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Research

Interdisciplinary work can take many forms, from the individual scholar who integrates a diverse range of materials and methodologies into his or her research, to ongoing collaborative ventures that span across multiple departments. The College of Arts and Humanities actively promotes interdisciplinary engagement in graduate education. Our faculty provide graduate students with opportunities to pursue interdisciplinary projects that help students develop the skills necessary to study across disciplines.

Faculty

Faculty in the College of Arts and Humanities regularly develop internationally-recognized interdisciplinary research projects. Recent examples include:

  • Vincent Caretta of the Department of English produced an award-winning study of the life of African American Olaudah Equiano, entitled Equiano the African: Biography of a Self-Made Man synthesizes literary studies, African American history, and critical biography. Professor Caretta recently received a Guggenheim fellowship.
  • Seung-kyung Kim of the Women’s Studies Department and founding Director of the Asian American Studies Program, is currently at work on two new projects that explore intersections between gender, politics, and national identity. The first, Women’s Movements in Democratic South Korea: The Trajectory of Institutionalization and the Loss of Autonomy was funded by the Korea Foundation. The second, Global Citizens in the Making?: Transnational Migration and Education in Kirogi Families, was funded by the Social Science Research Council.
  • Sheri Parks of the American Studies Department has written extensively about popular culture, and has been interviewed by the media on everything from Google's email program to TV viewing, and men and their leadership habits. Her research encompasses a range of topics from media criticism to Harry Potter and American culture.
  • Hayim Lapin, the Director of the Joseph and Rebecca Meyerhoff Center for Jewish Studies, is currently writing a book on the history of the rabbinic movement in ancient Palestine and an article on Jewish religion in antiquity. His work maps connections between Jewish history, religious studies, and classical history.
  • Ira Berlin, Distinguished University Professor, and winner of numerous awards for his ground-breaking research on African American history and culture, recently created a year-long project centered on the University of Maryland, entitled “Knowing Our History: African American Slavery and the University of Maryland.”

Collaborative Research Awards

The College of Arts and Humanities has received several prestigious awards and fellowships in recent years, honoring faculty, departments, and research centers engaged in interdisciplinary projects. 

  • The Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities and the Department of Theatre recently received a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grant to develop a Web-based collaborative tool that allows scholars to create 3-dimensional models of pre-19th century theater buildings. Read More
  • The Linguistics Department garnered a $3 million IGERT Award from the National Science Foundation for an interdisciplinary graduate training program in Biological and Computational Foundations of Language Diversity.  Read More