Liberal Arts Scholarship Catalyst Grants Program
About the Program
In September 2016, the College launched its Strategic Plan 2020, with a top priority to “enhance the scholarly profile of College faculty and students while affirming the teacher-scholar model and celebrating the broad range of scholarship, artistic production and performance present in the College.” The College’s Liberal Arts Catalyst Program is one important investment we’re making in faculty scholarship.
The Liberal Arts Scholarship Catalyst (LASC) Grants Program makes available, on a competitive basis, funds for scholarly and creative work that shows clear potential for increasing the faculty member’s research productivity and advancing professional goals, including the pursuit of external funding and application for promotion. Given existing sources of research support for tenure-track faculty, most notably Research Council Seed Grants, and the dearth of comparable internal programs for tenured faculty, Liberal Arts Catalyst grants are limited to tenured faculty in the Humanities, Social Sciences and Arts divisions of the College. Grants support work taking place in the summer and during the following academic year.
2024-25 LASC grant recipients
We are pleased to announce the recipients of the 2024-25 College of Arts and Sciences Liberal Arts Scholarship Catalyst (LASC) grants:
- Haimanti Roy (Department of History): Paper Trails: Documentary Identity and the Indian Citizen, 1920-2015
- Jamie L. Small (Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work): Split: How Do Divorce Lawyers Make Decisions about Property Settlement, Financial Support and Child Custody in the Modern Family?
- Dr. Cecilia Moore (Principal investigator), Dr. Nicholas Rademacher (Principal investigator), Dr. Joseph Flipper (Contributor), Department of Religious Studies: Documenting the Black Catholic Experience in Dayton, Ohio
2021 LASC grant recipients
- R. Darden Bradshaw (Department of Art and Design): Sustaining Memory: Threads of Place
- David Darrow (Department of History): The Spread of Empire: Siberia, the Global Butter Industry and Peasant Cooperative Production
- Glenna Jennings (Department of Art and Design): The Desert Table: one community’s struggle for food justice
- Benjamin Kunz (Department of Psychology): The Role of Threat-Related Stereotypes in the Perception of Interpersonal Distance
- Nancy Martorano Miller (Department of Political Science): The Diffusion of Ideas in State Constitutions
- Laura Vorachek (Department of English): Society of Women Journalists Membership Database 1894-1914
2020 LASC grant recipients
- Dorian Borbonus (Department of History): GIS Map of Funerary Monuments in Imperial Rome
- David Darrow (Department of History): The Spread of Empire: Siberia, the Global Butter Industry and Peasant Cooperative Production
- Miranda Hallett (Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work): More than Survival: Salvadoran migrants, sanctuary, and life in the diaspora
- Erin O'Mara Kunz (Department of Psychology): Examining self-esteem across the menstrual cycle
- Sayeh Meisami (Department of Philosophy): Philosophy of Logic in the Faith-Based Metaphysics of Mulla Sadra
- Shazia Rahman (Department of English): The Environment of South Asia: Literary and Cinematic Representations
- Viorel Paslaru (Department of Philosophy): What’s in the Name of a Language? Science, Values and Diversity
- Anthony Smith (Department of Religious Studies): From Rome to Hollywood: Italian Cinema in Cold War America
- Patrick Thomas (Department of English): Developing the Repository of Social Media Writing: Expanding Collaborative Digital Writing Research Spaces, Methods, and Practices
2019 LASC grant recipients
- Joshua Ambrosius (Department of Political Science): Chatting with the Nextdoor Neighbors: Use of a Niche Social Media Platform by Community Leaders and Members in the Dayton, Ohio, Suburbs
- Simanti Dasgupta (Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work): Prophylactic Rights: Sex Work Movement, HIV/AIDS and Anti-tracking Laws in Sonagachi, India
- Samuel Dorf (Department of Music): Extreme Early Music: Performing Antiquity Today
- Erin Holscher-Almazan (Department of Art and Design): "The Only Way We're Going to Get Through This is Together:" Support for a Significant Solo Exhibition and Continued Creative Research in Female-centered Paintings and Prints
- Natalie Hudson (Department of Political Science, Human Rights Studies Program): New Directions in the Politics of Narratives: Transnational Advocacy on Sexualized Violence in Conflict
- Judith Huacuja (Department of Art and Design): Liberation Theology and Social Engagement in the Art of Robert Campbell
- Heather MacLachlan (Department of Music): The Seventh Precept in the Twenty-First Century
- Caroline Merithew (Department of History): “The Certainty of Hope:” Feminism and Antifascism in the Global Struggle to Keep Ethiopia Independent, 1924-1945
- Erin O’Mara (Department of Psychology): Examining self-esteem across the menstrual cycle
- Andy Slade (Department of English): Be a Man, and Other Bad Advice: Cinema and the Ethics of Masculinity
- Tereza Szeghi (Department of English): Didacticism, Hope, and Change: Fiction and the Fight for Indigenous Human Rights
- Patrick Thomas (Department of English): Examining Social Media Writing Processes through Data Visualization
2018 LASC grant recipients
- Simanti Dasgupta (Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work): Prophylactic Rights, Sex Worker's Subjectivity at the intersection of HIV/AIDS
- Suki Kwon (Department of Art and Design): Creative Seminar Project in China
- Nancy Martorano Miller (Department of Political Science): Applying Institutional Grammar Syntax Framework-Study of Public Policy in State Constitutions
- Caroline Merithew (Department of History): Feminism, Antifascism, global struggle to keep Ethiopia independent
- Haimanti Roy (Department of History): Paper Trails: Mobility and Documentary Citizenship in 20th Century India
- David Watkins (Department of Political Science): Uses, Abuses of "realism" in political theories of immigration
- Laura Voracheck (Department of English): Late 19th c. women journalists