UC Riverside Scholar Selected for Elite NHC Summer Residency
Professor Susan Laxton will represent UCR at the National Humanities Center, advancing CHASS’s transformative humanities research on a national stage
Demonstrating a loud and clear commitment to advancing its world-class research enterprise, the University of California, Riverside (UCR) announces that Susan Laxton, Associate Professor of Modernism and the History of Photography and Chair of the Department of the History of Art, has been selected for the esteemed National Humanities Center (NHC) Summer Residency program. Laxton will be one of 40 participants. Costs will be covered by the College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, which has been a NHC Institutional Member since 2022.
The NHC Summer Residency Program is an exclusive, four-week fellowship designed to provide exceptional humanities scholars with a highly concentrated period of supported research and intellectual exchange. Held in North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park, the program is uniquely tailored to help scholars jump-start or make substantial progress on significant academic projects while fostering synergistic discussions with peers from across the country. Laxton’s project title is “Cut Together: Surrealist Photomontage and the Structure of Dissent.”
“For a historian of surrealism, the chance to think and write alongside colleagues equally absorbed in their work has its own dream logic,” Laxton said. “I am deeply grateful to the Dean, the Center for Ideas and Society, and the National Humanities Center for making it real.”
“Our deliberate investments in National Humanities Center programs lead our research university enterprise,” said Daryle Williams, Professor of History and Dean of the College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences. “When we commit resources to placing exceptional scholars like Professor Laxton in these competitive residencies, we see direct returns in the form of accelerated, field-defining publications and a magnified UCR presence on the national stage. It is an investment in the intellectual capital that drives the humanities forward.”
Championing Field-Defining Scholarship
Laxton brings a wealth of expertise and a distinguished record of scholarship to the NHC. A Ph.D. graduate of Columbia University, her research explores the alternative art practices of the 20th-century European avant-gardes, with a profound focus on photography, photomontage, and chance-based processes. She is the author of Surrealism at Play (Duke University Press, 2019) and is currently developing a new manuscript titled “Cut Together: Surrealist Photomontage and the Structure of Dissent.” Her field-defining scholarship has already been supported by prestigious fellowships from the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the Hellman Foundation, and the Borchard Foundation. Her work frequently appears in leading academic journals such as October and Critical Inquiry.
Elevating UCR’s Humanities Research
Laxton’s upcoming residency highlights UCR’s aggressive, strategic investment in faculty research and the university’s ongoing commitment to shaping the national conversation in the humanities. By supporting faculty through high-impact initiatives like the NHC Summer Residency, UCR ensures its scholars have the dedicated time, resources, and intellectual community required to produce groundbreaking, field-defining publications.
The Center for Ideas and Society (CIS) at UCR plays a vital role in championing these research endeavors, fostering an environment where humanistic inquiry thrives. Katharine Henshaw, Executive Director of CIS, is an alumna of the NHC humanities center director workshop and understands its importance.
“Professor Laxton’s selection for the NHC Summer Residency is a testament to the high caliber of research emerging from our College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences,” said Jeanette Kohl, Co-Director of the Center for Ideas and Society and Professor of Art History. “An internationally acclaimed art historian of photography and the current chair of her department, Professor Laxton will benefit greatly from the dedicated time the residency provides to focus on her research and writing. This opportunity will accelerate her next publication and bring an important scholarly intervention to the field all the more quickly.”
“Prof. Laxton’s Residency in the National Humanities Center’s summer program reflects a valued colleague’s advancement of the Center for Ideas and Society mission,” added Dylan Rodríguez, Distinguished Professor and Co-Director of the Center for Ideas and Society. “As a signature University of California research center supporting the interdisciplinary humanities at the UCR campus, the work of CIS is strengthened and advanced through Prof. Laxton’s national recognition by the NHC.”
For more information about UCR’s Center for Ideas and Society and its ongoing research initiatives, please visit ideasandsociety.ucr.edu.
“Out of Character, Out of Order” shows how typographic design was employed to negotiate shifting colonial, postcolonial, and Cold War geopolitical dynamics between 1945 and the early 1960s. United Nations agencies and Korean linguists regarded the Sino-Korean form of writing as an impediment to promoting literacy and democracy; and the scholars also viewed it as a remnant of the ancient World Order that subjected Korea to Chinese power. Linguists and educators introduced various typographic solutions, including reorienting Hangeul from vertical to horizontal writing and deconstructing syllabic characters into phonemes. These efforts to follow what they assumed to be the “universal standards” resulted in deformed letters that merely imitated the Roman alphabet without improving the writing system’s legibility or readability. This paper demonstrates how the attempt to break from the old order inadvertently led to a departure from the inherent character of Hangeul, culminating in its swift absorption into a new order.
Conrad Rudolph, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Medieval Art History
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