Graduate Dissertation Fellowship

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2007-2008 WOrkshop Meetings

Call for 2008-2009 Graduate Dissertation Fellowships

The Humanities Research Center awards four competitive fellowships to advanced doctoral students who are completing research and writing their dissertations.  Students in the humanities or engaging in humanistic study, broadly construed, are eligible.  It is expected that these awards will enable students to complete their dissertations and graduate at the end of the award year.  Applications will be reviewed by the advisory panel of the HRC.

The HRC is delighted to announce its 2007-2008 Graduate Dissertation Fellows:

	Cecilia Ballí Anthropology, "Women and Death on the Border: Gender, Territory, and Power in Ciudad Juárez."  Dissertation Director, Dr. James D. Faubion.  Ms. Ballí's project focuses on violence towards women along the U.S./Mexican border, especially in Ciudad Juárez.  Following eighteen months of ethnographic fieldwork, Ms. Ballí's dissertation seeks to expose the frequent murder of women in Juárez, in the absence of any apparent criminal motives, as radically anti-social acts aimed at undoing society through the vicitimization of its most vulnerable members.  Ms. Ballí relies "on anthropology in order to understand Juárez as a loosely bound but real space [...] where the unfolding of globalizing forces and the constant contentation of authority spell terror and death for poor women."
	Ryan J. Foster History, "The Creativity of Nature: the Genesis and Development of F.W.J. Schelling's Naturphilosophie."  Dissertation Director, Dr. John H. Zammito. Mr. Foster's dissertation is an exhaustive intellectual biography of German metaphysical philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling.  Joining recent attempts to revive Schelling's work in defiance of recent trends away from metaphysical thought, Mr. Foster focuses on Schelling's early philosophy of nature (Naturphilosophie) in order to show the ways that philosophy and science can speak to each other in intellectually and ecologically sound ways.  By demonstrating a strong sensitivity to the historical moment in which Schelling was working and how that moment influenced his thought, Foster's dissertation will also show how his philosophies of science and nature are still relevant today.
	David Messmer English, "Fighting Words: The Politics of Literary Aurality in African American Literature from the Civil War to the Civil Rights."  Dissertation Director, Dr. Caroline Levander.  Mr. Messmer's work looks at the crucial role that representations of sound and music play in the formation of an African American literary tradition that spans the years leading to the Civil War through the era of Civil Rights.  Through an examination of works by Frederick Douglass, Pauline Hopkins, James Weldon Johnson, W.E.B. DuBois, Ralph Ellison, and jazz singer Billie Holiday, Mr. Messmer's dissertation first isolates a persistent tension between written and aural forms of cultural expression and then traces the ways in which African American writers utilize that tension to make intrusions into national concepts of racial politics that would otherwise render them silent.
	Ann K. Ziker History, "Containing Democracy: Race, Conservative Politics, and U.S. Foreign Policy in the Post-Colonial World, 1948-1968."  Dissertation Director, Dr. John B. Boles.  Ms. Ziker’s dissertation examines how the modern American conservative movement took shape around the problems of U.S. foreign policy in a decolonizing world.  As anticolonial revolutions remade the international political landscape, the politics of race mingled with public disputes about America’s relationship with newly independent nations in Africa and Asia.  She suggests how the twin issues of civil rights at home and human rights abroad helped assemble a new conservative coalition in the United States. Her project aims to bridge the intellectual gap between domestic and foreign historical inquiry.

2007-2008 Workshop Meetings

Wednesday, September 5, 10am -- Ballí
Wednesday, September 26, 10am -- Foster
Wednesday, October 24, 10am -- Messmer
Wednesday, November 14, 10am -- Ziker
Wednesday, December 12, 10am -- Ballí
Wednesday, January 9, 10am -- Foster
Wednesday, February 6, 10am -- Messmer
Wednesday, March 5, 10am -- Ziker

Call for 2008-2009 Graduate Dissertation Fellowships
DEADLINE: March 3, 2008
We will begin accepting applications on January 1, 2008

Download call and summary sheet

Qualifications:

• Enrollment at Rice University and in good standing
• Passed the comprehensive exams and have a project proposal approved by the advisor
• Meets Rice policy requirements for time to degree
• Completion of fifth year of study by the start of the fellowship. 

Award: $15,000 stipend and a waiver of tuition fees.  The stipend will be dispersed in bi-weekly checks.  Receipt of the second check is dependent on participation in activities of the HRC. It is expected that fellows will attend selected HRC-sponsored talks and otherwise participate in the intellectual life of the Center. Fellows also have the opportunity to present their work to the Rice community and organize a brown bag lunch on dissertation research and writing.

Application:

• Curriculum vitae
• Project description of no more than 1000 words
• Unofficial transcript
• One-page report on the status of the dissertation
• Summary sheet completed by the department chair
• The dissertation advisor should send a letter of recommendation directly to the HRC