ANNOUNCING THE 2010-2011 DISSERTATION/THESIS FELLOWS:
Donovan Schaefer (Department of Religion)
Title of Project: Radical Embodiment: On the Possibility of Animal Religions
Project Description: This dissertation argues that religion can be viewed as an embodied phenomenon. “I sketch out a model of bodies as primarily affective, comprising interconnected systems of bodily technologies,” the author explains. “If religion is embodied, it is also available to bodies of nonhuman animal species, especially if we move away from the cognitively oriented definitions of religion common in popular and scientific frames and toward a more feminist understanding of religion as an embodied, affective process.” Schaefer’s advisor is John D. Caputo, the Thomas J. Watson Professor of Religion and Humanities.
Tanushree Ghosh (Department of English)
Title of Project: Looking at Others: The Affective Fashioning of Liberal Subjectivity in Late 19th-Century Britain
Project Description: An examination of liberal and reformist social attitudes in Great Britain, touching on Victorian British novels, print culture and intellectual history. Ghosh’s advisers are Michael Goode, professor of English at SU, and Linda Shires, professor and chair of English at Yeshiva University, both of whom specialize in 19th-centurty literature and culture.
Past fellowships & faculty research award
2009-2010 HC Graduate Fellows were:
Aaron A. Blum (VPA, Department of Transmedia—Art Photography)
Title of Project: “Between Worlds”
Project Description: Photographic exploration of the Appalachian region of West Virginia using artist’s own memories and new insights to construct photographic interpretations of various stereotypes (social, cultural, racial) that have determined the region in the public mind. As the artist writes, “The fiction representation of West Virginia is unrealistic, but like most stereotypes there is some truth behind the generalizations. In my photographs I create a narrative illustrating how West Virginia exists somewhere between fictional views expressed by Hollywood and non-fictional views based on personal memory and experience.”
**View original Artwork by Aaron Blum**
KJ Rawson (A&S, Composition and Cultural Rhetoric/LGBT)
Dissertation Title: “Archiving Transgender”
Description: Research and investigation of the practices involved in archiving transgender materials from communities, asking how these practices also function rhetorically. Three existing archives are examined and discussed in the dissertation, including The Sexual Minorities Archive in Northhampton, MA, the GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco, and the National Transgender Library and Archive in Ann Arbor, MI.
Jonathan Singleton (A&S, English)
Dissertation Title: “The Suspension of (Dis)Belief: Novel and Bible in Victorian Society”
Description: Historical analysis of the politics of biblical quotation in Victorian literature and Culture and the manner in which writers capitalized on the unacknowledged instabilities of contemporary religious discourse. Drawing upon diverse archival sources (such as religious pamphlets, sermons, radical tracts, and personal letters) the dissertation focuses on the works by Bronte, Gaskell, Eliot and Thomas Hardy.
SU HUMANITIES CENTER INTERNAL FACULTY FELLOWS (Beginning Spring 2010)
*note: there are no faculty fellowships being awarded for fall 2010 at this time
Awards carry a one-semester, one course reduction to complete a proposed research or creative project and to contribute to Humanities Center research activities. The fellowship is not defined as a “research leave,” according to the terms and conditions of The College, and faculty will be expected to contribute service to their departmental unit or program, and must receive approval for course reduction from the Chair or Director prior to submitting the application. The award does not carry course-replacement costs, which must be assumed by the department; a travel stipend or research burse may accompany the award, if funds are available. For Spring 2010, two faculty fellows will be appointed in The College of Arts and Sciences and one each from the Maxwell School and the College of Visual and Performing Arts (Faculty from other Schools or Colleges, or who are not at Syracuse University, are not eligible). Fellows will be expected to present their work or lead colloquia on their research or creative project that will engage other faculty both in their field and from other disciplines. Fellows will also participate actively in Humanities Center research activities and events.
Elizabeth Cohen, Assistant Professor, School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Maxwell
Book Project: Citizenship, Naturalization and Jus Soli in Calvin’s Case
Arsalan Kahnemuyipour, Assistant Professor of Linguistics, A&S
Project: A cross linguistic investigation of verb agreement in copular sentences
Amos Kieve, Professor of Communication and Rhetorical Studies, VPA
Book Project: Unsolved Civil Rights Era Murders: High School Outreach
Bruce Smith, Professor of English (Poetry), A&S
Book Project: The Devotions