ‘What is a city’ and ‘how do we study it’ are therefore the group’s primary questions.

Organizer:  Will Morris (wfmorris@uiuc.edu)

Comparative Politics Workshop

The CPW is a forum for the presentation of on-going cross-national and/or cross-cultural research that poses academically interesting and relevant questions about political phenomena. It is not limited in terms of subject or methodology. Presentations are informal, papers are circulated before the meeting and all are encouraged to actively participate in the discussion.

Organizer: José Antonio Cheibub (cheibub@uiuc.edu)

This reading group will consider current interdisciplinary queer studies scholarship on sexualities, races, and nations.  We are especially interested in exploring:  the national and cultural specificity of existing formations of queer critique and theories of racialization; transnational queer approaches; and the extent to which analyses of race and sexuality do or do not translate easily or innocently across historical periods or national contexts.

Organizer: Martin Manalansan (manalans@uiuc.edu)

Critical Research Collaborative

The CRC Reading Group engages and provides ongoing public spaces for critical dialogue; support for the critical development of members; and the cultivation and nurturance of critical research and policy analysis that supports the struggle for cultural and economic democracy. Specifically, the CRC Reading Group will be structured around the process and politics of dissertation writing. This reading group will engage how social justice and transformation address issues regarding tolerance, justice, equity, responsibility, and democracy.

Organizers: Rufina Cortez (cortez2@uiuc.edu) and Judith Estrada (jestrad2@uiuc.edu)

Critical Spatial Practice

Our goal is to investigate “the relationship between spatial theory and critical practice.” While investigating the spatialization of power on a global scale and its historical antecedents, we also hope to make concrete connections to local distributions and enactments of power. Visiting speakers will enhance our transdisciplinary inquiries, and our listserv has become international over the last year. We continue to gather links to parallel activities on the website, www.walkinginplace.org/iprh.

Organizers: Nicholas Brown (nbrown2@uiuc.edu) and Sharon Irish (slirish@uiuc.edu)

Critical Sports Studies

The Critical Sport Studies reading group offers an opportunity for interdisciplinary investigations of the myriad sporting experiences across the local, national, and transnational spheres. This reading group builds on the existing interests in critical studies of sport among faculty and graduate students across the UIUC campus. Its goal is to cultivate an important intellectual base to further develop this interdisciplinary field by engaging in the close study of recent publications, works viewed as canonical, and works in progress.

Organizers: Adrian Burgos (burgosjr@uiuc.edu) and David Haskell (haskell2@uiuc.edu)

Critical Technologies of Race

This is an inter- and transdisciplinary group designed to draw connections between texts in critical theory and critical race studies. It is an important time to re-imagine the circulation of racial epistemologies and politics; conversations would be designed to facilitate the re-thinking and re-framing of critical race studies via classic and contemporary readings in critical theory.

Organizer: Fiona Ngô (ngo@uiuc.edu)

Digital Literacies

Organized around the theme of digital literacies, this reading group invites colleagues to engage in an interdisciplinary conversation on how digital media have been taken up in fields such as writing studies, art and design, informatics, communication, and rhetorical studies, among them. With digital literacies, we do not signal only competence in the skills necessary to operate a computer.  Instead we argue that the ability to read, compose, and communicate electronically has become essential to literate activity.

Organizers: Gail Hawisher (hawisher@uiuc.edu) and Patrick Berry (pberry2@uiuc.edu)

Drugs, Culture, and Society

This group will foster discussions about the multitude of narratives woven into the realities of illegal drugs via literature in a variety of disciplines and genres.  Readings will engage particular dominant and subaltern narratives that have emerged during the last 150 years, which, taken collectively answer the question: how did we get here? While answering this question, we intend to work towards investigating alternatives that can be used to construct new approaches to public policy.

