Thirteen faculty members from the College of Letters and Science at UC Davis were recently awarded Revitalization Research Program Grants. Intended to support faculty whose research programs have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, the college-funded grants support the continuation or completion of stalled, high-priority projects.
"The College continues to make a major financial commitment to support faculty research through a diverse suite of funding programs, including this Revitalization Research Grant for faculty whose research was impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic or other exigencies," said Lori Lubin, associate dean for research and graduate studies. "Recipients of this competitive grant are awarded financial support to continue their critical research, benefiting the college, campus, and beyond."
The selected faculty members represent the breadth of research conducted at the College of Letters and Science. The awards ranged from $5,000 to $20,000. The total awards given to faculty this year amount to nearly $204,000.
The faculty awardees are as follows:
Diana Aramburu, associate professor of Spanish
Project: Examining the madre rebelde: A Transatlantic Study of the Prenatal and Postpartum Care in Contemporary Hispanic Fiction
Diana Aramburu studies 20th and 21st century Iberian and Latin American literatures and cultures, and contemporary Spanish and Caribbean crime fiction and maternal narratives, among other genres. Aramburu will use her revitalization grant to advance her second book Examining the Madre Rebelde: A Transatlantic Study of Prenatal and Postpartum Care in Contemporary Hispanic Fiction. The work will investigate the portrayal of the pregnant and postpartum body in maternal narratives of the Hispanic world.
Magali Billen, professor of earth and planetary sciences
Project: Pilot Model for National Science Foundation Geophysics Slab-Plume Interactions
Magali Billen investigates the forces that drive tectonic plates to move around the surface of the Earth. Billen is interested in exploring interactions that occur between slabs and narrow regions of buoyant, warm material called plumes, which rise from the Earth’s mantle. Billen will use the revitalization grant to recruit and support a graduate student who will create pilot models for these interactions. The hope is that the work will lay the foundation for a project that enables the detection of such interactions through seismological observations.
Damien Caillaud, professor of anthropology
Project: Behavioral Adaptation of Western Lowland Gorillas to an Extreme Habitat, the Lac Télé Swamp Forest
A behavioral ecologist, Damien Caillaud is interested in the social behavior and movement patterns of primates and other animals. Caillaud’s revitalization grant will fund research concerning the Western lowland gorilla, a critically endangered species throughout its range in central Africa. According to a survey conducted around two decades ago, these gorillas were unexpectedly documented as having a high density in a peat swamp forest in the Likouala region of the Republic of Congo. Caillaud wants to explore the hypothesis that the gorillas migrate seasonally between the swamp forest and solid ground forest.
Heather Elko, associate professor of political science
Project: The Multistage Path to Peace in Civil Conflicts
Heather Elko’s research seeks to understand the dynamics that lead to different countries negotiating with one another. Elko will use her revitalization grant to further her project that breaks up the “multistage path to peace” into four stages: initiation, pre-bargaining, the actual negotiation and the implementation phase. Elko wants to approach this multistage path holistically with careful attention to the earliest stages, which often are understudied.
Michael Foster, professor of East Asian languages and cultures
Project: The Poetics of Yôkai: Explorations of Wonder in Japan
Michael Foster studies the folklore, literature and popular culture of Japan. Foster will use his revitalization grant to complete the final chapters of a book titled The Poetics of Yôkai: Explorations of Wonder in Japan. Yôkai is an umbrella term used for the traditional monsters, supernatural creatures and spirits of Japanese folklore. According to Foster, these figures have recently become protagonists of popular culture products, including anime, manga, films and video games.
Richard Huskey, associate professor of communication
Project: A Neuro-Computational Model of the Negativity Bias for News
Richard Huskey studies how motivation influences the attitudes people hold and their behaviors. Huskey’s revitalization grant will fund an ongoing research project based on the findings that news organizations tailor their content to capitalize on people's common tendency to notice and dwell on negative information. Huskey aims to uncover the psychological and neural processes underpinning this “negativity bias.”
Erica Kohl-Arenas, associate professor of American Studies
Project: Agri-Cultural Justice from California’s Central Valley to the Mississippi Delta
Erica Kohl-Arenas is a scholar of social movements, freedom struggles and the politics of institutionalization, professionalization and private philanthropy. Kohl-Arenas will use her revitalization grant to support the second half of her forthcoming book Unruly Utopias: Radical World Building Projects in Northern California and Beyond, which aims to connect the California Central Valley and the Mississippi Delta through case studies of farming and food culture organizing initiatives.
Emily Morgan, assistant professor of linguistics
Project: Uncovering the Building Blocks of Languages
Emily Morgan studies the basic building blocks that a speaker needs in order to “know a language.” Morgan accomplishes her research through computational linguistic models. She will use her revitalization grant to further uncover the building blocks of language, specifically researching how formulaic multi-word phrases, such as idioms, are stored in a speaker’s mental repertoire.
Amy Motlagh, associate professor of comparative literature and Middle Eastern/South
Asian studies
Project: Invisible Men: A Cultural History of a Racial Thinking in Modern Iran and the Diaspora
Amy Motlagh has a long-standing interest in the Arab literary tradition and its connections to other world literatures. Motlagh’s revitalization grant will fund a book project titled Invisible Men: A Cultural History of Facial Thinking in Modern Iran and the Diaspora. The book analyzes the cultural output of prominent authors and filmmakers, as well as the critics and scholars who have engaged their work, to showcase how contemporary understandings of race and slavery in Iran have contributed to a “modern” Iranian identity.
Carey Seal, associate professor of classics
Project: Various Article Projects and Lucan’s Republic
Carey Seal studies Latin literature with a particular focus on how Roman authors handle questions about moral, political and aesthetic value. Seal’s revitalization grant will help support the completion of various article-length projects. It will also kickstart research for Seal’s second book, which concerns an epic poem by Roman poet Lucan about the civil war between Caesar and Pompey. According to Seal, this book, Lucan’s Republic, will be the first full-scale account of Lucan’s political ideas in more than 50 years.
Daniel Stolzenberg, associate professor of history
Project: The Holy Office in the Republic of Letters
Daniel Stolzenberg is a historian of knowledge, specializing in early modern Europe. The revitalization grant will support Solzenberg’s efforts to finish his second book The Holy Office in the Republic of Letters: Censorship and Bibliophilia in the Seventeenth-Century, which examines the relationship between the papacy and the Protestant book world in the 17th century. According to Stolzenberg, this relationship should be understood as an interface between Catholics and Protestants, rather than a barrier that impeded communication.
Cecilia Tsu, associate professor of history
Project: Starting Over: Hmong Refugees and the Politics of Resettlement in Modern America
Cecilia Tsu is a United States historian with research and teaching interests in Asian American history, race and ethnicity, immigration, California history and the American West. Tsu will use her revitalization grant to further her book project Starting Over: Hmong Refugees and the Politics of Resettlement in Modern America. The book will chronicle the evolution of Southeast Asian refugee resettlement policy from 1975 to 1996.
Stefan Uhlig, associate professor of comparative literature
Project: Cultural Reflection in Eighteenth-Century Art and Theory
Stefan Uhlig studies 18th-century and Romantic writing, art, material culture and aesthetics. Uhlig will use the revitalization grant to further work on his second book Cultural Reflection in Eighteenth-Century Art and Theory. The book aims to reveal how manufacturing, commerce, scientific learning, commentary, desire and cultural differences influenced 18th-century aesthetic theory through a set of artists, commentators, archives and practices.