Tanner Humanities Center announces Faculty and Undergraduate Fellows

Faculty members Kevin Deluca and Rachel Griffin have been awarded this year's Virgil C. Aldrich Faculty Fellowship and undergraduate student Maya Kobe-Rundio was awarded the Honors College Undergraduate Research Fellowship from the Tanner Humanities Center. The faculty fellowships provide scholars with the time and support to conduct research that makes significant contributions to humanistic knowledge. The undergraduate fellowship enables students in the Honors College to complete their honors theses.

"Kevin Deluca's “Activism on the Wild Public Screens of China: Environmentalism, Social Media, and Civil Society,” focuses on China’s growing environmental movement’s use of social media. It analyzes four case studies of citizen and organizational-led initiatives — mass protests, international social media campaigns, image events, and a viral documentary — and features interviews with activists, domestic and international media reports, and close readings of social media texts and images. Deluca’s project will suggest new practices of resistance for activists in a world immersed in a global surveillance society. It also will consider how social media creates pockets of makeshift democracy and thus fosters advances in China’s civil society."

"In “‘Still I Rise’: Early Black Feminist Rhetors,” Rachel Griffin addresses the unique late 20th century/early 21st century cultural circumstances that foster the sustained audibility and visibility of Black feminist rhetors. This project will track Black women’s discursive presence, highlight their intellectual contributions, and theorize their use of Black feminist rhetoric as a distinctive resistance strategy. It also will address how this rhetorical work responds to systemic oppressions that render women of color inferior, inaudible, and invisible."

"Maya Kobe-Rundio’s honors thesis, “In Her Element: Outdoor Recreation as a Tool for Female Empowerment and Community Building,” explores how outdoor recreation activities can act as a vehicle of female empowerment and community among college-aged women. Kobe-Rundio will interview and photograph a diverse group of female-identified individuals who participate in outdoor recreation. She will analyze both the positive and negative experiences of being a woman in the outdoors and produce a written and visual portrait that reveals her findings."

For more information on the Tanner Humanities Center.