Professor Kēhaulani Vaughn Receives 2026 Dean’s Research Impact Initiative Seed Grant

Professor Kēhaulani Vaughn Receives 2026 Dean’s Research Impact Initiative Seed Grant

by Keith Miyake Faculty News

Dean Daryle Williams and the University of California, Riverside (UCR) College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (CHASS) are proud to announce the launch of the Dean’s Research Impact Initiative. This strategic program is designed to catalyze high-impact scholarship and creative activity during the Winter and Spring 2026 terms, serving as a springboard for a robust, expanded research ecosystem in the 2026-27 academic year and beyond.

As part of this initiative, Dean Williams has awarded five Dean’s Research Impact Initiative seed grants. Drawing from unspent endowment funds, each grant of $10,000 to $15,000 provides CHASS Senate faculty with the critical early-stage accelerator grants needed to pilot innovative projects, foster interdisciplinary partnerships, and position CHASS at the forefront of research at the University of California and across the Association of American Universities.

The following faculty members have been selected for their potential to drive meaningful change through their respective disciplines:

All seed funds must be spent by September 1, 2026, on the expectation that each grantee will be well-positioned to seek additional external funding in the coming academic year. In partnership with the Graduate Division, each grantee will also be able to seek additional one-time summer funding for graduate student research support.

“These seed grants represent more than just financial support; they go beyond accelerating Chancellor Hu’s focus on our research enterprise, “ Dean Williams said. “Each grant makes concrete the enduring truth that the humanities, arts, and social sciences are pillars of the modern research university. CHASS is an engine of discovery and development at UCR.”

“By supporting these five scholars today, we are setting the stage for CHASS to lead the way in interdisciplinary excellence and research with public visibility and social impact. These efforts ensure that the momentum generated by Professors Holguín Mendoza, Katrib, Levy, Vaughn, and Wu — and our outstanding undergraduate and graduate students — will evolve into a permanent, well-supported infrastructure for excellence, now and into a bright future.”

The Dean’s Research Impact Initiative is a direct response to the campus-wide research goals established by Chancellor S. Jack Hu and Vice Chancellor for Research, Innovation, and Economic Development Rodolfo Torres.

By providing these five seed grants, CHASS is actively implementing the Chancellor’s three core research pillars of Strategically Aligning Seed Funding, Diversifying the Funding Ecosystem, and Enabling High-Impact Research.

“Graduate education is fundamentally research education, and the Dean’s Research Impact Initiative is exactly the kind of strategic investment that accelerates discovery while strengthening the training environment for students,” said Lidia Kos, Vice Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies.

“By pairing faculty seed grants with targeted graduate student research support, CHASS is building a model for how campuses can expand scholarly impact while developing the next generation of researchers, thinkers, artists, and public intellectuals. The Graduate Division is proud to partner with CHASS in advancing student success through meaningful research opportunities and mentorship.”

 

You can view the original announcement here.

Colloquium: “Refusing ‘Queer Paradise’: Māhū Pedagogies of Queer Indigenous Re-Memory in Hawaiʻi” by Pōmaikaʻi Gushiken

Colloquium: “Refusing ‘Queer Paradise’: Māhū Pedagogies of Queer Indigenous Re-Memory in Hawaiʻi” by Pōmaikaʻi Gushiken

by Keith Miyake Events

Join the UCR Department of Ethnic Studies for our colloquium speaker series

Monday, January 26, 2026
1:00-2:00 p.m.
CHASS INTS 1111

Based on close readings of a queer Native Hawaiian ‘zine and LGBTQ+ travel writing about Hawaiʻi, this talk develops the concept of “māhū pedagogies” to argue that while settler homonationalist tourism narratives enact cultural prostitution by figuring Hawaiʻi as a “queer paradise” absent of Native resurgence, māhū and queer Indigenous cultural workers refuse colonial narratives by centering queer Indigenous relationalities that generate decolonial futures.

Dr. Pōmaikaʻi Gushiken, is a Kanaka ʻŌiwi and Uchinānchu educator and researcher from Nānākuli, Hawaiʻi. Currently a UC Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow at UCLA, he holds a Ph.D. in Ethnic Studies from UC San Diego.

