FHI >>

DISSERTATION WORKING GROUPS

Now Accepting Applications for the 2008-09 Academic Year

Deadline: Monday, April 28, 2008

Click to download complete application guidelines and application form

Launched in 2005-06 with support from the Mellon Foundation, the Dissertation Working Groups program seeks to spur timely completion of dissertations and to foster students’ intellectual and professional development by providing research funding and membership in a year-long workshop comprised of advanced graduate students across the humanities and interpretive social sciences. Now fully funded by Duke University, the program offers a dynamic and supportive interdisciplinary setting where students can learn from peers in other fields through conversations about their work and writing.

The 2007-08 Working Groups are comprised of 16 members from 11 humanities and interpretive social sciences departments and programs. Our participants' projects cover a range of historical periods, geographical areas, and disciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches. Please see below for more information about the participants and their work. Click here to see the 2006-07 group.

2007-08 PARTICIPANTS:

	NICO BAUMBACH, Literature Impurities of Cinema: Ontology and Pedagogy of the Moving Image More information coming soon!
	SUSANNA DRAKE, Religion *Sexing the Jew: Early Christian Constructions of Jewishness* Susanna is a fifth-year doctoral student in the Religion department with a special interest in early Christian literature. Her dissertation project investigates how sexualized representations of Jews functioned in relation to early Christian discourses of alterity and developing practices of asceticism. Other research interests include art history, feminist theory, and continental philosophy. Susanna has an M.T.S. from Harvard Divinity School and a B.A. in Philosophy from Grinnell College.
	CHAD EGGLESTON, Religion "See and Read all these Words" (Jer 51.61): The Concept of the Written in the Book of Jeremiah A fifth-year doctoral candidate in the department of religion, Chad's interests include Israelite and ancient near Eastern prophetic literature, the history of biblical interpretation, and the theological interpretation of scripture. His dissertation explores the relationship between orality and textuality in the Hebrew Bible, focusing especially on the book of Jeremiah and Judah in the 6th century BCE. Drawing on anthropological research regarding the effects of literacy and writing, his work challenges evolutionary cultural models that presume early oral and late textual phases in the production of Israelite prophetic literature. When he is not working on his dissertation in the divinity school library, Chad enjoys soccer (football), reading, watering his yard, and the occasional Simpsons episode. Prior to entering the graduate program in religion, Chad studied at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama (B.A., Religion) and Duke University Divinity School (M.Div.).
	ERIN FEHSKENS, English *The Atlantic Now: Afterlives of Homeric Epic in the Twentieth Century Black Atlantic* Erin Fehskens is a fifth-year student in the English Department. She focuses on postcolonial literature and theory, particularly of the Caribbean, Africa, the black Atlantic, and the Black British tradition, as well as genre theory and conceptions of melancholia. Her dissertation argues that epic has returned to the Atlantic world, and she reads a selection of twentieth century texts, commonly designated as Caribbean or postcolonial, through an Atlantic organization of space and time to investigate the effects of epic’s return. What she most enjoys about her dissertation research and writing is the chance it affords her to combine historical, literary, and theoretical discourses and draw structural and content-specific connections between divergent materials. She really does enjoy reading Homer, so sometimes her dissertation strikes her as more pleasurable than painful. She is also developing an obsession with encyclopedic narratives and long family romances. She will be that professor that assigns really long books without batting an eye.
	ALEXIS GUMBS, English "We Can Mother Ourselves": Black Feminist Publishing 1970-1990 as Critical Diasporic Generation More information coming soon.
	PATRICK JAGODA, English Aesthetics of Terror: American Hauntings in the Age of Terrorism More information coming soon.
	HEATHER MITCHELL, English Dost Thou Speak Like a King? Staging History and Sovereignty, 1450-1600 When asked to describe her research interests, Heather's usual answer is that she works on bad kings who speak in Middle English. To get a bit more specific, her dissertation explores the symbiotic relationship between theatre and tyranny in one of history's most socially transgressive genres: medieval vernacular drama. Heather's project is shaped by the historiographic challenge of discovering what can be understood as "popular" in a pre-industrial context as well as her personal crusade against standard notions of historical periodization. On the occasions when she finds some spare time (usually under the sofa cushions), Heather enjoys playing taiko, “studying” fanfiction, drinking Dr. Pepper, and writing about herself in the third person.
