Syracuse Sun

Syracuse University Libraries' Special Collections Research Center (SCRC) has announced the recipients of its Faculty Fellows grants for the 2025-26 academic year. The awards were given to Arun Brahmbhatt, an assistant professor in the Department of Religion, and Zeke Leonard, an associate professor in the School of Design. Both will participate in a four-week summer residency at SCRC, which includes workshops on handling special collections materials and developing creative assignments with rare materials.

Jana Rosinski, SCRC instruction and education librarian, expressed anticipation for the fellows' projects that highlight unique strengths within the SCRC collections.

Brahmbhatt plans to update his course "The Art of Devotion in South Asia" using the H. Daniel Smith Poster Archive. This collection offers insights into South Asian visual culture from the 1950s to the 1980s. Brahmbhatt explained that students will explore images that may not be considered high art but play significant roles in Hindu devotional practices. “When we think about religious images, we often focus on works of ‘high art.’ On the contrary, by exploring the Smith archive, students will train their eyes on images that may seem unremarkable from an artistic perspective, but that nonetheless play an outsize role in Hindu devotional lives,” he said.

Leonard is revising his course "Sustainable Furniture and Lighting," where students design lighting and seating objects. His class will use historical documents from mid-20th century designers like Jens Risom and George Nelson & Co., allowing students to engage with design as both functional art and craft. Leonard stated, “As a design/build class, this class has always been a making class. However, at its core it is a design class. By accessing process documents from historic standouts in the field, the students will be contemplating and learning from another type of making.”

The SCRC Faculty Fellows Program supports innovative curriculum development by providing each fellow with $5,000 and resources for utilizing primary source materials in their courses.

Funding for this program comes from George Bain G’06 and William F. Gaske ’72 through generous gifts. The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation also contributed original funding to support humanistic inquiry and artistic creativity.

For more information about supporting future Faculty Fellows or teaching with SCRC resources, contact Jana Rosinski or Ron Thiele at Syracuse University Libraries.