The Institute for the Humanities is a center for innovative, collaborative study in the humanities and arts. Its central function is to form an intellectual community of faculty and graduate student fellows from various departments who will spend a year in residence in the institute pursuing their research and participating in a cross-disciplinary, non-public weekly seminar. The 2016-17 fellows are composed of 9 faculty and 8 graduate students from across the university.Strassfeld plans to use his time on fellowship to work on his dissertation, "Indecent Detroit: Regulating Race, Sex, and Pornography, 1950-1975."