Organizers: Daniel Larson (dmlarson@uiuc.edu) and Will Morris (wfmorris@uiuc.edu)

Globalization and migration around the world have brought into contact speakers of different linguistic varieties, impacting their verbal behavior in the process. This reading group will draw from a broad range of disciplines studying language contact and language evolution. Besides traditional areas of inquiry in the linguistic sciences, such as historical linguistics, sociolinguistics, and dialectology, readings will feature foundational work on theories of social action, social network theory, and computer-based simulations of language evolution

Organizers: Anna Maria Escobar (aescobar@uiuc.edu) and Zsuzsanna Fagyal (zsfagyal@uiuc.edu)

The Early Modern Interdisciplinary

This reading group provides an intellectual forum for early modernists on campus. For this purpose, we define early modern studies as a field of inquiry encompassing the literature, culture, history, arts, and sciences from 1450 to 1800 in any area of the globe. Participants are encouraged to make suggestions. Meetings are structured around broadly conceived themes, e.g. early modern subjectivities, conceptualizations of space and territoriality, and global approaches to early modern culture.

Organizers: Heather Hyde Minor (hhminor@uiuc.edu) and Robert La France (lafrance@uiuc.edu)

East Asian Language Pedagogy

East Asian Language Pedagogy reading group is a bi-weekly meeting among those graduate students and faculty who are interested in second language acquisition and pedagogy.  Our goals are to expand our knowledge of East Asian language learning/acquisition and pedagogy, and to become familiar with important professional resources so that we, as language teachers, learn to become an informed, purposeful decision maker in the second/foreign language classroom.

Organizers: Misumi Sadler (sadlerm@uiuc.edu) and Jeeyoung Ahn Ha (j-ahn3@uiuc.edu)

The Eastern European Reading Group is an interdisciplinary gathering of faculty and students who are interested in a variety of topics and issues related to the region of Eastern Europe.  During their monthly meetings, the members of the Eastern European Reading Group discuss new works of scholarship on the region and debate a number of important historical themes related to the region, view and discuss films, and occasionally invite visiting scholars to address the group

Organizers: Keith Hitchins (khitchin@uiuc.edu) and Fedja Buric (buric@uiuc.edu)

This reading group aims to touch on critical emerging issues in the study of community and community development.  The group will explore themes such as globalization and community change, the challenge of public participation in the context of changing society, and changing definitions of community through reading and discussion of scholarly books and articles, literary books and films, and sharing ongoing research.  Occasional seminars will allow participants and outsiders to share their work.

Organizers: Stephen Gasteyer (gasteyer@uiuc.edu) and Anne Heinze Silvis (asilvis@uiuc.edu)

Gender, Sexuality and 'South Asia' Studies

Seeking to explicate the localization of histories of sexuality in an apparently transnational world, this reading group politicizes increasing intersections between 'globalization' and 'sexuality'.  Drawing heavily from the South Asian case, the group will also refer to texts on gender and sexuality in the ‘Middle East, Indian Ocean Trading World, and South Asian diaspora.

Organizers:  Shefali Chandra (sc23@uiuc.edu) and Nathaniel Chio (nchio1@uiuc.edu)

The German Colloquium has met regularly since 1989, bringing together U of I scholars in German history, German literature, and allied fields along with their students.  We discuss ongoing research projects, dissertation proposals, dissertation chapters, and other works in progress; host off-campus visitors who share their current research; and read and discuss new and important studies in the field.  The itinerary for the year is in part a function of the interests and inclinations of the participants

Organizer: Peter Fritzsche (pfritzsc@uiuc.edu)

Girl's Studies

Girls' Studies explores how age, race, gender, class, and sexuality mediate representations and lived experiences of girls—a group historically overlooked by society, culture, and scholarship.  By reading recent scholarship, exchanging works-in-progress, and interacting with SOLHOT (an arts-based community project for primarily African American girls,) we will address how girls as a group influence and are influenced by social, political, economic, and transnational systems

Organizers: Sarah Projansky (sprojans@uiuc.edu) and Ruth Nicole Brown (rnbrown@uiuc.edu)

Engaging critically with indigeneity as a site of inquiry allows scholars to address discourse that underpin colonial institutions.  Thus, this reading group provides occasion to address several questions:  How does "indigenous" signify and challenge the conditions of colonization, industrialism, and globalization?  How does indigeneity function as a political, geographical, or theoretical category and how does bringing indigeneity to the fore allow for new intellectual relationships that challenge common constructs such as race, ethnicity, and nation

