2025 Grant Recipients

Camille Utterback, (Art and Art History and by courtesy of Computer Science), Risa Wechsler (Physics, Particle Physics and Astrophysics and Director of the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology), Charlotte McElwain (Creative technologist and educator)

With our current ability to study the world through massive quantization and AI tools, what is lost of our ability to viscerally apprehend and experience that information, to let it shape our sense of ourselves? What does it mean to work with data at scales we cannot physically experience, that we need machine learning tools to meaningfully parse? Our goal is to create tools and experiences that allow the general public to engage with vast amounts of data in tangible and critical ways. 

Our project team will develop a custom open source software tool to allow artists and other non-experts to access the massive amounts of astronomical data streaming from the new Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). With its nightly repeated deep images, this survey will look for everything in the sky that changes, from nearby asteroids to exploding stars 10 billion light years away. The size of the data and the number of changes will be so vast that it can only meaningfully be parsed by AI “brokers” that will send alerts when specific changes or unrecognizable patterns are found. Wechsler and her colleagues at SLAC are playing key roles in the development, construction, and operations of the instrument and the scientific utilization of the LSST. 

Our collaboration will develop our software tool as a test case for Utterback’s public site-specific Fathom artwork located in Stanford’s Computing and Data Science (CoDa) building. Utterback will use our tool to access the nightly changing variations and AI generated alerts in the LSST data. From the data she will create live computer-generated animations projected onto one of the large-scale glass panels in the artwork. By incorporating the beauty, complexity, and variability of the LSST patterns into Utterback’s artwork we hope to inspire in the public a feeling of awe and curiosity about the literal “rhythms” of the universe, and to reconnect viewers to the sensuousness contained within the human act of measurement. The open source tools we share from this project will also allow other artists to more easily use the LSST data in their own artwork.

Jennifer DeVere Brody (Theater and Performance Studies)

The Edmonia Lewis Project engages public audiences through innovative programming inspired by the sculptural art of Edmonia Lewis (born free in upstate NY in 1844 and died in London in 1907). Of Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) and African descent, Lewis was the first internationally known, professional colored woman sculptor. She attended Oberlin College, worked among abolitionist circles in Boston during the Civil War and then, in 1866, moved to Rome, Italy where she ran her own studio making exquisite marble sculptures in the neoclassical style. Her award-winning work was exhibited in major cities across the globe—from Philadelphia, to Chicago, Rome and Naples, Italy as well as San Francisco and San Jose.

The Project provides a special opportunity for students and the public to learn about issues emanating from her life and art. The project deploys a multifaceted approach that befits its complex subject. It historicizes Black, Indigenous and female artists working in the past and the present by mounting an exhibition, Edmonia Lewis: Indelible Impressions, at the Cantor, organizing workshops, hosting an operatic performance, convening students, curators, literary and visual artists, docents and scholars for a symposium, providing student summer research, and building a digital archive capable of hosting 3D technology suitable for online viewing of sculptural art. In sum, the Project serves as a resource and archive for the growing interest in Edmonia Lewis and the many questions her life in art engenders, such as: How does sculpture commemorate? What makes portrait sculpture “life like”? How is race inscribed in neoclassical art? How can we think about relationships between art and technology? What are the ethical questions of display? How did art culture develop in our region?

Paula Findlen (History), Brian Brege (Syracuse), Luca Molà (University of Warwick), Giorgio Riello (European University Institute)

Global Florence is a collaboration between Stanford, the European University Institute, Syracuse, the University of Warwick, and Harvard University’s Villa I Tatti (Center for Italian Renaissance Studies) to create an exhibition to be held in fall 2026 at the Laurenziana Library in Florence. The exhibition will use the journey of the Florentine merchant and repentant ex-slave trader Francesco Carletti (1573-1636), who became the first person to accidentally circumnavigate the globe (1594-1602), as a point of departure to explore Florence’s relations with Asia, Africa, and the Americas at the end of the Renaissance. From Florence to Seville, Cape Verde to Cartagena, from Lima and Mexico City to Manila, from Nagasaki to Macao and Goa, and finally from the lonely island of St Helena to the Dutch port of Middelburg, Carletti assessed the world’s people, places, and things with a practiced mercantile eye, always calculating the value of everything. He began his voyage illicitly participating in the Spanish Atlantic slave trade, crossed the Pacific on the Manila galleon, and witnessed the early suppression of Christianity in Japan and the sophisticated trading practices of Gujarati merchants, and the rise of the Dutch East India Company. Carletti returned home carrying a late Ming atlas – the only artifact that survives from his global voyage after his goods were confiscated by Dutch privateers near the island of St Helena – accompanied by a manumitted Korean convert known as Antonio. “Antonio Corea” became the subject of myth and fiction as the first Korean to arrive in western Europe.

