AY 2026-27 Study Leave for Tenured Instructional Faculty Awards
Study leaves for tenured instructional faculty, funded by the Office of the Provost, are intended to provide paid temporary leave for the support of advancing scholarly research, teaching, and/or creative activity, including the development of innovative teaching approaches and methods. The application process for Faculty Study Leaves is competitive, and not all applications may be funded. Since 2015, the College has received 223 applications and awarded 165 study leaves to tenured faculty for scholarly research and creative activity.
Department of Communication
Xiaoquan Zhao, Evidence-Based Campaign Message Development: Finding the Missing Piece of the Puzzle
The study leave will build upon Zhao’s work as a health communication scholar by advancing an evidence-based message development framework for health communication campaigns. The study leave includes three specific objectives: completing a manuscript that presents a comprehensive conceptual framework for message development and an accompanying operational protocol; a proof-of-concept study that demonstrates the utility of the extended framework; and laying the groundwork for an external funding proposal that would systematically test the framework in a novel public health context.
Department of Economics
Jonathan Beauchamp, Economic and health implications of improved genetic prediction of health conditions
The study leave will provide an opportunity to work on three interrelated projects that center on the impacts of improving genetic prediction of 1) critical illness insurance, 2) the use of genetic prediction in medicine and public health, and 3) health/life/long-term care insurance. The proposed outcome of the project includes research and publication.
Department of English
Keith Clark, Omni-Southern: James Alan McPherson and the Storyteller’s Craft
The study leave will provide an opportunity to work on the manuscript-in-progress, Omni-Southern: James Alan McPherson and the Storyteller's Craft, with the goal of (re)introducing a pathbreaking writer to scholars and students of African American and American literatures, recuperating and positioning McPherson as a vitally important figure in African American and Southern Literary studies, and offering a thorough critical analysis of McPherson’s books, including his final short story and memoir.
Robert Matz, Thinking Through Lectures: A History
The study leave will provide an opportunity to continue archival research and writing on a six-chapter book manuscript that continues Matz’s long interest in how the past informs contemporary ideas about teaching and learning, with a particular focus on audience responses to lectures. The books’ historical approach to the lecture as pedagogy offers a new perspective on the topic. The project’s timeline has a goal of a complete book drafted by the end of summer 2027.
Michelle LaFrance, How to Read a Cemetery: A Rhetoric of Community
The study leave will provide the opportunity to consolidate years of research into a significant scholarly contribution. The project is a study of the Historic Congressional Cemetery (HCC), which examines how diverse community members negotiate shared meaning and belonging through embodied and material practices. The proposed outcomes of this project include the completion and submission of a monograph on HCC, as well as conference presentations and journal articles that highlight the project's methodological innovations for community-engaged study via walking interviews and community story circles.
Department of History & Art History
Alison Landsberg, Impossible Histories
The study leave will provide the opportunity to work on the book project Impossible Histories. The project theorizes the emergence of a contemporary form of history on film and television, which takes as its focus episodes of racial violence in the US past and connects them to the present in unexpected, provocative ways. Its methodology, which has a different temporality from the dominant form of academic history writing, is enabled by the formal possibilities of audiovisual media. The expected outcome of the study leave will be drafted chapters of the book for publication with Oxford University Press.
Samuel Huneke, Queer: A History of the World
The study leave will provide an opportunity to complete a book manuscript that is currently under contract with Liveright, an imprint of W.W. Norton. Published as a trade book, the 13-chapter book will bring together decades of scholarship on global queer history. The book is written with the intention of presenting an accessible, narrative history that is addressed to three audiences: scholars in the field; students seeking an accessible introduction to the scholarship; and a readable narrative for the general public.
Matt Karush, Tropical Argentina: Dance Music and the Remaking of Argentina in the 1990s
The study leave will provide an opportunity to complete the monograph, Tropical Argentina. The book will offer a new cultural history of Argentina in the 1990s, revealing the grassroots dynamics of globalization and offering a new explanation of the surprising emergency of massive resistance to neoliberalism at the turn of the century.
Michele Greet, Abstraction in the Andes, 1950-1971
The study leave will provide an opportunity to finalize the book manuscript, Abstraction in the Andes, 1950-1971, which will examine the nuances of postwar Andean artists’ references to pre-Columbian abstract designs, the politics and implications of this posture at home and in the international art world, and its effectiveness as an aesthetic strategy in these spheres. It will also consider the global networks and exchanges that facilitated the emergence of abstract trends in the Andes (Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia) and helped disseminate this art abroad.