His research focuses on decolonization, queer Indigenous futurity, and the intersections of pedagogy, refusal, and ea in Hawaiʻi.
Colloquium: “Caress of the Chinampa: Nahua Ecologies of Survivance and the Death of Mexico City” by Daniel P. Gámez

Colloquium: “Caress of the Chinampa: Nahua Ecologies of Survivance and the Death of Mexico City” by Daniel P. Gámez

by Keith Miyake Events

Join the UCR Department of Ethnic Studies for our colloquium speaker series:

“Caress of the Chinampa: Nahua Ecologies of Survivance and the Death of Mexico City”

By Daniel P. Gámez

Monday, December 1, 2025
1:00-2:00 p.m.
CHASS INTS 1111

In this talk, Daniel Gámez weaves extended conversations, collaborative archival analysis, and political advocacy with elders, traditional authorities, and agricultural workers of Atlapulco, a Nahua pueblo in Xochimilco, southern Mexico City. He focuses on the everyday intimate, spiritual, and embodied encounters with earthen materials and waterscapes, tracing environmental transformations experienced by chinampa ecologies—characterized by abundance and life—with the expansion of the colonial city. The talk will consider how the latter is on the brink of environmental catastrophe, prompted by centuries of imperial urbanization.

Daniel P. Gámez, UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellow, American Indian Studies & History—University of California, Los Angeles—is also a postdoctoral scholar for the project “Race in the Global Past through Native Lenses,” supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. He received his Ph.D. in Geography from The University of British Columbia and is an interdisciplinary scholar-activist specializing in the study of anticolonial thought, racialization, Indigenous sovereignty, and imperial urbanism in Abya Yala (Latin America & the Caribbean).
Colloquium: “Black Women, Biographies, and the Challenge of Two-Faced Archives” by K.T. Ewing

Colloquium: “Black Women, Biographies, and the Challenge of Two-Faced Archives” by K.T. Ewing

by Keith Miyake Events

Join the UCR Department of Ethnic Studies for our colloquium speaker series:

“Black Women, Biographies, and the Challenge of Two-Faced Archives”

By K.T. Ewing

Monday, November 24, 2025
1:00-2:00 p.m.
CHASS INTS 1111

The craft of Black women’s biography enables a more accurate recounting of their lives as a corrective to how those stories have been erased, underappreciated, or misunderstood. This process of reclamation locates the presence of Black women in their fullness, both within and beyond traditional archives. It challenges the narrative that the relative silence surrounding Black women’s interior lives is synonymous with an absence of complexity. When these women intentionally preserve their own stories, the result is even richer. Using blues performer Alberta Hunter as an example, this talk explores how some Black women use a process of two-faced archiving to preserve and sometimes share their life stories on their own terms.

K.T. Ewing is an Associate Professor in the Department of Gender and Race Studies at The University of Alabama, is a proud third generation HBCU graduate whose interests include Black history, women and gender studies, and the influence of blues culture in American society. She has writings published in The Black Scholar, Black Perspectives, Transformations in Africana Studies, and Black Female Sexualities. Her current book project, Remember My Name: Alberta Hunter and the Two-Faced Archive, examines the life of Alberta Hunter, a twentieth-century blues and cabaret singer from Memphis, Tennessee.
Colloquium: “Graphic Vietnam: Visualizing Memoirs, Memories, and Militarism” by Long T. Bui

Colloquium: “Graphic Vietnam: Visualizing Memoirs, Memories, and Militarism” by Long T. Bui

by Keith Miyake Events

Join the UCR Department of Ethnic Studies for our colloquium speaker series:

“Graphic Vietnam: Visualizing Memoirs, Memories, and Militarism”

By Long T. Bui

Monday, October 20, 2025
1:00-2:00 p.m.
CHASS INTS 1113

This talk presents my graphic memoir in progress. Using ethnic studies research and frameworks as the basis for art, I recognize the creative aspects of doing scholarly intellectual work (and vice versa). My book utilizes the power of comics and a powerful visual medium to draw out the many strands of the Vietnam War, previously considered America’s longest war, linking them with other protracted American conflicts such as race wars, drug wars, gang wars, the wars on poverty and terror. Although this year marks the 50th anniversary of the “end” of the Vietnam war, I illustrate, through my refugee family’s story, that no war is really over.