We will produce a catalogue and two videos to accompany the exhibit and offer a public lecture series and free secondary and college-level teaching materials through our various institutions based in Florence, including Stanford BOSP Florence.

Patricia Blessing (Art and Art History), Emre Can Dağlıoğlu (History), Ananya Goel (Art and Art History), Richard McClary (University of York), Belgin Turan Özkaya (Middle East Technical University), Michelle Lynch Köycü (University of Notre Dame), Fatih Han (Princeton University), Menna M. El Mahy (Ghent University), Nehna (civil society organization in Antakya, Turkey)

In February 2023, earthquakes in Turkey and Syria damaged many historic buildings. Over two years after the earthquakes, many of these buildings still sit damaged and exposed to the weather, as reconstruction efforts have focused on clearing rubble and rapidly rebuilding residential areas. This collaborative project brings together researchers from different countries to document those buildings and the damage they suffered. We will focus on Antakya, Turkey, where the earthquakes damaged or destroyed markets, churches, mosques, and synagogues built between 300 BCE and the 1800s. We will collect photographs from the nineteenth century to the present, scholarly literature, oral histories, maps, and plans to create records of these important cultural sites before further deterioration occurs.

Through collaborations among architectural historians, civil society activists, and architects, this project will step into the gap and create an archive documenting these monuments. The contents of the archive will be made accessible online, without paywall, so that it can be used by the broader public, but also by scholars, planners, architects, and restoration professionals who will hopefully work towards preserving these buildings. In future stages, the project will extend its scope to work on the documentation of monuments damaged by the earthquake in Syria, including in already war-torn areas such as Aleppo and its surroundings. Our research can also shed light on monuments destroyed by war in areas such as Gaza and Lebanon, where aid for inhabitants must be a priority and historical preservation efforts are nearly impossible. The project will result in a website that contains a map of monuments linked to an open-access digital archive, 3D printing of monuments, digital reconstruction of monuments in a VR environment, and exhibitions in Antakya and Stanford. 

John Willinsky (Education), Parth Sarin (Graduate Student, Digital Education)

Over the last decade, journalists have been raising alarms about men stating a preference for “virtual girlfriends,” such as female avatars in Nintendo dating simulation games. In the same period, movies like Her and apps like “Mini Gay Boyfriend” have emerged and depict increasingly intimate relationships between humans and technology. Today, AI companions are customizable, allowing users to edit their image and behavior to create personas of romantic partners, therapists, and friends. Developments in language technologies are increasingly becoming sites of intimate exploration, involving new forms of desire, sexual preferences, and the invention of imaginaries related to gender, race, and sex. Because these tools are inseparable from the political economy required to produce them, AI companions are also rife with potential for exploitation and oppression.

In this project, we will use digital storytelling to trace the impact of language technologies on conceptions of intimacy. This form of ethnography involves recording and producing stories of AI intimacy in a workshop format. We will provide space for exploration, learning, reflection, and the construction of counter-narratives in forms and prose beyond the “homogenized” scientific writing voice. To engage participants in this research, we plan to host workshops for co-creating short, personal videos—and also audio stories, image collages, or blog posts—about participants’ practices, knowledge, and beliefs. We’ll work with participants to interpret their experiences and incorporate that analysis into the materials. As a result, we hope to assemble an archive of new insights for participants, researchers, and the public on how AI intimacy contributes to the social fabric of twenty-first century life. 

Pedro Regalado (History)

For over a century, Latino businesses have been integral to shaping the cultural and economic landscape of New York City. Today, the metro area is home to over 31,000 Latino-owned businesses—more than ever before—but their deep historical roots remain largely overlooked. Mapping Nueva York uncovers this history, tracing a pivotal transformation in Latino New York that began in 1898, when Spanish-speaking migrants arrived in the city from regions destabilized by U.S. expansion. These businesses became more than commercial spaces; they formed the visual and material foundation of a shared identity, reflecting common experiences, culinary traditions, cultural rituals, and social bonds.