Brian Platt, Wind, Worms and Weeds: Rescuing the Past in Early Modern Japan
The study leave will provide an opportunity to develop research into a book manuscript. The project Wind, Worms and Weeds: Rescuing the Past in Early Modern Japan, examines the emergence of local history writing, archaeology, stele-building and autobiography in Japan over the 18th and 19th centuries, viewing them as related expressions of a widespread cultural movement that grew out of a shift in the way that literate people in Japan thought about the past and its relationship to the present. The proposed outcomes for the study leave include development of the research into a full book manuscript and to apply for an external fellowship.
Department of Modern and Classical Languages
Esperanza Roman-Mendoza, Artificial Intelligence and the Aging Multilingual Society: Designing Inclusive Services for a Changing Population
The study leave will provide an opportunity to conduct research for the project, Artificial Intelligence and the Aging Multilingual Society: Designing Inclusive Services for a Changing Population. This project addresses how aging multilingual populations navigate communication, cognitive change, and access to services in societies increasingly shaped by AI. Its significance lies in connecting two fields that will become increasingly intertwined as populations age in multilingual societies and AI technologies expand. The proposed outcomes for the study leave include publication, external fellowship, and grant proposal development.
Jennifer Leeman, Language, society and power: Critical perspectives on Spanish
The study leave will provide an opportunity to work on Lengua, sociedad y poder: Perspectivas críticas en torno al español, an in-progress book under contract with Routledge that brings together critical sociolinguistic research on the relationships among language, society, and power with regard to Spanish around the world. Integrating theoretical perspectives, case studies, and original analyses, the book examines the social, political, and ideological dimensions of Spanish in both majority- and minority-language settings. During the leave period, work will focus on drafting and revising chapters, completing the introduction and conclusion, and integrating the manuscript as a whole.
Department of Psychology
Deborah Rupp, A Bipartisan Theory of Employment Discrimination
The study leave will provide an opportunity to develop a bipartisan theory of employment discrimination with the objectives to advance research, update scholarship, and strengthen service and outreach. Proposed outcomes from the study leave include publication, grant proposal, and curriculum development.
Olga Kornienko, Digital Life and Adolescent Mental Health: Understanding the Role of Peers Across Contexts
The study leave will provide an opportunity to prepare and submit a large grant proposal to the National Institutes of Health for Digital Life and Adolescent Mental Health: Understanding the Role of Peers Across Contexts. The project will focus on the impact of technology and digital media (social media platforms, AI chatbots) on youth relational skill development with consequences for mental health and future platonic and romantic relationships. The proposed outcome of the study leave includes multiple peer reviewed publications about the benefits and risks of technology and digital media for adolescent development of social relationships and mental health and proposal submission for external funding.
Todd Kashdan, Shaping Personality with Micro-Interventions: Using Curiosity as an Example
The study leave will provide an opportunity to work on the project, Shaping Personality with Micro-Interventions: Using Curiosity as an Example. The project aims to launch a new translational research program: designing, testing, and disseminating a smartphone-based intervention to cultivate curiosity in adults and evaluate whether increasing curiosity states that can gradually foster enduring personality change. In addition, new models of curiosity and purpose in life will be developed and disseminated widely. The proposed outcomes of the study leave include publications, presentations, and workshops.
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Huwymin Liu, Decolonizing Formosan Black Bears: The Rise of Bear Conservation and A National Totem in Taiwan
The study leave will provide the opportunity to conduct ethnographic fieldwork for the project, Decolonizing Formosan Black Bears: The Rise of Bear Conservation and A National Totem in Taiwan. This project examines the rise of Formosan Black Bears as a national totem, conservation superstar and co-living entity in Taiwan. The proposed outcomes of the study leave include producing a monograph, publication of journal articles, and drafting book chapters.
Global Affairs Program
Niklas Hultin, From Humanitarianism to Arsenalization: 0rthern European Security Culture since 2026
The study leave will provide the opportunity to work on the project, From Humanitarianism to Arsenalization: Northern European Security Culture since 2026. The project examines how assumptions about security and defense have changed in Northern Europe (with a focus on Sweden, Finland, and Poland) in response to Russia's full-scale war against Ukraine and the re-election of US President Trump. The proposed outcomes for the study leave include submission of a book proposal and article publications, as well as curriculum development.
School of Integrative Studies
Julie Owen, We are the Leaders We've Been Waiting For: Women and Leadership Development in College
The study leave will provide the opportunity to work on the second edition of We are the Leaders We’ve Been Waiting For: Women and Leadership Development in College (WAL), which will examine the challenges and opportunities related to women’s leadership development in college. The second edition, to be published in 2027, will include a new preface and introduction, 2 new chapters, significant updates to content/data and sources for 8 additional chapters and will feature student narratives gathered from a collective autoethnography research project.