The Franco Institute held its first workshop for the 2025-2026 cohort of humanities fellows on Wednesday, October 8. Three of this year’s fellows shared work from manuscripts-in-progress with distinguished guest scholars and faculty colleagues.
In her opening remarks Kate Marshall, director of the Franco Institute, shared that this meeting was the culmination of an idea two years in the making. She called the Humanities Fellows program an opportunity “to devote substantial time to research while building intellectual community.” As Marshall noted, these workshops signal the Franco Institute’s deep commitment to liberal arts scholarship across departments and disciplines.
The format for the workshop allowed each of the three fellows to share a contextualizing overview before inviting their external reviewers and Notre Dame colleagues to provide feedback on each manuscript.
Liang Cai, associate professor of history and this year’s Lee Humanities Fellow, welcomed her guest readers, Clifford Ando from the University of Chicago and Mark Csikszentmilhàlyi from the University of California, Berkeley, to respond to her work on convict politics and state power during China’s Western Han dynasty. Ardea Russo and Carrie Gates–both of Notre Dame–served as manuscript reviewers for Debra Javeline, professor of political science and the Murphy Humanities Fellow. Russo and Gates shared their thoughts on Javelin’s memoir detailing her experience as a parent navigating issues related to merit and disability in the US education system. “Meritocracy and My Kid is a mother-daughter disability memoir, which represents an entirely new kind of writing for me that is squarely in the humanities,” Javeline shared.
She noted the importance of the event, saying “The workshop was my first opportunity to share the work, and I felt very grateful for the vibrant and safe space and full engagement of the other fellows.” Rounding out the workshop was Brian Krostenko, associate professor of classics and the Midili Humanities Fellow. Michael Weiss from Cornell University served as Krostenko’s guest reader and provided sociolinguistic perspectives on the Latin text at the center of Krostenko’s project, a dedication by the guild of Faliscan cooks, which offers insights about social class in the Roman Empire.
This first workshop demonstrated the innovation and expertise that Arts & Letters faculty bring to their research on timely and enduring questions in the humanities. Cai reflected on the experience, saying “The Franco Humanities Fellows Workshop offers me a unique opportunity to receive feedback not only from leading scholars in my field but also from the diverse intellectual perspectives of my Notre Dame colleagues, who are experts in various disciplines.” She added, “This rich exchange of ideas has contributed to the cultivation of a vibrant academic community at Notre Dame.”
The Franco Institute will hold two more sessions, one in January and another in March, to facilitate collaboration and feedback among humanities fellows.