The Philosophy, Rhetoric and Literature (PRL) cluster is a transdisciplinary area and a faculty research group of the humanities meeting on West Campus.

• The PRL sponsors major ASU-events that benefit a variety of disciplines. The PRL creates a new faculty space for ongoing “salons” to present work-in-progress, discuss texts, study new ideas

• The PRL is now a unique program faculty cluster and resource for students in two curricular programs (undergraduate certificate and graduate M.A. area of focus)

Recent events in the state of Arizona and reactions across the country have once again catapulted the issue of immigration to the forefront of the national consciousness and prompted statements and resolutions from local, national, and international bodies, including university officials and faculty bodies.

The academic study of emotions has developed since the 1980’s in different disciplines, including psychology, philosophy, literature, law and religious studies. It therefore appears as an ideal topic to consider from an interdisciplinary perspective, especially after about three decades of research in independent fields with few intersections between them. In this cluster, our main goal is to study different approaches to emotions, and see how different perspectives, when crossed, can deepen each other and provide a broader and more accurate background.

The chief purpose of this Research Cluster is to explore the rich cultural expressions that have emerged in a variety of colonial and postcolonial intersections, including experiences of diaspora, immigration, migration and other forms of cultural encounter. We seek to participate in a global conversation on a variety of issues, including the effects of colonialism on cultural encounters, neo-colonialism, the impact of colonial legacies on postcolonial state formation and the influences (positive and negative) of Western culture generally in the postcolony.

During the upcoming academic year, this research cluster will focus on theories of intersectionality and feminist knowledge within a global and transnational framework as well as those that acknowledge the continuing importance of the nation-state in the construction of identities, desires, and culture.  In this way, we intend to rigorously theorize the politics of knowledge that we research and teach beyond a primarily US-centered analysis of the relationships of women and communities of color to the nation-state but see these phenomenon as also constructing of and at times constructe

Diverse manifestations of modernity, from the experience of colonial subjugation, the struggles for the formation of independent nation-states, and the rise of modern-day global networks, shaped and reshaped the Muslim world.

This research cluster will inquire into the circumstances that make “reciprocal interdisciplinary scholarship” possible. As a result of our work together, we will gain new knowledge about how a specific landscape can offer occasion for social, cultural, technological and scientific learning. More importantly, we will know how that landscape, and a journey through it, can be a focal point, a place on which learners can utilize many lenses to understand a whole.

2012 is the UN International Year of the Co-Op!

This cluster will focus on cooperatives as innovative ways to foster community development in their efforts in 2012. You are invited to attend a seminar on February 7, where Victor Pestoff, Professor Emeritus at the Institute for Civil Society Studies at Ersta Sköndal University College in Stockholm, Sweden, will present on the topic. (Please see attached flier below for more information)

Initially, the Creative Inquiry Research Group (CIRG) was conceived as an opportunity to share and
survey commonalities of what creative inquiry means to each artistic field and how that is incorporated

The purpose of this research cluster is to examine ways of making academic writing more meaningful for a wide public as well as for ourselves as scholars and publishing artists.

Within many disciplines in the humanities there remains a strong expectation to produce academic writing that is presented in a detached manner, making extensive reference to existing theories as a means for justification, and often using esoteric jargon of the field. Such writing is expected for tenure purposes, and is believed to be of a higher order than other modes of communication.