Arts-Based Research (ABR) is a qualitative inquiry tradition that employs the arts as a means to generate, analyze and/or present research data.  Limited examples of ABR include ethnodrama, photo voice, narrative and poetic inquiry, painting as embodied inquiry, choreographic writing, A/R/Tography, and many other forms. Within the College of Arts and Sciences, this group has many collaborative ABR projects, including research projects between Theatre and Speech Communication Disorders, Art and Cognition, Dance and African American Studies, and Public Health and English.  This group supports and encourages ABR as a vibrant and important research tradition within the College of Arts and Sciences. And through the Humanities Collaborative, this group collaborates and shares, supports, and challenges research traditions while developing ABR to understand the world around us. 

• (PI) Peter Duffy (Theatre And Dance)

The Black Arts Working Group is a reading group that focuses on theories current to Black Studies, the visual arts, and performance studies. Geared primarily toward graduate students and advanced undergraduates across the humanities, this group's goal is to foster deeper inquiry into Black Art by benefitting from voices across traditional disciplines. This group provides a space for student dialogue on an ongoing basis and fosters collectivity among people of varied cultural, racial, ethnic, and disciplinary backgrounds as long as they are invested in art and its relation to Black life, racial justice, and Black aesthetics.

This group meets monthly to discuss readings that the group chooses together based on what graduate students are working on, new scholarship, or the group’s interests as a whole. Group activities include visiting the International African American Museum, and inviting faculty on campus to discuss their new work or works in progress. This group also produces a ‘zine with all of the readings from over the course of the semester. 

• (PI)  Abbe Schriber (Visual Art Design)

The Comics and Cultural Impact Group is an interdisciplinary collaboration that works to support the USC community in the study and teaching of comics and to aid in the development and use of USC’s significant comics-related resources. “Comics” encompasses a uniquely expressive medium and vital art form, a multifaceted array of interlocking industries, a wellspring of intellectual property central to global media strategies, and a means for representing and understanding culture. USC Libraries Special Collections currently houses both the Gary Lee Watson Comic Book Collection, consisting of over 143,000 unique comic books, and the Derek P. Royal Graphic Novel Collection. USC faculty regularly teach classes on the study and making of comics, have been nominated for and have won the prestigious Eisner award for comics scholarship, and have fostered students who have gone on to careers in the comics industries. The USC and broader Columbia community includes comics creators whose work has earned them a dedicated fandom, the industry’s highest honors, and the attention of Hollywood. This group seeks to build from these resources to establish USC as a hub for comics studies and comics culture throughout the state and region.  

• (PI) Michael Weisenburg (Rare Books)  
• (PI) Mark Minett (Film & Media Studies and English)  

The Experimental Theory Research Group fosters community around the most exciting contemporary work in humanist theory. This group emphasizes “theory” as thought and creative activity that draws on a longstanding tradition in the humanities of asking unanswerable questions, asserting the value of abstract, conceptual thinking as a necessary medium for engaging a complex world, and suspending (provisionally) the need for immediate solutions or practical application. This is a type of thinking that carves out a space to pause, crack open, and reconceive the world as one thinks they know it. It institutes a break in everyday experience and conventional modes of perception, encouraging a new kind of sensuous knowledge that finds expression in what one might call an intellectually serious play. In this sense, theory itself is intrinsically experimental: it involves the posing of compelling hypotheses that generate, try out, improvise upon, discard, and recombine abstract models of reality, conjuring thereby alternative worlds that are rooted in but stifled by the spurious solidity of “how things are.” 

• (PI) Greg Forter (English)

The Nineteenth-Century Studies working group aims to develop collaborations among the outstanding faculty and graduate students working in field. Present participants, primarily in British and European studies, come from tenure homes in Art History; English; History; Languages, Literatures, and Cultures; Rare Books and Special Collections; and Theater. This group welcomes participation from interested colleagues working across the Humanities and across the globe. By bringing together faculty and students from a range of disciplines, this group seeks to produce multi-faceted scholarly endeavors about the nineteenth century. The group meets monthly to discuss works in progress, scholarship of collective interest, and potential collaborative projects. This group is particularly interested in thinking together about the place of the Humanities in the public imagination of the long nineteenth century, and in the present moment. 

• (PI) Rebecca Stern (English)

SouthernGauge is a screening series in Columbia, South Carolina which brings experimental, independent and new media art to the greater Columbia area. This group celebrates the underground and the experimental with an emphasis on community collaboration. This series holds events open to the public that showcase 16mm screenings and digital new media once a semester, including visiting artists. SouthernGauge venues range from small businesses to non-profit local organizations in the greater Columbia area. This group's goal to create more opportunities for viewing nontraditional forms of media art and art making at no ticket cost to the public. 

• (PI) Carleen Maur (Media Arts, School Of Visual Art Design)
• (PI) Laura Major (Library manager at the Moving Image Research Collection)

The Underrepresented University Histories Working Group serves as a space for people interested in exploring histories at the University of South Carolina that have been overlooked or hidden in the telling of the school’s past. This working group brings together faculty, staff, and students from different schools and departments, as well as researchers from partner institutions outside the university, to work collaboratively to create a more complete picture of the history of the University of South Carolina.

This group meets monthly to share common readings and problem solve research issues. These meetings provide a space for members to connect with one another about ongoing research projects. This group also hosts public events that share this university history with people on campus and in the community.

• (PI) Jill Found (Civil Rights Center, Thomas Cooper Library)
• (PI) Kelly Goldberg (Honors College)

Because the history of lumber, wood products, and forest conservation has been grossly understudied in South Carolina, the Wood Basket Research Group seeks to better understand the range of effects that resulted, both positive -- economic development, the attraction of talent and new industries and industrial and design advancements -- as well as negative -- environmental degradation and the resulting re-development challenges. Today, South Carolina, part of the “wood basket of the world,” features 13 million acres of commercial forest land - about 2/3 of the state’s total land area. With over 90,000 jobs and an annual payroll of $4.1 billion, forestry is one of the most important manufacturing industries in the state. 

Click here for more information about the group and the history of lumber in South Carolina.

• (PI) Jessica Elfenbein (History)