In 2024-2025, successful FrameWorks Fellowship applicants will be invited to research and write critical articles that interpret the theme “Our Houston.” The application form asks you to propose an article that addresses the theme of “Our Houston” through a humanities-based analysis of a “cultural artifact.”

How to Think About the Theme:
Let the theme, “Our Houston” inspire rather than limit you.

Think of all the ways Houston defies definition. From above, it appears as an arterial mass of highways that circle, intertwine, and stretch across hundreds of square miles. No less Houstonian are its intimate pockets, the neighborhoods between freeways, the encampments beneath bridges, its suburban cul de sacs, dying strip malls, and lively streetcorners. Houstonians are thriving and dying. Some live in splendor and some in squalor. Some Houstonians know no other home and some are building new homes here from scratch. Houston can be as inspiring as it is heartbreaking and loving as it is brutal.

We gather in temples, churches, mosques, museums, theatres, dance halls, parks, restaurants, the streets. Every one of our buildings and bayous has a Houstonian story to tell. So do the works of our painters, sculptors, writers, musicians, singers, dancers, graffiti artists, chefs. We have so much to learn from each other, and so much to tell the world.

Or maybe the world can help Houstonians better understand themselves. What does, say, The Odyssey have to teach us about the meaning of home? How does being Houstonian change your interpretation of, for example, a Shakespeare play? Or a Toni Morrison novel? Or a Rumi poem? Or a Frieda Kahlo painting? How would existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre read the directive on the I-45 railway bridge to “BE SOMEONE”? Is there a piece in the MFAH or Menil or Blaffer that sings a peculiarly Houstonian song?

What is a “Cultural Artifact”?

For our purposes, the term “cultural artifact” refers to something created by human beings which, properly researched and analyzed, will help you (and ultimately your reader) understand the culture out of which it arose, while giving you (and your reader) the opportunity to engage the theme.

Your cultural artifact should stand up to detailed scrutiny but be of a manageable scope given editorial word limits (5000 words per article). Prioritize depth over breadth. For example, it is much easier to do justice to a single novel than an entire literary movement. So, too, privilege the particular over the general. A careful interpretation of a specific historic event is easier to manage than a sweeping overview an era.

Cultural artifacts may include but are not limited to a novel, a building facade, a philosophical text, a mural, a Greek tragedy, a painting, a music video, a poem or collection of poems, an historical map, a city ordinance, an oral history, a play, a family recipe, the text of a speech, a sculpture or statue, Beyonce lyrics, a dance performance, an example of AI-generated digital art, a video game, historical Houston Rodeo advertisements, an art installation, and so forth and so on.