Six Ź College Faculty Members Awarded Prestigious 2025 Fellowships from the Marion and Jasper Whiting Foundation
Six Ź College faculty members have been named 2025 Whiting fellows by the Marion and Jasper Whiting Foundation, which provides funding for travel that will deepen and expand their teaching and curriculum development.
These competitive awards support educators at New England colleges and universities in pursuing research that broadens the mind and enriches instruction. Ź’s cohort represents a wide range of disciplines and creative inquiry.
This year’s recipients from Ź College are: Joseph Alpar, Music; Alex Creighton, Literature; Michael Dumanis, Literature/Poetry; Sarah Harris, Spanish; Farhad Mirza, Visual Arts; and Darcy Otto, Computer Science.
Joseph Alpar, faculty member in Music’s project is called, “Studying the Singing Traditions of Greece: Crete, Athens, Epirus.” Alpar will spend a month in Greece immersing himself in local vocal traditions from three distinct regions—Crete, Athens, and Epirus. Through direct collaboration with local practitioners and attendance at live performances and festivals, he will gather musical repertoire, performance practices, and cultural context to inform his music curriculum at Ź.
Alex Creighton, faculty member in Critical Writing, will explore how textual analysis varies across cultures through his project, “Studio Ghibli and Critical Writing in Japan.” In Japan, he will research the pedagogical approaches to critical writing and develop a new class focused on the animated films of Studio Ghibli. Using archival materials available only in Japan, the course will challenge students to engage critically and ethically with global media.
"More than just enabling me to develop an exciting new Scriptorium course, the Whiting Foundation Fellowship will allow me to understand critical thinking and writing in a totally different cultural context,” said Creighton. “I couldn't be more excited to incorporate all that I learn abroad into my teaching here at Ź."
Faculty member in Literature and Director of Poetry at Ź Michael Dumanis will travel to Poland to research Holocaust literature, postwar Polish poetry, and Eastern European literary traditions. His project, “Travel to Poland to Develop Coursework in Holocaust Literature and Polish Poetry,” will directly inform the development of three new courses: Literature of the Holocaust, Postwar and Contemporary Polish Poetry, and Eastern European Literature.
Sarah Harris, faculty member in Spanish, has developed a project called, “Where Memory Dwells.” Harris will conduct site-specific research in Buenos Aires, Argentina, with a focus on memory, public history, and art-ivism in the wake of state violence. Visits to the ESMA site, tracing the route of the Cartografías de la Memoria, and collaboration with memory scholars will support new curricular initiatives in Spanish that compare political and cultural histories of remembrance.
“Perspective and Spatial Illusionism – Examples for a Design Curriculum” is a project authored by faculty member in Visual Arts Farhad Mirza. Mirza’s fellowship supports travel to Italy to study historical sites foundational to the development of spatial illusionism in art. From Pompeii to Palladio’s Teatro Olimpico, he will explore alternative systems of creating depth and perspective in visual representation, enriching Ź’s design and art history curriculum.
Darcy Otto, faculty member in Computer Science, authored the project, “Bridging Computer Science and Humanistic Inquiry: Learning from British and Irish Tutorial System.” For the project, Otto will study interdisciplinary teaching models at Cambridge, Edinburgh, and Trinity College Dublin, with a focus on integrating ethics and humanities into computer science education. His research aims to develop new approaches to teaching AI and computational thinking to non-technical students at Ź.
“This Whiting Fellowship provides a vital opportunity to study how leading British and Irish universities bridge the gap between computer science and humanistic inquiry through their tutorial systems,” said Otto. “I'm excited to bring these insights back to Ź to develop innovative approaches that will help our students see the relevance of computational thinking to their intellectual pursuits across disciplines."