Four collaborative faculty teams that represent seven different departments across Notre Dame’s campus have been awarded Notre Dame Arts Initiative grants in support of arts research and creative practice.
The grants, awarded this year, will conclude in 2027. They support the Arts Initiative in its three research priority areas: Arts in Action centers the arts in pursuit of social transformation, Sense and Transcendence examines the role of the arts in ritual and devotional practice, and Techne Futures engages the intersection of science, technology, and the arts.
"The Arts Initiative is proud to support these innovative projects that advance knowledge and promise to inspire productive, interdisciplinary dialogue," said Michael Schreffler, director of the Arts Initiative. We look forward to following their progress and celebrating their contributions to Notre Dame's thriving arts ecosystem."
2025-27 Faculty Grant Awardees
Cafecitos: Motherhood and Migration Stories of Trauma and Joy through Art, Literature, and Community Building
Principal Investigators: Vanesa Miseres, Associate Professor of Spanish in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, and Vania Smith, Professor in the Department of Anthropology
Arts Initiative Research Theme: Arts in Action
This project explores the arts as narrative and healing tools among migrant Latina mothers in South Bend, Indiana. Building upon two years of cafecitos (coffee gatherings) at La Casa de Amistad, a community center in South Bend, this second phase hosts internationally recognized Latina artists to guide participants in artistic explorations. By employing creative practices—such as collage, poetry, photography, and textile arts—and visits from Latina artists including Lourdes Almeida, Claudia Bernardi, Carmen Mariscal, and María Pichot—this project fosters collective storytelling and community building that enables participants to articulate both trauma and joy in ways that traditional academic or policy discourses often overlook. A resulting book will feature artwork and testimonies and provide a model for scholars, practitioners, and community organizers interested in intersectional approaches to Latina motherhood, migration, and reproductive justice.
Melting Time in The Digital Cave: An Interactive Multimedia Installation
Principal Investigators: Cecilia Kim, Assistant Professor of Film in the Department of Film, Television, and Theatre, and David Bird, Assistant Professor of Music Technology and Digital Media in the Department of Music
Arts Initiative Research Theme: Techne Futures
Melting Time in the Digital Cave explores the sensory and spatial qualities of a cave as a framework for examining extractivist labor, digital preservation, and data accumulation. Integrating high-resolution video, spatialized audio, and live performance, the project reimagines the cave as both a historical site of human activity and a metaphor for digital storage and cultural memory. Melting Time builds on Bird’s and Kim’s interdisciplinary work in music composition, performance, and video art by combining field recording from geological caves, performances by the vocal ensemble Ekmeles, and moving image art into an immersive, responsive digital cave. By slowing down time and countering digital fatigue, Melting Time encourages viewers to reconsider the intersections of technology, materiality, and temporality in an era dominated by accelerated digital culture. Scheduled for a major U.S. contemporary art space in Fall 2027, following a preview at the Notre Dame Arts Initiative Biennial in spring 2027, the installation aims to expand the creative possibilities of large-scale media art.
The Last Man at 200 - Imagining the Future After Environmental Disaster
Principal Investigators: Eileen Hunt, Professor in the Department of Political Science, Roy Scranton, Associate Professor in the Department of English and Director of Notre Dame’s Environmental Humanities Initiative, Ricky Herbst, Cinema Program Director at the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center and Term Teaching Professor of Film in the Department of Film, Television, and Theatre, and Yasmin Solomonescu, Associate Professor in the Department of English.
Arts Initiative Research Theme: Techne Futures
Marking the bicentennial of Mary Shelley’s The Last Man (1826), this project brings together faculty and students from Notre Dame and universities around the world to explore the enduring legacies of Shelley’s text by showing its artistic and philosophical resonances with one of the most important works of environmental and disaster literature of this century, Canadian author Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven (2014). The award-winning novel inspired the HBO series of the same name in 2021, and The Last Man at 200 will bring Mandel to Notre Dame during a globally broadcast conference in fall 2026. The conference convening will also support Eileen Hunt’s forthcoming edited publication, the first book devoted to Mary Shelley’s genre-defining post-apocalyptic pandemic novel and its legacies.
The Work of Human Hands: Liturgy and the Arts
Principal Investigators: Kimberly Belcher, Associate Professor in the Department of Theology, and Rebecca Maloy, J.W. van Gorkom Professor of Music and Director of Sacred Music at Notre Dame
Arts Initiative Research Theme: Sense and Transcendence
The Work of Human Hands is a research and teaching project that considers liturgy as an avenue for artistic engagement, spiritual practice, and health and well-being. The project convenes Notre Dame graduate students, faculty, and visiting scholars through a speaker series to deepen inquiry around texts, music, visual art, and architecture as it relates to communal worship. The speaker series will host two international scholars on campus in spring 2026.
Additional Support for Arts-Integrated Research and Teaching
Four of the grants recently awarded by the Strategic Framework Grant (SFG) Program also support collaborative, cross-disciplinary research and teaching projects that center artistic inquiry and creative production.
Sr. Ann Astell, the John Cardinal O’Hara Professor of Theology, and co-principal investigator Jennifer Newsome Martin, the John J. Cavanaugh Associate Professor of the Humanities and Director of the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture, both in the Department of Theology, will lead a research and creative works project titled “Saint Hildegard’s Illustrated Prayer Book (ca. 1180): A Prayer Book for Today.”
Cynthia Katsarelis, Assistant Professor of the Practice in Conducting in the Sacred Music program, and co-principal investigator Lee Haines, associate research professor in the Department of Biological Sciences, will lead a research and creative works project titled “Symphonic Wings: A Story of Peril and Promise.”
Michael Kackman, associate teaching professor in Film, Television, and Theatre, will develop an integration course titled The Mediated Climate: Critical Media Literacy and the Climate Crisis.
Patrick Yim, assistant professor of violin and viola in the Department of Music, will lead a research and creative practice project titled “Beyond Orientalism: Contemporary Classical Music at the Global Crossroads in Chinese-American Composer Zhou Long’s First Violin Concerto.” Yim will be joined by co-principal investigators Zhou Long, Bonfils Distinguished Research Professor of Composition at the University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory of Music and Dance, and Chen Yi, Lorena Cravens/Millsap/Missouri Distinguished Professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory of Music and Dance.
Originally published by at strategicframework.nd.edu on November 05, 2025.