Description

“A Universe of Terms” is a cross-institutional collaboration that utilizes “keywords” to stimulate and organize research, producing on-line, visual environments within which that research can be presented and explored. Building on a Social Science Research Council pilot, this next iteration will be developed around four separate research projects that explore the entanglement and interdependence of human and nonhuman life, and the precarious status of religious and racial minorities. The resulting website will feature: a digital archive of images of and commentary about Coptic Orthodox Christian tattoos, a crowd-sourced survey of “householding” under conditions of climate change, an immersive digital story based on a Dutch Creole letter written by a formerly enslaved African woman, and a photo essay of the endangered El Segundo Blue butterfly in Los Angeles. The Luce Foundation’s grant will support the project’s principal investigator as well as subawards to partnering institutions.  
This will be the Luce Foundation’s fourth grant to Howard University, and the first grant to Howard University from the Religion and Theology Program.    This grant would advance the Religion and Theology Program’s goal of seeding and growing new initiatives on religion, democracy, and public culture.