Research Interest Groups (RIGs)

Purpose

Oregon Humanities Center (OHC) RIGs support UO-based scholars who share a humanities-related research focus by providing up to $1,000 per academic year for up to two years. RIGs are interdisciplinary in nature and meet regularly (a minimum of once per term) to share readings and/or other recent research activities and findings.

Current RIGs:

Thinking with Data

Hosted by UO Library Data Services, members of this RIG read and discuss recent books on the intersections of data, science, and contemporary knowledge production. The group serves as a meeting point for faculty, students, and community members across disciplines to discuss the impact of the increasingly prominent role of data in society and its potential social, cultural, and political ramifications. The group has fostered dialogue between data scholars and those working in the traditional humanities. The during the 2023–24 academic year, the group read David Salsburg’s The Lady Drinking Tea: How Statistics Revolutionized Science in the Twentieth Century, David Golumbia’s The Cultural Logic of Computation, and Caroline Criado Perez’s Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men. 

Philosophy of Machine Learning and AI

Embodying the Liberal Arts in Theory and in Practice (2021-current)

Our interdisciplinary research interest group (RIG), the founding members of which currently serve as faculty-in-residence in the Clark Honors College, is dedicated to the exploration of how to embody the liberal arts in theory and in practice. While our research projects engage embodiment across a range of scholarly fields, we also are unified in our commitment to investigate the transformative potential of embodiment practices for liberal arts education.

Embodying racial justice is the primary focus of our RIG this year. 2020 witnessed some of the most passionate protests for racial justice seen in the US and globally since the Civil Rights movements, awakening a new consciousness of the depths of structural anti-Black and racist violence. In the past year we also collectively bore witness to an unfathomable number of incidents of violence against communities of color, from the brutal murder of George Floyd to a series of shootings of unarmed Asian women in Atlanta. The response from higher education has been an outpouring of initiatives to transform university cultures that, since their inception, have unconsciously excluded and disempowered students and faculty of color.

Transformation and reform initiatives within higher education have been fraught. Many faculty and students of color argue that current initiatives must go beyond semantic and intellectual gestures toward inclusion. Anti-racist work must strive to transform educational cultures in a way that palpably affirms and recognizes the historical and contemporary trauma of marginalized groups, and structurally combats racist power dynamics within institutions and leadership. Racism and colonization are not limited to individual attitudes, biases and prejudices. They are structurally anchored in the forms of denial, disembodiment, and historical erasure that permeate educational institutions and society at large.

Our RIG is premised upon the idea that our bodies are a crucial site for working with this disease of forgetting that we see in our society, because the body is where we hold racialized trauma, both individually and collectively. We believe that embodied practices are key to cultivating anti-racist and anti-oppressive environments. Through this academic year and beyond, we will gather interdisciplinary scholars who write and teach about the concept of embodiment in theory and in practice, with a particular focus on racial justice and on embodied pedagogy as research.For more information about the RIG, contact Kate Mondloch at mondloch@uoregon.edu

“Decolonial Philosophies Collaboratory (2021-2022)

This reading group is devoted to decolonial, postcolonial, anti-colonial, and indigenous scholarship with the aim of establishing a conversation between these fields that will help us to rethink and reimagine pathways for decolonization.

Through our personal research and the ethos of a collaborative scholarship, we are interested in thinking about the relationship between a project that builds on solidarity with the task of building a decolonial, postcolonial scholarship community within ourselves. We see how projects that deal with different systems of oppression, problems, and historical processes like racism, genocide, capitalism, nationalism, are interconnected and essential to challenging colonial narratives across the globe. For more information about the RIG, contact Alejandro Vallega at avallega@uoregon.edu

Science, Technology, and Society (2020-2022)

Several recent developments at UO call for attention to the intersections of science, technology, and society. These include the founding of the Knight Campus, the new Data Science Initiative, and the significant recent increases in science research funding. Together, these developments point to broader campus-wide investments in science and technology, which would be well-served by complementary  STS  scholarship. There are many scholars across UO working in this area, on subjects as diverse as artificial intelligence, food studies, entrepreneurship, music, human genetic and reproductive technologies, social media and data, and the co-production of science, technology, and political theory. This RIG connects STS scholars from across Anthropology, History, Philosophy, Romance Languages, and the Lundquist College of Business. For more information about the RIG contact Vera Keller at vkeller@uoregon.edu

Health Humanities, the Body, and Society (2019-2020)

An interdisciplinary group of graduate and faculty researchers who think about the concept of health at the intersection of science and culture.