Long T. Bui is Professor of Global and International Studies at the University of California, Irvine.

He is the author of books such as Returns of War: South Vietnam and the Price of Refugee Memory (2018), Model Machines: A History of the Asian as Automaton (2022), and Viral World: Global Relations during the COVID-19 Pandemic (2024).

Bui earned a Ph.D. in Ethnic studies from UC San Diego and was a UC postdoctoral fellow in Ethnic Studies at UC Riverside.
Arts and Artist Activism in Times of Global Authoritarianism: A Book Launch for Performing Vulnerability

Arts and Artist Activism in Times of Global Authoritarianism: A Book Launch for Performing Vulnerability

by Keith Miyake Events

The Center for Ideas and Society Presents

A Book Launch for Performing Vulnerability

Featuring Emily Hue, Tamara Ho, and Chaw Ei Thein

Friday, November 7, 2025
2:00–5:30 p.m.
CHASS INTS 1111

Performing Vulnerability: Risking Art and Life in the Burmese Diaspora is a groundbreaking exploration of how diasporic Burmese artists navigate the intricate intersections of art, politics, and humanitarianism. It provides a critical examination of the economic and social value placed on representations of suffering of artists living in the aftermath of military rule. This event invites further dialogue on the ethical implications of this value within the global arts and humanitarian markets in the US and beyond.

We will open with a performance by Burmese feminist performance artist Chaw Ei Thein and follow with a discussion with the artist, alongside author Emily Hue, and critic Tamara Ho. Topics discussed include the current political moment in Myanmar post-coup as well as how immigrant and exiled artists work against “doubled” authoritarian afterlives in the United States. Reception to follow.

Tentative Event Schedule

2:00 – 2:45 Performance: Chaw Ei Thien
2:45 – 3 pm intermission
3 to 4:15 pm Roundtable Discussion: Emily Hue, Tammy Ho, Chaw Ei Thein
4:15- 5:30 Q&A and reception

Speakers

Chaw Ei Thein: “I was born in 1969 in Yangon, Myanmar (Burma). I graduated with LL.B (Law) in 1994. I has started art at an early age through I had received numerous national and international art prizes and awards. My father is an artist and art teacher Pathein Maung Maung Thein. He is my art teacher and mentor. My artistic practices are diverse and I am working as a painter and a performance artist.”

Tamara C. Ho is an Associate Professor of Gender & Sexuality Studies. She earned her Ph.D., in Comparative Literature from University of California, Los Angeles.

Emily Hue is an Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies and core faculty in Southeast Asian Text, Ritual, Performance (SEATRiP), at the University of California, Riverside. She earned her Ph.D. in American Studies from the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University.

Joan Mitchell Foundation Announces the 2025 Joan Mitchell Fellows, Including Prof. Gerald Clarke

Joan Mitchell Foundation Announces the 2025 Joan Mitchell Fellows, Including Prof. Gerald Clarke

by Keith Miyake Faculty News

Fifteen US-based artists will each receive $60,000 over the five-year span of the program, which also provides learning, peer engagement, and network-building opportunities.

NEW YORK, NY – August 13, 2025 – The Joan Mitchell Foundation is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2025 Joan Mitchell Fellowships: 15 US-based artists working in the evolving fields of painting and sculpture. The artists, who hail from 11 states and range in age from 30 to 74, will each receive $60,000 in direct funding, distributed over five years alongside professional development, peer engagement, and network-building programs. This year’s Fellows announcement coincides with the Foundation’s year-long celebration of Joan Mitchell’s centennial year and a major exhibition, on view for the month of August, marking 10 years of the Joan Mitchell Center residency program in New Orleans. The Fellowship awards represent a $900,000 monetary commitment to the 15 artists, augmented by more than $400,000 in non-monetary services offered over the five years of the program.

