Little Rock native Florence Price was the first black woman to be recognized as a major symphonic composer. Her violin concertos will be recorded for the first time. Photo courtesy University of Arkansas Libraries Special Collections.

The Office of the Vice Provost for Research and Economic Development has awarded faculty research grants through its annual Arts and Humanities Seed Grant Program. The $25,000 program provided five awards of $5,000 each to tenure-track faculty engaged in scholarly and/or creative activity in the arts and humanities. In selecting grant recipients, the award committee prioritized projects for which external funding opportunities are limited.

The five funded projects for 2017 are:

  • A world-premiere recording of Florence Price’s violin concertos. Price, a Little Rock native who died in 1953, was the first black woman to be recognized as a major symphonic composer. Er-Gene Kahng, a faculty violinist in the music department, will perform the concertos with the Janacek Philharmonic, an orchestra based in Ostava, Czech Republic. A recording of the performance will be available on a CD.
  • A documentary film on homelessness in Fayetteville titled, “Don’t Look Away: Homelessness in a College Town.” The film, produced by documentarian and journalism department chair Larry Foley, and Kevin Fitzpatrick, a university professor and holder of the Bernice Jones Chair in Community in the sociology department, will examine the growing problem of homelessness in a prosperous region with low unemployment. Foley and Fitzpatrick will use the film as means of generating discussion of the problem and ways to help alleviate it. The grant money will pay for a film trailer, providing publicity and fundraising opportunities to help cover the documentary’s $80,000 production budget.
  • A database of Arkansas election results from 1866 to 1976, compiled from Arkansas Secretary of State reports. While election results at the county level for federal offices are available online and in print, access to results for statewide offices below the gubernatorial level is available only in print, microfilm and in limited quantity online. The three University Libraries grant recipients — Beth Juhl, a web services librarian and the primary investigator; Martha Parker, a digital services librarian; and Joshua Youngblood, a research and outreach services librarian – will select a 10-year sample from the 100-year time period to digitize and make freely available. The researchers will also create a blueprint to digitize the remaining 90 years of election results. The information will be useful to historians, political scientists, journalists and other researchers throughout the state.
  • Travel to research and acquire materials for an art exhibit titled “Medium Anxiety: The role of the Avant-Garde and Electronics in Visual Art.” Marc Mitchell, an assistant professor of art and the U of A’s director of exhibitions, plans to explore the concepts of utility and unorthodox trend cycles through the lens of “dazzle ships” and “new old stock.” The former is the World War I practice of painting British naval ships with elaborate stripe patterns to confuse German U-boats stalking them. The latter refers to obsolete electronic equipment meant to advance technology that ultimately failed to connect with consumers. Mitchell will work with John C. Kelley, an assistant professor at the University of Tennessee, to create the exhibit.
  • Support for research on prominent Arkansas-based architects who, through their work, sought to define Ozark regionalism. With the seed funding Gregory Herman, associate professor of architecture in the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design, will continue his study of works by Fay Jones, John Williams, Herbert Fowler and Warren Segraves. Herman’s work will ultimately lead to a book provisionally titled Five Houses, Four Architects, and will examine mid-century modernism as it was interpreted in the Ozarks.