This project brings together sources that are often siloed in specialized fields and assembles them in one place. By analyzing business directories from 1934 and 1964—along with census data and other historical records—we will create a dynamic digital platform that maps the role of commerce in shaping Latino place and identity. Users will be able to explore how businesses served as cultural anchors within New York’s colonias, revealing patterns of migration, economic resilience, and community formation. Through digital tools and data visualization, Mapping Nueva York offers a new way to engage with urban and migration history. By making this research accessible to scholars and the public alike, the project fosters deeper conversations about Latino contributions to the city’s development while advancing interdisciplinary approaches to historical storytelling.

Vaughn Rasberry (English)

Any tourist visiting the North African nations straddling the Mediterranean Sea will notice that the famous historical landscapes of these countries point chiefly in two directions: north, to the Mediterranean Basin and Europe; and east, to Arabia and the cradle of Islam. Over millennia, the succession of invaders in North Africa reads like a roll call of ancient and modern empires: Phoenician, Roman, Byzantine, Arab-Islamic, Ottoman, French. Each imperial incursion has left an indelible imprint on the region’s topography, cultures, and historical sites.

In Mediterranean Africa’s historical landscapes, the region’s relationship with the continent south of the Sahara Desert, or what in Arabic is called bilad-as-sudan (“lands of the blacks”), is less evident. Yet the history of the Trans-Saharan world reveals connections and reciprocal influences forged through millennium-long patterns of religious, intellectual, and commercial exchange, including the trade in slaves. This legacy of enslavement has also left an enduring imprint on Mediterranean Africa, even if its history remains a taboo topic about which ordinary citizens are nonetheless aware. Today, scholars, writers, and artists are confronting this buried past and reimagining the historical relationships between Africans north and south of the Sahara. With this Humanities Seed Grant, this project will sponsor an international conference, “The Forgotten Pan-Africanism: Black Power and North Africa in Pan-Africanism Discourse,” held in Casablanca in summer 2026. The Seed Grant will also fund a digital archive, "Mapping the African Mediterranean," which will feature essays, images, music, and other contributions from scholars committed to projecting a Pan-African image of the region.

Ayana Flewellen (Anthropology), Jillian Lyles (Graduate student, Anthropology)

Submerged Histories and Embodied Memory takes shape within the liquidity of the Atlantic Ocean, exploring what is made possible when we remember the history of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade underwater at known historic sites of shipwrecks that carried enslaved Africans through the Middle Passage. This proposed project explores how our understandings of history, memory, and embodiment shift when in relationship to and when submerged in water, asking: What is made possible when we remember the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade from “within the water column?” This question, which lies at the intersection of heritage studies and environmental humanities, prompts a reevaluation of established frameworks and methods for studying human experience, affect, and memory-making practices at public history sites by submerging them underwater.

Centering on scuba diving as an embodied method, the team will collect underwater oral histories centered on the experiences of divers (N = 10) while submerged at historical sites of enslavement, exploring how history is embodied and how somatic registers of memory (e.g., heart rate, cadence of breath) shift in relationship to and while submerged in the ocean. The grant will support gathering interviews at two underwater archaeology sites, the Guerrero and the Henriette Marie--two historic underwater shipwreck sites from vessels that carried enslaved Africans across the Atlantic during the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.

The deliverables funded by this grant will expand beyond traditional scholarly outlets. Funding for this project will support the creation of the first underwater oral history archive. This research will lay the foundation for future work centered on underwater heritage sites as submerged public history and the impact these sites have on collective memory felt in the body. Additionally, undergraduate student researchers will produce theory maps of each interview, providing a visual guide highlighting the main themes, quotes, and topics from the interviews. Theory maps are a visual form of social science communication, combining text and graphics that chart core topics, quotations, and themes within each interview. Audio recordings of the underwater interviews, transcriptions, and theory maps will be combined into an interactive ESRI StoryMap. The StoryMap will connect audio from interviews, transcriptions of interviews, students' theory maps, and the histories of the heritage sites featured spatially to waterscapes in the Atlantic. The interactive StoryMap will be accessible online, engaging national and international publics.