The Office of the Vice President for Research at the University of Iowa has announced that two GWSS faculty are recipients of the Arts & Humanities Initiative (AHI) grant program for 2012-2013.  The awards are designed to provide support for faculty who are preparing a publication or other scholarly work likely to make a significant impact on scholarship in the proposed field.  
 

Meenakshi Gigi Durham, Professor, Journalism & Mass Communication & Gender, Women's & Sexuality Studies
TechnoSex: Technologies of the Body, Mediated Corporealities, and the Quest for the Sexual Self
"TechnoSex: Technologies of the Body, Mediated Corporealities, and the Quest for the Sexual Self" is an academic book addressing the idea that media technologies constitute corporeality in ways that have profound impacts on our sexual identities. We live in an era where media technologies pervade the environment, altering our landscapes and lifestyles, and serving now as transmission devices for sexuality (for example in the notorious teen practice of "sexting").  The book centers on the relationship between media practices, technological interfaces, and sexual identities.  This core thesis is premised on the basic idea that subjectivity, or selfhood, is now altered through the joining of corporeality to cyberspace. While there has been a great deal of popular discourse on practices like "sexting," cybersex, and amateur videography via Youtube, scholarship to date has not directly theorized the relationship between interactive media, corporealities, and sexual subjectivities, and "TechnoSex" will break new ground by exploring this complex dynamic.

Sasha Waters Freyer, Associate Professor, Cinema & Comparative Literature & Gender, Women's & Sexuality Studies
What Has Been From Time Immemorial
This AHI Grant Proposal will support two short films to be completed as a part of a cycle of six short films entitled What Has Been From Time Immemorial.  This cycle of films in the documentary-essay style combines 16mm film source material with on-screen text to explore a partial history of cinematic representations of human experience(s) at key transitional moments in the 20th century.  The best way to fully understand the project is to watch the first film in the cycle, An Incomplete History of the Travelogue, 1925. You may see a clip of the film here: www.pieshake.com/Pieshake/The_Latest.html.