IRH Director Steven Nadler is pleased to announce the full cohort of incoming and returning IRH fellows for the 2025-2026 academic year. This group of 38 fellows is diverse in many senses of the word: it represents 15 institutional affiliations, 12 departments/programs at UW–Madison, 6 U.S. states, and 5 countries. The research that this fellow cohort is conducting begins in antiquity and ends at the present moment, and it spans 8 countries.
Among the fascinating spread of topics we will see covered in the coming year, several themes emerged. Three fellows are working on gender-ethnicity relations: Sarah Thal (open-topic Senior Fellow), KD Thompson (open-topic Resident Fellow), and Benjamin Mier-Cruz (Race, Ethnicity, and Indigeneity Resident Fellow). Sarah, who is David Kuenzi and Mary Wyman Professor of History at UW–Madison, will research how basic formulations of Japan’s “Way of the Samurai”—value statements concerning morality, manliness, and suicide, revenge, and swordsmanship—were shaped by crises of the 1890s and informed by Japan’s deep engagement with ideas in the United States and Europe. KD, a Religious Studies professor and Evjue-Bascom Professor in the Humanities at UW–Madison, will explore women’s engagement with a Swahili-language nondenominational Muslim radio station, Radio Nuur in Tanga, Tanzania. And Benjamin, a professor of Scandinavian Studies and Women’s Studies at UW–Madison, will examine how Swedish filmmakers of colors’ complex portrayals of racialization events within Sweden’s culture of racial colorblindness reshapes the documentary format.
Another research theme for this cohort is oceans. Ester Prieto Ustio (Solmsen Fellow) will explore this theme as it relates to religious practices on Hispanic ships during the 16th and 17th centuries. By analyzing archival records and religious artifacts, Ester will explore how these objects supported Catholic rituals at sea and contributed to evangelisation efforts in colonial territories. The other two projects—both by History PhD candidates at UW–Madison, investigate this theme from a more scientific and technological lens. Samm Newton (Coleman Dissertation Fellow)’s dissertation project analyzes the power dynamics underlying the control of marine environments and addresses how ocean knowledge was generated, by whom, and for what purposes. And Aijie Shi (Coleman Dissertation Fellows)’s dissertation project argues that with knowledge and materials synthesized across the Pacific, Chinese technocrats were able to transform seas, rivers, and artificial reservoirs into sites of production for inexpensive sources of biochemicals and energy.
Among the 4 Universities of Wisconsin Fellows, 2 are working on monuments. Louise Zamparutti, an English professor at UW–La Crosse, will investigate the global popularity of extremism through a case study analysis of the Foiba di Basovizza, a recently established national memorial in northeast Italy. And Sierra Rooney, an Art History professor also at UW–La Crosse, will trace the chronology of commemoration of women and the evolving ways that Americans visualize, honor, and interpret historical women through monuments created for public spaces.
It is sure to be a lively year of thoughtful, multi-disciplinary scholarship and community-building! To stay up-to-date with IRH news and events, visit our website (irh.wisc.edu) or subscribe to our semi-annual newsletter here.
Full fellow biographies and project information will be posted on the IRH website in late summer.
Senior Fellows:
- Mercedes Alcalá Galán, open-topic Senior Fellow, 2023-2027 (Department of Spanish & Portuguese, UW–Madison) “Uncovering Black African Female Slavery in Early Modern Spain: Voices from the Archives and Portrayals in Art and Literature”
- Rob Asen, open-topic Senior Fellow, 2025–2029 (Department of Communication Arts, UW–Madison) “Schooled in Whiteness: How Anti-Woke Publics Disrupt Democratic Education”
- Karen Britland, open-topic Senior Fellow, 2024-2028 (Religious Studies Program, UW–Madison) “Possession: A Story of Gods, Goods and Greed”
- Jill Casid, open-topic Senior Fellow, 2024-2028 (Department of Art History; Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, UW–Madison) “Doing Things with Being Undone in the Necrocene”
- Lisa H. Cooper, open-topic Senior Fellow, 2023-2027 (English Department, UW–Madison) “The Poetics of Practicality in Late Medieval England”
- Tom Dale, open-topic Senior Fellow, 2025–2029 (Department of Art History, UW–Madison) “Visualizing Race and Cultural Encounter in Medieval Venice”
- Caroline Gottschalk, Race, Ethnicity, and Indigeneity Senior Fellow, 2025–2029 (English Department, UW Madison) “Mending Rivers”
- Andrea Harris, open-topic Senior Fellow, 2023-2027 (Dance Department, UW–Madison) “The Body Is an Instrument: Science, Therapeutics, and the Beginning of Modern Dance”
- Sarah Thal, open-topic Senior Fellow, 2025–2029 (History, UW–Madison) “Ways of the Samurai: Masculinity, Violence, and National Character in Turn-of-the-Century Japan”
Resident Fellows:
