Awards for 2008-09:

Harry Brown (Assistant Professor of English) Spring – to develop a course: “Protestantism in the Wilderness: Moravians, Methodists, and Native American Conversion Narratives”

This project examines the testimonials of Indian converts such as the Pequot writer William Apess, who adopted Methodism in his youth and later became an itinerant minister, a conversion he recounts in his autobiography, A Son of the Forest (1829). I also incorporate more obscure conversion narratives contained in the Methodist archives here at DePauw. The Methodists’ relatively progressive Christian message, which emphasized racial inclusiveness and the active engagement with social issues, appealed to Apess not only as a call to spiritual rebirth but also as a platform for a range Indian reforms, including temperance, reservation autonomy, and the right of Indians to marry whites. At the same time, Apess recognized that the greatest potential for reform Christianity existed outside established congregations. His accounts of Pequot conversions, including his own, describe private, vernacular, and multicultural worship, held in a forest grove rather than a church, attended by both whites and Indians, and spoken in a blend of English and Pequot. These small communities could achieve among themselves the egalitarianism that Apess could not sustain within larger congregations, which became fractured by debates over Indian removal and slavery. Apess’s work establishes the foundation for an idea that Indian writers would not articulate until the second half of the twentieth century: a syncretism of Christianity and Native belief.

I see my study of Apess as the foundation for a broader study of a prominent figure in the Moravian and Methodist conversion narratives: the Indian convert who becomes a missionary to his own people. The missionary Indian embodies both the conflicts and the hopes of the assimilation era and emerges as a paradoxical symbol of both cultural survival and cultural extinction. While these missionaries tend to share white reformers’ view that agriculture, commerce, and Christianity are Indians’ only paths to survival, they also search for ways to synthesize tribal beliefs with the new religion, particularly by worshipping in the woods, in Native languages, without an officially invested minister. Apess own difficulty in becoming ordained demonstrates a more widespread awareness among devout but disgruntled Indian missionaries that Indian Christianity would flourish in the wilderness, outside established congregations. Apess’s "The Experiences of Five Christian Indians" (1831), containing profiles of Pequot converts, furnishes an early model for this Native form of Christianity.

Nahyan Fancy (Assistant Professor of History) Fall – to develop a course: “Partition and Memory”

In the current discussions surrounding Iraq, one often hears talk about partitioning Iraq on the basis of religious and ethnic lines. During the course of Fall 2008, I plan on developing a course that, using a comparative and interdisciplinary approach, will challenge students to think critically about the concept of partition, by studying the enduring legacy of violence, militarization and displacement in at least two groups of post-partition societies: Israel-Palestine and Pakistan-India.  The proposed course will critically examine the roles specific histories play in post-partition societies. More importantly, it will examine the manner in which post-partition histories are constructed to provide specific groups with the moral high ground. It will also address questions such as: How plausible is partition as a military exit strategy? How does partition affect the religion(s) and culture(s) of a post-partition society? What impact does partition have on the populations, especially the displaced populations on both sides of a politically devised border? Is the memory and violence of partition gendered? Finally, a larger over-arching theme of the course will be to examine how historians and other scholars themselves participate in the competition over the historicity and the meanings of the events of partition.

Jeanette Pope (Assistant Professor of Geosciences) Spring – to develop a course: “Environmental Curricula Assessment”

Awards for 2007-08:
Lori Miles (Assistant Professor of Art) Fall – to develop a course: “Art and Ethics”

In light of recent controversy stirred over the installation and consequent damage to Marc Swanson’s sculpture “Fits and Starts,” it seems quite clear that an organized, systematic course should be offered on this topic. Fine art, public art in particular, has a long and sordid love affair with its audience. As artists, we live and breathe freedom of speech and freedom of expression. It is the basic truth on which our entire structure relies. And here, a tiny, innocuous deer has come to represent what art can do only at its best: the chance to engage an audience, to be a mirror of our own, inner belief systems. Underlying this is the core question of art-responsibility, both of artist and audience. We follow a unique set of ethical standards in art, one which cannot be adequately covered by any other course on ethics. We value protest but detest vandalism, we embrace influence and appropriation from other artists but reject plagiarism, we strive to move and affect change but are frequently inadequately prepared for the real-life results those changes in attitude inspire. And now, it seems, we are accidental activists for tolerance. This is the time for a course which can provide a forum for these discussions, on both ethical and legal grounds.

Raymonda Burgman (Assistant Professor of Economics and Management) Spring – to develop a course: “The Ethics of Tax Policy”

This will be a course where students focus on the ethics of tax policy. The course should introduce the student to ethics theories and tax policy. Analyzing tax policy for its ethical nature is essential to the course mission and objectives. In addition, how might changes to these policies affect tax collections and taxpayer behavior? A cursory tax code examination reveals that postsecondary education, family planning, home-ownership, retirement planning, as well as charitable giving are all impacted. Thus, the course will broadly examine: Ethics and Social Responsibility Literature, Tax Policy Literature: Equity versus Efficiency, Taxation and Behavior Economics, Analyzing the Ethics of US Tax Policy, Democratizing Tax Policy.