The Health RIG, which began meeting in January 2020, meets once a week to discuss our own research in the context of reading Elaine Scarry’s The Body in Pain. Our group consists of members from English, biology, philosophy, public health, and psychology. To join the RIG, contact Ricardo at friazr@gmail.com.

Mediterranean Studies (2017-2020)

The Mediterranean Studies RIG brings together scholars exploring how the movement of people, ideas, and things across the Mediterranean create a unique regional cultural history that brings together the territories that are currently Southern Europe, the Balkans, North Africa, the Levant, and Asia Minor. One of its merits is that it imagines cultural production and human expression across national and linguistic boundaries by focusing on shared experiences, travel, cosmopolitan urban spaces, translation, and cultural crossings and hybridities.

In this group, scholars work on diverse fields and time periods. You might hear a film scholar give a paper on the contemporary migrant crisis to an audience including an art historian of the church architecture of North Africa, a linguist working on Arabic in France, a scholar of medieval Hebrew literature, and a historian of Early Modern maritime Venice. Mediterranean Studies is still an emerging field, which means that participants are contributing their expertise to build a broad knowledge base in support of an emerging field, which means that participants are contributing their expertise to build a broad knowledge base in support of research questions that span disciplines, national histories, languages, and time periods. For more information about the RIG contact David Wacks at wacks@uoregon.edu. 

Critical Phenomenology (2016-2018)

The purpose of this group is not only to continue marking Oregon’s philosophy department as being a pillar in phenomenological research, but to mark it as the foundational pillar of this new and burgeoning sub-discipline. Arguably more than any other field in philosophy, phenomenology has and continues to be a valued and widely utilized resource for research across the humanities: cultural studies, media studies, sociology, medical ethics, etc., often use phenomenology. Our hope is that
the establishment of this RIG will lend itself to the kind of inter-disciplinarity already prominent within the world of phenomenological scholarship. At present, no such crossover exists between departments at UO. The RIG aims to open up this cross-departmental scholarship and communication, both through RIG meetings devoted to the analysis and discussion of contemporary scholarship, and in the development of Puncta, the first journal of its kind for critical phenomenology. For more information about the RIG contact Beata Stawarsk  at stawarsk@uoregon.edu. 

19th Century Visual and Literary Cultures (2016-2017) 

This group brings together colleagues from different departments at the UO working on projects in the (long) 19th century. We are a diverse group of predominantly early career scholars working on different aspects, languages (German, English, Spanish, French), and scholarly traditions in the 19th century. Our purpose is to create a space for exchanging ideas, sharing our projects, and collaborating in the development of our respective fields of research. The group also acts as a network for the dissemination and exchange of information about seminars, conferences, journals, fellowships in the field of 19th century studies across the country, that can also reach out to other networks of scholars in the 19th century from other institutions (UC Boulder 19th century Studies Network, Hispanic Siglo diez i nueve Group, etc.). Our hope is to create a supportive environment that fosters high quality research into different aspects of 19th century literature, art, and culture.

A major focus of this group is to function as a writing group, giving regular feedback and offering constructive criticism on our works-in-progress (conference papers, journal articles, book chapters, book proposals, etc.) and thereby create an environment conducive to the encouragement and support of our scholarship. For more information about the RIG contact Nina Amstutz at namstutz@uoregon.edu.

