Oberlin Art Professor Awarded ACLS Collaborative Research Fellowship

Assistant Professor of Art History Sarah Hamill has been awarded a 2013 Collaborative Research Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies. Working with Megan Luke, an assistant professor of art history at the University of Southern California, Hamill will shed new light on the role of photography in shaping modern conceptions of art and history with Sculpture and Photography: The Art Object in Reproduction, a co-authored study of theories of imaging technologies and the limits of perception.

ACLS, a private, nonprofit federation of 71 national scholarly organizations, is the preeminent representative of American scholarship in the humanities and related social sciences. The Council awarded fellowships to seven teams of scholars that cross boundaries of discipline, methodology and geography to undertake new research projects that will result in joint publications. The program, which is made possible by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, aims to demonstrate the creative potential of collaborative research in the humanities and related social sciences.

“The 2013 ACLS Collaborative Research fellows come from a range of humanities fields, but more importantly, they represent collaborations across all faculty ranks and stages of the academic career,” notes ACLS Director of Fellowship Programs Nicole Stahlmann. “The continuous diversification of the applicant pool over the past five years of the program suggests that collaborative research is gaining traction among both tenured and untenured scholars.”

“I think one of the most exciting things about this project is the opportunity to work collaboratively with another scholar,” says Hamill. “Scholarly research is often thought of as a very individualized practice, but that's not the reality — we are always discussing our ideas with others at conferences, workshops, and in the classroom. I'm grateful to the ACLS for giving us the chance to co-author a book, a process that will entail a rich exchange of ideas.”

To learn more about this year’s fellowship recipients, visit the ACLS website.

Contact: John Paul Christy 212-697-1505