MELLON PROGRAMS
2015-2019 Studies in Climate Change: The Limits of the Numerical
With support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, this four-year project addressed the relationship between humanistic research and quantificatory method across a range of fields. What is the effect of the pervasive introduction of quantification into social evaluation? When does quantification work against the very values (such as precision and ease of communication) that it is intended to support? How do numbers as a system of evaluation clash with social values that resist this approach? At the University of Chicago, the Franke Institute hosted two postdoctoral scholars for three years each to study the role of quantitative data in the humanistic understanding of climate change. Subgrants at Cambridge University and the University of California at Santa Barbara addressed related issues in healthcare and higher education, respectively. The project leaders at UChicago were James Chandler (English Language & Literature and Cinema & Media Studies) and Dipesh Chakrabarty (History and South Asian Languages & Literatures).
2016-2020 Musical Pasts Consortium
With support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, this four-year project rewrote traditional historical narratives by giving music the centrality usually accorded to textual sources. Transdisciplinary and international, the Musical Pasts Consortium partnered the Franke with humanities institutes at Yale University, the University of California at Berkeley, and King’s College London. The UChicago contribution to the consortium included a conference on “Body Techné Memory” in 2017 that featured a keynote address by Carolyn Abbate of Harvard University. The project leaders at UChicago were James Chandler (English Language & Literature and Cinema & Media Studies) and Martha Feldman (Music).
2016-2020 Algorithms, Models, and Formalisms
With support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, this four-year project addressed the nature, course, and consequences of the interaction between new technology and disciplinary practices in the humanities and beyond. In 2019-2020, “Algorithms, Models, and Formalisms” supported residencies at the Franke Institute for Dr. Michael Barany (Lecturer in the History of Science, University of Edinburgh) and Dr. Haizi Yu (Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign). The project leaders were James Chandler (English Language & Literature and Cinema & Media Studies), James Evans (Sociology) and Adrian Johns (History).