Digital Humanities (2015-2017)

In concert with the new Digital Humanities (DH) program, currently under development for the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Oregon, the DH working group will meet monthly to discuss new tools, theories, and methodologies related to this academic discipline. As a burgeoning field, DH offers new conceptual tools for analyzing cultural texts and innovative strategies for exploring the humanities in the classroom. Our working group signifies the beginning of a larger initiative at UO to design an undergraduate DH degree, foster graduate research, and educate faculty in the possibilities of computing methods for the humanities. This initiative would position UO among our West Coast peer universities such as University of Victoria, University of Utah, Stanford University, and many others that have developed DH programs. We are currently reaching out to humanities faculty who are already engaged in this type of research and teaching to participate in our working group in the hopes that we can encourage a significant DH presence at UO.  

This working group will thus provide an entry point exclusively for faculty and graduate students who are interested in learning about digital tools for scholarship and pedagogy. The intellectual purpose of our RIG will be educational and cooperative, providing a space for scholars from across the humanities to share their ideas, collaborate on research solutions, and discuss pedagogical innovations. Meeting once a month, we will promote discussions of potential digital projects that will drive innovative research in the humanities. The working group will supplement monthly workshops we plan to offer the humanities community at UO, which will provide entry-level training in various digital tools central to the DH discipline and allow scholars to reconceptualize their research projects and teaching. By learning what tools are available, scholars and teachers will find new ways of engaging the humanities at UO. For more information about the RIG contact Heidi Kaufman at hkaufman@uoregon.edu. 

Scientific Study of Values (2014-2015)

The Scientific Study of Values Group meets once a month to discuss recent publications and to plan collaborative research in the interdisciplinary field of values. Participants from all disciplines are welcome, most notably including psychology, philosophy, economics, marketing, law, geology, anthropology, sociology, and women & gender studies. Specific values on which the group focuses are up to the members. Some of the inaugural members’ interests include generosity, charity, gratitude, justice, forgiveness, compassion, sacred values, free will, trust, empathy, friendship, curiosity, altruism, gender, and commitment to local community. This somewhat disparate list is structured around four interrelated themes:

1) Generosity, empathy, and gratitude. These interlocking dispositions feed each other. If you empathize with me, that may lead you to act with generosity or altruism towards me. In turn, I may feel gratitude towards you. But how do these virtues, which operate tolerably well in small-scale interactions with well-known agents, react to large-scale collective action problems, such as global poverty and genocide?

2) War, genocide, forgiveness, and trust. In the wake of atrocity, how do people put their lives back together? How do they live near or among those who condoned or even perpetrated horrors? What, if anything, leads to forgiveness and the reestablishment of trust?

3) Justice and gender. In a related vein, how do victims who’ve been singled out for especially appalling mistreatment – typically women and other gender minorities – respond? Does it even make sense to talk about justice in the wake of such episodes? What measures can be taken to prevent such injustice in the first place?

4) Creativity, prospection, and mindfulness. The previous three themes are primarily retrospective. Generosity is a reaction to others’ pre-existing needs. Gratitude is a reaction to generosity. Forgiveness is a reaction to harms suffered. Justice often aims to set right a world out of joint. Ideally, needs and harms would be handled before things reached a crisis pitch. This suggests a more forward-looking imperative, centered on the values of creativity, prospection, and mindfulness. For more information about the RIG contact Elizabeth Reis at lzreis@uoregon.edu. 

Indigenous Philosophy (2014-2015)

The Indigenous Philosophy Research Interest Group (IPRIG) is intended to broaden participants’ knowledge of indigenous cultures and philosophy through an engagement with texts by various authors writing from an indigenous standpoint.  Our goals are to have an interdisciplinary space to read and study indigenous texts, invite speakers from other universities and local tribes, and workshop research by RIG participants.  We believe that studying indigenous thought will generate new methods of teaching and engaging students, open new possibilities for research projects and methodologies, provide vital historical context for contemporary American philosophy, and—most importantly—show respect for native peoples who have had a profound, though often unrecognized, influence on American and Western thought. 