	JACOB REMES, History When the State Blows Away: Survival and Organization After Two Progressive-Era Urban Disasters Jacob Remes (B.A. Yale 2002, M.A. Duke 2006) is a doctoral candidate in history. He studies the working-class and labor history of North America, with a focus on urban disasters, working-class organizations, and migration. His dissertation is on the immediate aftermaths of the Salem, Massachusetts, Fire of 1914 and Halifax, Nova Scotia, Explosion of 1917. He is the executive secretary of the Labor and Working-Class History Association.
	BIANCA ROBINSON, Cultural Anthropology Traveling Girlfriends in Search of Diasporic Realities, Virtual Contacts: Race, Happiness, and Love Bianca C. Robinson is both a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Cultural Anthropology, and working towards a graduate certificate in the African & African American Studies Department at Duke University. For the past two years, Bianca has conducted multi-sited ethnographic research among members of a virtual community comprised of international tourists, Jamaicans on the island, and Jamaicans living abroad. Her project examines how Black American female website members, and their Jamaican interlocutors, become aware of, and actively participate in, the networks of power and privilege that are greatly interconnected with processes of racialization, the constitution of racial categories, and the construction of the African diaspora. Bianca has accompanied these self-proclaimed ?Jamaicaholics? on their multiple trips to Jamaica (the physical island and the virtual sphere), to document how they modify their understandings of their racialized selves, as they realize that Black people(s) experience race and racism differently throughout the world. With a keen ear towards moments of disconnect, miscommunication, and mistranslation, this dissertation project attempts to explore race and the diversity of the African diaspora, in conversation with the literature on race, transnationalism, feminism, tourism, and virtual communities. When she has free time, Bianca enjoys reading works by great fiction writers and going to the movies.
	CAPRI ROSENBERG, Art, Art History, and Visual Studies *The Meaning of "Sensation": Young British Art in the Nineties* Capri's dissertation explores the contemporary art exhibition "Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection" (1997-99), which opened in London before traveling to Berlin and New York. She considers the social reception of this exhibition in all three cities, with particular attention to the controversies that 'Sensation' ignited in both the US and in Britain. While Capri is passionate about the subject of her dissertation, it pales in comparison her endlessly fascinating one-year-old son Oliver.
	TERESA SHEWRY, Literature *Potential Ecologies: Hope, Ethics, and Ecology in Pacific Literature* My research and teaching has focused on Asia Pacific and Pacific literatures, postcolonial studies, and environmental studies. My dissertation explores how literature narrates what is possible for Pacific ecologies after the Second World War. I focus on the construction of “possible” and “potential” seas, forests, atmospheres and rivers in Pacific literature, and the historical and aesthetic contexts with which they are engaged. I interpret narratives around threatened and damaged ecologies (the rainforest, sea, and atmospheric and water cycles) to try to understand linkages between ecology, possibility, utopianism, and hopefulness in the Pacific. When I am not studying, I am often running, biking, with my friends, or in New Zealand.
	MICAH TRUE, Romance Studies Ethnographic Writing in the Jesuit Relations from New France, 1632-1673 More information to come!
	YEKTAN TURKYILMAZ, Cultural Anthropology Imagining "Turkey," Creating a Nation: The Politics of Geography and State-Formation in Eastern Anatolia More information to come!
	WANG YU, Cultural Anthropology Naturalizing Ethnicity, Culturalizing Landscape: The Politics of World Heritage in China A PhD candidate in cultural anthropology at Duke University, Yu Wang is currently completing her dissertation that investigates the politics of world heritage in relationship to tourism development in contemporary China. With the support of a Wenner-Gren Foundation Dissertation Fieldwork Grant, Yu draws her dissertation research on twelve months of fieldwork that included three months’ internship at two UNESCO field offices in Asia. Focusing on a rural, ethnic, and poverty-stricken region that is currently under application for UNESCO’s designation of World Cultural Heritage Site, this research interrogates networks of transnational actors and the circuits of power-knowledge production, by questioning who can really speak for “nature”, “culture”, “locality”, “community,” and finally “development.”
	JENNY WOODRUFF, Music Learning to Listen, Learning to Be: African-American Girls and Hip-Hop in Durham, North Carolina Jenny Woodruff is a sixth year PhD candidate in music. Her dissertation explores how African-American girls learn to listen to music in culturally specific ways. Her research is based on a year and a half of participant observation at the John Avery Boys and Girls Club in Durham, where she danced, sang, talked and hung out with girls ages 5-13. Before coming to Duke, she worked as a Tour Actor/Director for Missoula Children's Theatre, and before that she graduated with a degree in Vocal Performance from Converse College in Spartanburg, SC. Her primary interest is finishing her dissertation, but she has also been known to sing alone in her apartment and host fantastic theme parties.
	AKIRA YATSUHASI, Classics Alexandrian Archive: Empire, Erudition, and Community in Hellenistic Egypt More information to come.