Organizers:  Jodi Byrd (jabyrd@uiuc.edu) and D. Anthony Tyeeme Clark (tyeeme@uiuc.edu)

The Jewish Studies Workshop provides an interdisciplinary forum through which to explore emerging issues in Jewish Studies. Reading materials, usually works-in-progress, are circulated prior to meetings, with the actual event serving as a forum for discussion. In addition to inviting U of I faculty and graduate students, each semester we invite a number of guests, ranging from established key figures in Jewish Studies to exciting junior scholars. We seek to open Jewish Studies to scholars across a broad range of interests. 

Organizer: Brett Kaplan (bakaplan@uiuc.edu)

The Korea Workshop, into its seventh year, will focus this year on: Korea Gender/Sex/Race.  We will meet approximately twelve times on Fridays from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m.  Sessions will include discussion of: pre-modern sex/gender cultures, colonial period gender/sex/race system, and contemporary racial/sexuality transformations. The group is run as a workshop, discussing an already circulated paper.  We welcome new organizers and discussants. 

Organizer: Nancy Abelmann (nabelman@uiuc.edu)

Language and Social Interaction

This group holds weekly data sessions on topics including repair, turn-taking, sequence organization, learner and teacher talk, and grammar and interaction. For each meeting, one group member provides the data, i.e., an audio/video recording and transcript. This format provides us with an opportunity a) to analyze data from various languages, b) to share in each others’ research, c) to present difficult data samples to a friendly audience for feedback, and d) to hone our analytical skills.

Organizer: Andrea Golato (golato@uiuc.edu)

Language Issues in the Asian Diaspora

This group takes a transnational perspective on language issues in the Asian diaspora. Topics include bilingual literacy development, heritage language education, the language socialization of immigrants, language attitudes towards English in Asia and the private English language education market. We look at the different ways in which race, class, gender, and ethnicity intersect language issues in immigrants’ lives, and the different kinds of methodologies which scholars use to understand language issues

Organizers: Adrienne Lo (adrienlo@uiuc.edu) and Yeonsun Ellie Ro (yeonro@uiuc.edu)

Linguistic Appropriateness over the Centuries

Philosophical treatises about rhetoric, medieval discourses about civility and the civilizing process, and most recently works on linguistic etiquette (or the lack thereof) have provided an outlet for normative injunctions about linguistic behavior since antiquity. Under the guise of political correctness and linguistic activism, such injunctions often seek to change society by changing how we speak about it. This interdisciplinary reading group will focuses on the many facets of linguistic appropriateness as outlined above.

Organizers: Marina Terkourafi (mt217@uiuc.edu) and Rakesh Bhatt (rbhatt@uiuc.edu)

This interdisciplinary reading group focuses on the historical and cultural analysis of human health, medicine, and science.  We read history, cultural studies, sociology, and anthropology and, from time to time, view videos as well.  Topics have included AIDS, Japanese-American physicians, thalidomide, condoms, disabilities, and end-of-life care.  The core group comes from History, the Institute of Communications Research, and the Medical Scholars Program.  We welcome those with related interests in other disciplines.

Organizers: Kristen Ehrenberger (kehren2@uiuc.edu) and Leslie J. Reagan (lreagan@uiuc.edu)

The Migration Studies Group consists of faculty and graduate students in the humanities and social sciences who work on aspects of human migration. The group meets eight to ten times a year to read and discuss work in progress by the presenters. The group also invites quest speakers from other campuses on occasion, sometimes in cooperation with other reading groups or programs at the university. The theme for 2007-08 is gender and migration.

Organizers: Dorothee Schneider (schndr@uiuc.edu) and Alicia P. Rodriguez (aprodrig@uiuc.edu)

Organizers: Nancy Abelmann (nabelman@uiuc.edu) and Adrienne Lo (adrienlo@uiuc.edu)

Museums Writ Large V

This reading group considers museums as sites where identities are asserted, contested, and negotiated within dynamic social, political and other contexts, including under contemporary conditions of globalization. We interrogate the social, historical, and economic conditions that generate the collections housed in museums as well as the architectural frameworks and academic and historical practices deployed in displaying objects and "Others." In addition to critical literature discussion we will apply our accumulated knowledge to actual civic engagement. New members are welcome.