This RIG will formalize a reading group begun last year with ten regular participants including faculty and graduate students from five disciplines.  Given ongoing interest from last year’s participants and increasing interest in Indigenous philosophies at the University of Oregon, we believe that IPRIG will make a direct contribution to scholarship on campus and provide incentives for new work in this important interdisciplinary field.  For more information about the RIG contact Scott Pratt at spratt@uoregon.edu. 

Human Consciousness (2014-2015)

For more information about the RIG contact David Wacks at wacks@uoregon.edu.

Oregon Rare Book Initiative (2013- 2017)

The Oregon Rare Book Initiative (ORBI) has four interrelated goals: to bring together scholars and community members interested in the shtdy of the hist01y of the book; to increase the visibility of the University of Oregon’s astonishing collection of rare books; to explore ways to use rare book materials in undergraduate classrooms and research projects; and to develop and launch initiatives around the rare book collection and the community it inspires that will make ongoing contributions to the University’s intellectual and cultural life. Interdisciplinary in approach and comparative in nature, it will provide opportunities for intellectual exchange among a core group of faculty and graduate students from a range of different departments. ORBI will also highlight the rare book holdings housed in the University of Oregon’s special collections, with particular attention to the many volumes not currently listed in the online catalogue. The motivations for doing so are multiple. While the rare book holdings constitute the pre-eminent rare book collection in the Pacific Northwest, they are not well known on campus or in the immediate community served by the University, let alone to the broader scholarly world. Finding ways to facilitate the complete cataloging of the collection will be an important step towards making it available for use. These untapped riches offer an outstanding resource for teaching and research that could not be duplicated today even were money no object. In an age of austerity, library budget cuts, and diminishing resources for the humanities, ORBI seeks to develop a new area of excellence within the University’s core academic mission by drawing on this preexisting resource. For more information about the RIG contact Vera Keller at vkeller@uoregon.edu. 

Environmental Humanities (2013-2014)

Technical and natural science-based forms of inquiry have dominated the emerging institutional field of environmental studies. While scientific epistemologies are fundamental to gaining insight into the complex natural systems in which all humans are embedded, a significant number of scholars are turning to humanistic frameworks to address core questions surrounding the study of the human and more-than-human environment. What are “environmental” values and how have they been culturally conceived? Are we in the midst of a global ecological crisis, and if so, what cultural assumptions may have fueled this crisis? How do humans, throughout history, see and narrate our relationship to natural systems and events? To what degree can literature, art, and new media help scientists and policy-makers narrate global environmental issues such as climate change? Such questions beg for the disciplinary skills and interpretive approaches of environmental historians, literary scholars, artists, philosophers, cultural anthropologists, legal theorists, and practitioners of humanistic social science. 

The Environmental Humanities RIG will seek to build on the University of Oregon’s long tradition of environmental research, activism and advocacy by providing institutional support and new opportunities to faculty and graduate students working in the developing “environmental humanities” field. While this interdisciplinary field has only recently gained national and international attention, the environmental humanities has been at the core of the University of Oregon’s environmental scholarship for decades. Thus this new RIG will not seek to facilitate the birth of the environmental humanities at the University of Oregon, but rather to foster its growth by creating greater opportunities for collaboration and enhancing the original work of an already vibrant community of scholars of philosophy, history, literary study, folklore, cultural studies, legal theory, new media, and the visual arts. For more information about the RIG contact Stephanie LeMenager at slemen@uoregon.edu. 

Human/Animal (2012-2014)

The Human/Animal Research Interest Group takes a broad focus on the
human/animal divide, human/animal relations in the past and present, animal
archaeology, animality, animal studies, posthumanism/ transhumanism, animal
environments, animal ethics, biosemiotics, the place of animals in history, art,
literature and scientific discourse, etc.
We hope to bring together a diverse group of scholars from a range of fields so as
to develop, through interdisciplinary conversation, better understandings of the
theme of the human/animal in all its guises. For more information about the RIG contact Carla Bengtson at bengtson@uoregon.edu.