Christine Hahn, PhD

My interest in the questions around what gets taught in art history, and how it gets taught, has only continued to grow since arriving at Kalamazoo College in the fall of 2008. A fellowship from the ACSJL in 2010 allowed me to develop a new course on the relationship between race, gender, and the built environment (ART295: Architecture, Urbanism, and Identity). Over the next two years, I will be working on a project that at its core asks the question: what would an antiracist art history curriculum look like? The fellowship will allow me to read widely and deeply on literature concerning critical pedagogy and scholarship on the intersection of art history and social justice, draft a publication on the state of the field of undergraduate art history curricula in this regard, and ultimately, redesign the existing introductory survey sequence in art history using an antiracist framework.

Shreena Gandhi, PhD

Assistant Professor of Religion Shreena Gandhi’s work will examine the history of U.S. religious organizations and how the formation of U.S. civil society contributed to weakening the state through anti-government rhetoric and played a role in creating and sustaining structural and racial inequity while seemingly working for justice.

During the Second Great Awakening (1820s-1840s), Protestants used the spirit of revivalism to move into the business of organizing around various causes. At one point during the mid-1800s, the combined operating budgets of the “Benevolent Empire” were larger than that of the federal government. My project will be to reexamine this history through the lens of social justice. In particular, I want to pay attention to how the formation of U.S. civil society contributed to weakening the state through anti-government rhetoric and how these organizations played a role in creating and sustaining structural and racial inequity while seemingly working for justice.

Alyce Brady, PhD

Associate Professor of Computer Science, worked on an experimental software project that provided generic database access at two universities (in Sierra Leone In the wake of a brutal and destructive 10-year civil war that ended in 2001) into a robust, sustainable, open-source system for computerized academic record-keeping.

I worked in partnership with interested staff and students from Njala University, the University of Sierra Leone, and Kalamazoo College to:

• Identify the specific record-keeping and procedural needs of the two Sierra Leonean universities
• Develop custom tables and software specific to Registrar needs,
• Enhance software elements related to data integrity, privacy, and security, and
• Develop mechanisms and processes to support the project as a continuing, sustainable open-source project.

Regina Stevens-Truss, PhD

Associate Professor of Chemistry served as a Kalamazoo College Faculty Fellow, during the fall of 2014 focusing on the ongoing Science and Social Justice Project, a partnership with Harvard Medical School. During her fellowship, Dr. Stevens-Truss gathered information on current social justice practices in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields that were then fed into the ACSJL’s online resource center, (former Praxis Center).

Amelia Katanski, PhD

Associate Professor of English Amelia Katanski explored the intersections among American Indian tribal sovereignty, food sovereignty, and storytelling, focusing on Great Lakes region Native communities. The project I propose will explore the intersections among American Indian tribal sovereignty, food sovereignty, and storytelling, focusing on Great Lakes region Native communities. This project would have three interrelated facets: first, to read the literary texts of Great Lakes Indian communities for the stories they tell about food cultivation, its role in cultural transmission ,and its significance in building or maintaining tribal sovereignty; second, to gather and share the stories of Great Lakes American Indian communities that are working toward food sovereignty by preserving knowledge and claiming control over food production; and third, to bring together Great Lakes American Indian activists and Kalamazoo College/Kalamazoo-area food activists to learn from one another’s stories and strategies for developing strong and just local food systems.

Sarah Lindley, MFA

Associate Professor of Art, Sarah Lindley explored ways in which artists and the study of art can be more deeply engaged with issues of justice at Kalamazoo College and in the city of Kalamazoo during her fellowship.

In a liberal arts academic setting, these concepts are readily accepted and often celebrated, but we need a more sustained conversation about the significance of art to all individuals, regardless of age, socio-economic status or cultural background. During my time as a faculty fellow in the Arcus Center, I will focus on multiple interpretations of social justice in the arts by comparing and contrasting artists whose works focus on social responsibility, civic engagement, and/or activism. As part of my project, I would like to collaborate with the senior art majors and studio SIPs to establish a studio space off-campus in Kalamazoo, perhaps in a downtown location so that we can build on our relationships with community partners.

E. Binney Girdler, PhD

Associate Professor of Biology. For the Arcus Faculty Fellowship project, I am developing an interdisciplinary introductory-level science course that focuses on a central theme that intersects social justice, e.g., Feeding the world; Inequities of climate change; Toxic environments and Race. I plan to approach this theme from multiple disciplinary perspectives– mathematics, computer science, physics, chemistry, and biology– but will constantly refer back to the social relevance of the topic. Social justice will be addressed in the content of the proposed course, the intended audience of this course and in changing the institutional approach to serving our increasingly diverse student body. I will pilot this course, which will include an experiential component, in the Fall of 2019 and again in the Winter of 2020.

Adriana Garriga-Lopez, PhD

Associate Professor of Anthropology and Sociology. The ACSJL supported my research in Puerto Rico through a Faculty Research Grant…It allowed me to travel to the archipelago in December of 2017, only three months after Hurricane Maria devastated the islands. This support was fundamental to set me on a new research path focused on the relationship between decolonization and disaster response and recovery, especially among small farmers working within the Latin American tradition of agroecology.

Ryan Fong, PhD

Associate Professor of English. “I have continued to expand and improve the section of my Victorian literature survey on Poverty, Race, and Urban Crime based on the projects that have been funded by Arcus, including the trip to Mississippi. We also include a prison and abolition set of lessons in our WGS 101 courses, which has been enhanced by that as well. I will be teaching the WGS senior seminar next winter, and it will be on Abolition Feminisms.

All of this is setting the foundation for my next book project that will look at prisons and incarceration in the nineteenth-century British imperial context and will use critical abolitionist frameworks.”

Noriko Sugimori, PhD

Associate Professor of Japanese Language. As an Arcus Center Faculty Fellow (2023–2025), I worked to transform how social justice is addressed in Japanese language classrooms. Instructors increasingly recognize social justice as essential but often lack training, resources, and curricular space. This challenge is especially acute in elementary Japanese, where teaching two syllabaries, kanji, grammar, and vocabulary can push history, culture, and questions of power to the margins.

With Arcus support, I collaborated with two scholars to develop Social Justice in Japanese Language Teaching, a practical reference book for instructors at every level. The project secured a contract with Palgrave Macmillan, part of Springer Nature, and is scheduled for publication in 2027. It will be Palgrave Macmillan’s first bilingual book in Japanese and English. Our work combines historical and contemporary issues, pedagogical frameworks, and classroom-ready approaches, allowing language learning to occur alongside critical inquiry. The project seeks not simply to add difficult topics to an existing curriculum, but to reimagine Japanese language education as a space where students examine power, encounter multiple perspectives, and engage responsibly with a complex world.