Organizers: Helaine Silverman (helaine@uiuc.edu) and Boyd Rayward (wrayward@uiuc.edu)

Oral History: New Issues in Practice and Preservation

We will frame our interdisciplinary readings and discussions by focusing mainly on recent work (both theoretical and practical) with four key questions in mind: What is the evolving practice of oral history? How is oral history conceived as a way of knowing, and how do practitioners relate it to other kinds of historical narrative and documentation? What methodological issues does oral history pose today? As technologies change and libraries digitize, how do we preserve oral history

Organizers: Susan Davis (sgdavis@uiuc.edu) and Chris D'Arpa (cdarpa2@uiuc.edu)

This reading group addresses the way the Internet and associated new media, such as blogging, wikis, mashups of digital video, and social networking sites, enable new forms of cultural participation. Discussion of this phenomenon, often referred to as Web 2.0, will appeal to scholars from diverse intellectual traditions, and include themes such as literacy, and copyright in the age of participatory culture; technology affordances and constraints on cultural production; and the place of women’s versus men’s productions

Organizers: Lisa Nakamura (lnakamur@uiuc.edu) and Lori Kendall (loriken@uiuc.edu)

Reading across Resilience

Our goals: a) highlight readings which frame and probe the parameters of resiliency and resilience as they relate to individual and family well-being in the context of communities, both in the presence of risk and as part of everyday living, b) build a dialogue around different perspectives and common interests on campus around resilience, and c) reflect upon the bidirectional implications of resilience/resiliency research upon individual- and family-focused practice.

Organizers: Aaron Ebata (ebata@uiuc.edu) and Aimee Rickman (arickman@uiuc.edu)

Reading the University of Illinois is a reading group that emerges from the interests of students who have worked with the Ethnography of the University Initiative (EUI).   This reading group takes a socio-historical approach to the University, exploring the historical roots of current social issues on campus.

Organizers: Kate Grim-Feinberg (kgrimfe2@uiuc.edu) and Teresa Ramos (tramos@uiuc.edu)

Rhetorical Studies

Now in its second year, the Rhetorical Studies Reading Group brings together an interdisciplinary group of faculty and students with interests in rhetoric. Through readings, conversations with visiting scholars, and surveys of the most recent scholarship, we work to identify lines of convergence and difference across various approaches to rhetoric. During 2007-08 we plan to make the “productive problem” of rhetoric’s multi-disciplinary locations a key focus of our conversations.

Organizers: Cara Finnegan (caraf@uiuc.edu) and Ned O'Gorman (nogorman@uiuc.edu)

The Russian Studies Circle (“Kruzhok”) is interested in the interdisciplinary study of Russia and the Soviet Union, past and present. The Kruzhok seeks to stimulate engagement across disciplines by bringing together students and faculty from different departments and by exploring texts that allow us to engage theoretical as well as interpretive questions. Formats include reading critical new work (including by visiting scholars), discussing the work of members of the group, and examining literature and film.

Organizers: Mark Steinberg (steinb@uiuc.edu) and Harriet Murav (hlmurav@uiuc.edu)

This group is a forum to read and discuss foundational and emerging scholarship within Science & Technology Studies.  Work that considers race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and transnationalism will be emphasized.  Cross-disciplinary discussions will illuminate how cultural identity influences and is shaped by science and technology.  We will explore the rich and compelling ways human societies produce and use science and technology, and how individuals locate themselves with and among changes in science and technology.

Organizers: Rayvon Fouché (rfouche@uiuc.edu) and Sharra Vostral (vostral@uiuc.edu)

The SLA reading group is an interdisciplinary group whose goal is to further the linguistic study of Second Language Acquisition (SLA). The group has two main objectives: (1) to read and discuss seminal texts on second language acquisition; and (2) to give group members, in particular graduate students, a chance to present their ongoing work, receiving feedback on their works-in-progress and presentations.

