This program offers three grant types to support creative and scholarly work that advances humanist principles.
"INTENSE” is a short, minimalist, psychological horror film that explores how emotional need can distort perception and reality and AHI funding will support principal photography and post-production. Bakopoulos wants to use this film as a pilot program, a model for future faculty collaborations that also provide students with hands-on opportunities to participate in professional film production.
"Creatively, I am interested in the intersection between the traditional literary short story and genre-driven short films. I want INTENSE to be the first in a series of short films that can work together, much like a collection or anthology of short stories works."
"Jacob Kessler and I have been working on One Long Arm Blind since graduate school and to be able to move it out of a self-funded space will really allow this piece to finally be finished and take its final form. The film is a nonfiction piece, shot on 16mm film, is about Chicago’s Stockyards and the echoes of its environmental impacts on the community and its waterways. Using techniques in eco-processing that we've developed during our time at Iowa, the film embodies and holds traces of the very environment it was shot in."
"I was awarded an AHI grant for my first feature film—a documentary titled Imperfect Water that looks at the water crisis in southeastern North Carolina. Water contamination from perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances—PFAS, also known as “forever chemicals” affects 73 million Americans, including those downstream of the chemical company Dupont in southeastern North Carolina. This film delves into the history of 3 different bodies of water and how they relate to those affected by PFAS contamination."
"My recent Arts and Humanities Initiative (AHI) Award supports my continued efforts to expand the limits of traditional cinema by treating it as a spatial, living narrative field rather than a fixed sequence of images. My project, InTween:Redux, opens new territory between advanced cinematography, performance-driven storytelling, and computational media, creating experiential, agential encounters beyond the traditional cinematic frame."
"I was awarded the AHI Award to create a proof of concept short film for Motion Sickness in order to pursue larger funding sources. Motion Sickness is a feature documentary that blends dance, lived experience, and emerging genetic medicine. Centered on Huntington’s disease, it asks what it means to know or not know the future written in your DNA, exploring risk, knowledge, and uncertainty through movement, music, and intimate family experience."
Developmental Studies Hybridoma Bank (DSHB) Humanities Scholar Award
This award provides support to tenure-track CLAS faculty for an approved research project within the humanities, including digital humanities.
"I received a Digital Scholarship in the Humanities and the Arts grant to create a digital humanities publication, a website that expands the impact of Motion Sickness and creates space to tell additional stories beyond the film. The film is deeply interdisciplinary, created in collaboration with Dr. Peggy Nopoulos and the Change HD study, Kimberly Fiat at the neuropathology lab, and Rosie DeAngelo from the dance department, to name a few."
Perry A. and Helen J. Bond Fund for Interdisciplinary Interaction
This endowment fund promotes interactions among Iowa faculty and students in areas of cross-departmental strength, and supports interdisciplinary events that draw scholars from institutions to the UI campus, both as presenters and as audience.
Michael Cowan, in collaboration with Sarah Minor (English) and Heather Parrish (SAAHD)
"We're using the funding to support a co-organized interdisciplinary symposium, Shadow Play Across the Arts, examining the role of shadows in visual art, silhouettes, film, puppet performance, storytelling, and music. The symposium is intended to coincide with the Hancher performance of The Fourth Witch by Manual Cinema, a Chicago-based artist collective for live cinema, who is currently in residence at the Hancher. The symposium will take place on April 16th, with Manual Cinema's performance following on April 17th."
Team Teaching in the Humanities
This funding initiative is aimed at promoting innovative teaching methods through team teaching in the humanities, seeking to enhance educational outcomes by integrating diverse perspectives and methodologies.
Industry Professionals in the Arts and Humanities
This program works to enable faculty to apply for funding awards to invite industry professionals to participate in workshops, masterclasses, and mentorship sessions with students.
"I was able to bring out Bethany Michalski, a professional cinematographer from Los Angeles, who shot the feature film She's The He that played this year at FilmScene's Refocus Film Festival. Bethany was able to attend coffee talks with community members and students, do Q&A's at the festival, and hold a 16mm cinematography workshop for our students in Cinematic Arts."
"I am excited to have received Industry Professionals Funding to support a multi-day, in-person campus visit from stop-motion animator Owen Klatte, whose credits include The Nightmare Before Christmas. His visit will include a public artist talk, class visits, and a hands-on, student-focused stop-motion workshop scheduled just before Halloween this fall.”
Small Important Project Grant
Through the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies, this program offers support for portions of research and creative endeavors by UI scholars that are important toward advancing a project but do not have enough funding from other sources.
"The Obermann Center granted my class, Topics in Screenwriting: Folk Horror Narratives, a $500 SIP grant which we put to good use during Fall 2025. Artist Lauren Haldeman joined us for two days of a mask-making tutorial which served to augment the students' final group project: scripting a folk horror ceremony or ritual, along with the prose lore out of which the ritual or ceremony emerged. The final piece of this assignment was staging what I'm calling a "Table Read Plus+." A normal table read entails students sitting around a table and reading a script aloud. In this instance, they staged their readings, with light costuming. Part of this costuming entailed the creation of masks, an element key in some of the foundational folk horror films we studied this semester. Additionally, I partnered with Film & Video Production Prof. Laura Conway to hire some students from her filmmaking class to come and film these Table Reads. This enabled them to get experience with "for hire" filming and editing, which widens their breadth of experience and skills they will take with them after graduation and into the workforce."
Harriet Wenger Crafton Research Award
The Harriet Wenger Crafton Research Award is a funding award through the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences that supports exceptional research initiatives.