The 2025 Joan Mitchell Fellows are:
Gerald Clarke, Anza, CA
Cathy Della Lucia, Boston, MA
Bob Dilworth, Providence, RI
Nancy Friedemann-Sánchez, Lincoln, NE
Sahar Khoury, Oakland, CA
Sammy Seung-min Lee, Denver, CO
Brenda Mallory, Portland, OR
Suchitra Mattai, Los Angeles, CA
Troy Montes Michie, Los Angeles, CA
Sara Rahbar, Great Neck, NY
Eric-Paul Riege, Gallup, NM
Juvana Soliven, Honolulu, HI
Linda Rotua Sormin, New York, NY
Lan Tuazon, Chicago, IL
Anthony White, Seattle, WA

 

Gerald Clarke (b. 1967, lives in Anza, CA), an enrolled citizen of the Cahuilla Band of Indians, draws on his community’s everyday experience to create conceptual artworks that exist within a spectrum of Indigenous expression that is simultaneously ancient and contemporary.

Read the full press release here.

Colloquium: “The Cahuilla Pedagogical Grammar Project: Results and Outcomes from An Indigenous Language Research Methods (ILRM) Approach to Writing Pedagogical Grammars for Indigenous Communities” by Ray Huaute

Colloquium: “The Cahuilla Pedagogical Grammar Project: Results and Outcomes from An Indigenous Language Research Methods (ILRM) Approach to Writing Pedagogical Grammars for Indigenous Communities” by Ray Huaute

by Keith Miyake Events

Join the UCR Department of Ethnic Studies for our colloquium speaker series:

“The Cahuilla Pedagogical Grammar Project: Results and Outcomes from An Indigenous Language Research Methods (ILRM) Approach to Writing Pedagogical Grammars for Indigenous Communities”

By Ray Huaute

Monday, May 19, 2025
1:00-2:00 p.m.
INTN 3023

With specific examples provided from my postdoctoral project, this talk presents an alternative model for research on a language that is also conducted for, with, and by the language-speaking community. In this framework, the “by” can include linguistic research conducted by an Indigenous community researcher as the Principal Investigator (PI), and in a manner that is relationally accountable to the language-speaking community. Centering linguistic research around community-specific language reclamation goals and values allows researchers to identify what might best support local language revitalization efforts.

Ray Huaute (Chumash, Cahuilla), a UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the Ethnic Studies Department at UC Riverside, earned a B.A. in Native American Studies at UCR, an M.A. in Native American Linguistics from the University of Arizona, and a Ph.D. in Linguistics from UC San Diego.

Ray won an Endangered Language Documentation Programme grant in 2019 to support linguistic fieldwork for his doctoral research on the Desert dialect of Cahuilla spoken on the Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indian Reservation.

His postdoctoral research project utilizes original data from contemporary speakers of Cahuilla, along with archival documentation.
Colloquium: “The Desirable Conduit: Cinematic Fantasies of Latinx Sexuality and Labor” by Richard T. Rodríguez

Colloquium: “The Desirable Conduit: Cinematic Fantasies of Latinx Sexuality and Labor” by Richard T. Rodríguez

by Keith Miyake Events

Join the UCR Department of Ethnic Studies for our colloquium speaker series:

“The Desirable Conduit: Cinematic Fantasies of Latinx Sexuality and Labor”

By Richard T. Rodríguez

Monday, March 12, 2025
1:00-2:00 p.m.
INTN 3023

Drawn from my book in progress, The Desirable Conduit: Cinematic Fantasies of Latinx Sexuality and Labor, this talk focuses on John Butler’s 2018 dramedy Papi Chulo. Concerned with the simultaneous demand for Latino male sexuality and labor in contemporary queer cinema, focusing on what I identify as “bad cinema” helps glean insight in representational spaces to assess the social, sexual, economic, and psychic currencies afforded to and by Latino male sexuality.

Dr. Richard T. Rodríguez is Professor of English at the University of California, Riverside. He is the author of Next of Kin: The Family in Chicano/a Cultural Politics and A Kiss Across the Ocean: Transatlantic Intimacies of British Post-Punk and
U.S. Latinidad, both published by Duke University Press and finishing a book of poems titled Exemplars & Accomplices.