Art and research are gaining increasing popularity among humanities scholars and social scientists. Moreover, art has always been a way for immigrants to communicate with each other, as well as to build, develop and communicate identity.

The primary function of this research cluster is to unpack complex questions connected to hip-hop and urban cultural production in framing and reframing Phoenix and the US/American Southwest. The consortium of ASU faculty, scholars, artists, students, and community members connect monthly in the Sonoran Desert around a series of themes that deeply investigate some of the ethical implications of urban arts knowledges and culture as a research and educational framework in relationship to the humanities, performing arts, liberal arts and sciences.

The Citizen-Diplomacy research cluster will bring together researchers, librarians, archivists and community members around a multi-method, and multi-scale history of citizen-to-citizen diplomacy during and after the Cold War. We will focus on the role of civic associations established in response to President Eisenhower’s 1956 “People to people” initiative, and trace their changing forms, programming and status through significant geopolitical, socio-economic and technological change.

The IHR has awarded us another ($1,000) grant for our research cluster, The Colonial, the Postcolonial and the Decolonial. This cluster aims to facilitate the exchange of ideas and the production of research across historical, ideological, cultural, material, geographical, and epistemological dimensions. We invite the participation of those interested in any sites and forms of colonial conquest, resistance, complicity, and aftermaths.

The Food and well-being in the Anthropocene research cluster will bring together environmental historians, philosophers, and food systems scientists in order to develop new research on the relationship between human well-being and global food systems. The participants will consider recent research in history of industrial agriculture and related food systems, the ethics of various food systems over time, the changing role of local food, and what constitutes a sustainable food system today.

For this research cluster, we seek to bring together colleagues from across the university who share an interest in mindfulness and social justice to engage in collective dialogue on how to bridge these two realms in our intellectual thinking, critical engagement with the world, and personal, everyday practices. Our proposed research cluster has two foci: 

Asian Americans are the fastest growing racial group in the United States (21 million according to U.S. Census, 2016). Despite this, Asian America’s diverse experiences remain invisible as a result of the “model minority” myth, the perception that they are stress and problem-free. This project employs the concept of intersectionality with literary and artistic interpretations of the Asian American experience to the field of psychology to ask: How can the humanities and social sciences make visible Asian America’s unique and diverse risks and resilience in mental health?

This research cluster highlights the interplay between radical feminist thought—that is, the political project of going to the roots of gendered inequalities—alongside sexuality and political resistance.  We look at marginalized groups and ideologies (e.g., indigenous rights, radical environmentalism) and we make unexpected connections among allies (e.g., radical feminist men, heterosexual allies for LGBT rights) as a way to deconstruct hierarchies around how radical feminism, sexuality, and resistance are conceptualized within the academy.  We are specifically interested in inter

This transdisciplinary and collaborative research cluster will explore how people engage with representations of otherness through the act of consumption. Participants will study the intersection of art and food, public festivals and race, class and ethnicity, and national identity and immigration.