Professor Jindrich Toman is a 2016-17 LSA Michigan Humanities Award winner. These awards provide a term off with salary for those working on projects in the humanities and qualitative social sciences. Professor Toman will use his award to work on his project, Happiness in Zlín:

"During the 1910s-1930s the East Moravian city of Zlín changed dramatically from a small provincial town to a major factory town that housed one of the largest industrial complexes of interwar Czechoslovakia, the Tomáš Bat’a shoe factory. By the end of the 1930s visitors felt that they were entering an enclave of America in Czechoslovakia rather than a Moravian town. The project focuses on Zlín highlighting this factory town as a cultural project that was distinguished by a distinct visual space, developed a print culture of its own and used modern media, such as film, to promote its corporate identity."