- Steffani Bennett, open-topic Resident Fellow, 2025–2026 (Department of Art History, UW–Madison) “Profession of the Brush: Sesshū Tōyō and the Artist in Medieval Japan”
- Brittney Edmonds, Race, Ethnicity, and Indigeneity Resident Fellow, 2025–2026 (Department of African American Studies, UW–Madison) “Who’s Laughing Now?: Race-Making in Post-Civil Rights Black Literary Studies”
- Michael Martoccio, open-topic Resident Fellow, 2025–2026 (History, UW–Madison) “Leviathan for Sale: The Market for City-States in Renaissance Italy”
- James Messina, open-topic Resident Fellow, 2025–2026 (Department of Philosophy, UW–Madison) “Hidden Dimension: Kant on the Nature of Grounding and Space”
- Benjamin Mier-Cruz, Race, Ethnicity, and Indigeneity Resident Fellow, 2025–2026 (German, Nordic, and Slavic+, UW–Madison) “Documenting Embodied Fictions”
- Katerina Somers, open-topic Resident Fellow, 2025–2026 (German, Nordic, and Slavic+, UW–Madison) “Translation, Prose, and the Literization of German in the Middle Ages”
- KD Thompson, open-topic Resident Fellow, 2025–2026 (Religious Studies Program, UW–Madison) “Women, Voice, and Muslim Radio in Tanzania”
- Michael Weinstein-Reiman, open-topic Resident Fellow, 2025–2026 (Mead-Witter School of Music, UW–Madison) “The Art of Touch: Musical Learning, Keyboards, and the Modern Self”
Biruté Ciplijauskaité Fellows in Peninsular Spanish Literature and Culture:
- Ignacio Arellano Torres (Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, Adelphi University) “Self-Representation and Burlesque Portraiture in Golden Age Spanish Poetry: A Study of Identity, Irony, and Social Commentary”
- Paul Joseph Lennon (Department of Spanish, University of St. Andrews) “Petrarchan Wives: Conjugal Love in Early Modern Luso-Hispanic Poetry”
Kingdon Fellows:
- Chase Castle (School of Music, University of Delaware) “The Gospel in Black and White: Race and Power in American Evangelical Hymnody, 1840-1900”
- Mario Sassi (Department of Romance Languages, Williams College) “The Teaching Miracle: The Supernatural and the Art of Preaching in Late Medieval Literature”
Solmsen Fellows:
- Grace Delmolino (Department of French and Italian, University of California–Davis) “Medieval Consent: Law, Gender, and Power in Gratian’s Decretum and Boccaccio’s Decameron”
- Ester Prieto Ustio (Department of History of Art, University of Seville; CEAUL, University of Lisbon) “Floating Altars: Religious Art and Cultural Practices on Hispanic Ships during the 16th and 17th Centuries”
- Katie Tardio (Classics & Ancient Mediterranean Studies, Bucknell University) “Feeding Tarraco: The Animal Economy of Hispania Tarraconensis”
- Mélanie Zappulla (Department of Philosophy, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne) “Spinoza and the Wisdom of the Ancients: Ethics as a Way of Living”
Biruté Ciplijauskaité Postdoctoral Fellow:
- Viacheslav Zahorodniuk (PhD, Taras Shevchenko University of Kyiv; Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Philosophy, University of Toronto) “Early Childhood in the Early Modern: Locke’s Accounts on Children Perception”
Universities of Wisconsin Fellows:
- Stewart Cole (Environmental Studies Program and Department of English, University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh) “The Haunted and the Hunted: Human and Nonhuman Animals in British Literature between the Wars”
- Michelle Mouton (Department of History, University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh) “Kriegskinder: German Children from the Second World War to the Cold War, 1944–1955″
- Sierra Rooney (Art, University of Wisconsin–La Crosse) “Monumental Women: Gender, Representation, and the Heroic Ideal in the United States”
- Louise Zamparutti (English, University of Wisconsin–La Crosse) “Monument in Motu: The Positionality of Place”
Biruté Ciplijauskaité Dissertation Fellow in Peninsular Spanish Literature and Culture:
- Jamie de Moya-Cotter (Department of Spanish & Portuguese, UW–Madison) “Entangled Narrations of an Extractive Anthropocene: Eco-Storytelling from the Andes and Amazon”
Coleman Dissertation Fellows:
- Samm Newton (History, UW–Madison) “Halfway Across the Oceans: Deep-Sea Values and Knowledge in Negotiating the Limits of the Commons”
- Aijie Shi (History, UW–Madison) “Experimenting with Aquatic Productivity: The History of Aquatic Science in Modern China (1910-1960)”
Dana-Allen Dissertation Fellow:
- Natalia Egorova (Asian Languages and Cultures, UW–Madison) “Marketing Cosmetics across Woodblock Media in Early Modern Japan”
Fonds de recherche du Québec (FRQSC) Fellowship Resident:
- Brandon Smith (Department of Philosophy, McGill University), “Spinozistic Eudaimonism: The Intellectual and Physical Unity and Plurality of Happiness”
Honorary Fellows:
- Simon P. Newman (History, School of Humanities, University of Glasgow, Emeritus) “Freedom Seekers 1776”
- Barbara Obrist (Centre national de la recherche scientifique, Université Paris Diderot) “La cosmologie médiévale. Textes et images II: le XIIe siècle”
Emeritus Fellow:
- Max Harris (Independent Scholar) “The Creative Cult of Saint Anthony: Relics, Paintings, Plays, Puppets, and Fiestas”