CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — A University of Illinois music professor and two U. of I. graduate students are among the 2015 fellowship recipients from the American Council of Learned Societies.

Michael Silvers, a professor of musicology, received an ACLS fellowship for his project, “Voices of Drought: Forró Soundscapes in Northeastern Brazil.” Silvers will study the interplay between music, the landscape and the experience of nature in northeastern Brazil. He will look at how northeastern Brazilians have learned about the regional landscape and soundscape through music, and how environmental conditions such as drought have shaped music-making.

The ACLS Fellowship Program allows researchers in the humanities and social sciences to devote time to research and to the writing of a major scholarly work.

Lauren Applebaum, a doctoral candidate in art history, received a Luce/ACLS Dissertation Fellowship in American Art for her project, “Elusive Matter, Material Bodies: American Art in the Age of Electronic Mediation, 1865-1918.” In her dissertation, Applebaum examines how American art – from paintings to quilts to decorative desk sets – engaged early electronic telecommunications practices and negotiated social connections engendered by new technologies such as the telegraph and telephone from the mid-nineteenth to early twentieth centuries.

The Luce/ACLS Dissertation Fellowships in American Art are awarded to doctoral students in any stage of dissertation research or writing on a topic in the history of visual arts in the U.S. The fellowship is funded by a grant from The Henry Luce Foundation.

Mark Frank, a doctoral candidate in East Asian Languages and Cultures, received a Luce/ACLS Program in China Studies: Predissertation Summer Travel Grant for his project, “The Rooted State: Materiality in the Making of Modern China’s Xikang Province.” Frank will examine the role of material factors in the establishment and dissolution of the Xikang Province (1939-1955), with a focus on Xikang’s modern economic, legal and educational institutions. He aims to provide insight into how national modernization projects are influenced by material factors.

The Luce/ACLS Program in China Studies: Predissertation Summer Travel Grants provide funding for graduate students to explore venues, make preliminary research arrangements and gain advice from potential collaborators about subsequent research in China. The travel grants are funded by The Henry Luce Foundation.

For more information, go to http://www.acls.org/fellows/new/.

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Reposted from the Illinois News Bureau - 7/24/2015 | Jodi Heckel | Arts & Humanities Editor