Organizers: Tania Ionin (tionin@uiuc.edu) and Silvina Montrul (montrul@uiuc.edu)

This group focuses on readings and discussion about service-learning pedagogy and the scholarship of engagement. Group activities will include sharing knowledge and resources to support service-learning course design, providing feedback about participants’ service-learning courses and community-based learning projects, and encouraging interdisciplinary collaboration on service-learning initiatives and engaged scholarship. The goals of the reading group are to foster interest in and knowledge about the scholarship of engagement and to develop an active community of service-learning practitioners.

Organizer: Valeri Werpetinski (werpetin@uiuc.edu)

Southern History

This group, which has met for more than a decade, brings together scholars across disciplines from various institutions to discuss the American South. The group has discussed a wide assortment of topics and hosted many prominent guest speakers over the years, but it usually concentrates on emerging scholarship: presentations range from book chapters and article drafts to dissertation proposals. The group fosters collaborative study and multi-disciplinary perspectives incorporating recent scholarship; its discussions are lively and wide-ranging. Visitors are always welcome.
 
Organizer: Vernon Burton (ovburton@uiuc.edu)

Recently, due to globalization and an emphasis on multicultural education, religious, spiritual, and holistic education have attracted growing attention from educators worldwide. By analyzing relevant scholarly works, we hope to address the following questions: What is spirituality? What is its relationship to religion? What is the relationship between spirituality and education? What, if anything, does international educational research tell us? Particularly, should spirituality be integrated into an American public school curriculum?

Organizers: Yueh-Mei Lin (ylin8@uiuc.edu) and Jeffrey R. Thibert (thibert2@uiuc.edu)   

Trans-East Asian Cinema Reading Group

The Trans-East Asia Reading Group focuses on the interactions among cinemas of China, Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Hollywood. We will screen films and discuss recent scholarship. We seek answers to the following questions: To what extent has the imagination of a unitary East Asian market influenced the style, aesthetics, and visual concepts of filmmakers? How is trans-East Asian cinema related to trans-Pacific and transnational cinema? What is the relationship between regionalism and transnationalism?

Organizers: Eric Dalle (dalle@uiuc.edu) and Yanjie Wang (ywang40@uiuc.edu)

Transnational Urbanism: Cities and Citizenship in the Transnational Era

This group will bring together faculty and graduate students with strong focus and interest in transnational studies to collectively interrogate and examine the complexity of urban development, urban life and citizenship in a transnational era. It calls for reconsidering and re-conceptualizing how cultural, political and economic urban processes are shaped locally and trans-locally.  A set of readings and discussions will be used as catalyst to help us reflect and re-interpret our understanding of citizenship, its construction, and its development.

Organizers: Stacy Harwood (sharwood@uiuc.edu) and Elizabeth Sweet (esweet1@uiuc.edu)

Working-Class Black Activism

Members committed to emancipatory projects in the contemporary will draw upon interdisciplinary scholarship to discuss the activism of working-class, working-poor, and poor people of African-descent in the United States from 1865 to the present. Through explorations of such varying topics as industrial unionism, welfare and public housing reform, and mobilizations around and against the US prison system participants will trace the transformative ideologies, strategies, and tactics developed by historical subjects often characterized as lacking agency.

Organizers: Kerry Pimblott (kpimblo2@uiuc.edu) and Ashley Howard (howard4@uiuc.edu)

Youth Literature Interest Group

The Youth Literature Interest Group (YLIG) offers an opportunity for faculty and doctoral students from the U of I, ISU, and EIU to collaboratively engage in the interdisciplinary study of children's and young adult literature.  We represent a range of disciplines--including, but not limited to, Education, English, and Library and Information Science--and meet monthly to discuss texts and issues relevant to youth literature.  We also host the annual Gryphon lecture, featuring a leading youth literature scholar, in the spring.

Organizers: Christine Jenkins (cajenkin@uiuc.edu) and Kate McDowell (kmcdowel@uiuc.edu)

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