End of Year News
Incoming Fellows:
The SHC program will be joined in September by two postdoctoral fellows and three graduate cluster fellows.
Sarah Carson (SHC postdoc/History) will be completing her PhD in History this summer at Princeton, where she studies the history of predicting the future, with a focus on the efforts to chart the weather in South Asia during the Raj and national periods. She will be teaching two courses for the History Department next year: History 392 “The History of the Future” (W2020) and History 275-2 “History of Modern Science” (S2020).
Madeleine Pape (SHC postdoc/Sociology) will be completing her PhD in Sociology this summer at University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she studies knowledge-making about sexual difference, notably in the use of hormone-testing in international sports. She will be teaching two classes for Sociology in 2019-20: Soc 355 “Medical Sociology: Gender & Health” (W2020) and Soc 319 “Sociology of Science: Feminist Perspectives” (S2020).
The science studies graduate cluster will be joined by three new students next year, they are:Raina Bhagat (graduate fellow, Comparative Literature) comes to us with a MA in English from Nehru University. She has an interest in literatures about the future.
Clay Davis (graduate fellow, Sociology) comes to us with a BA from Cornell’s Science and Technology Studies Program. He is interested in the processes of medical testing in U.S. in the context of gender and sexuality studies.
Juan Fernando Léon (graduate fellow, History) comes to us with an MA in History from Wheaton College. He is interested in the relations of early modern science and religion in the Spanish and Atlantic empires.
Congratuations to postdoctoral fellows:
Onur Özgöde (SHC postdoc/Sociology) has received an advance publishing contract for his book manuscript from the STS series at MIT Press. His book is titled: Fractals of Governance: Governing Systemic Risk at the Limits of Neoliberalism, 1922-2010. Diana Kurkovsky West (SHC postdoc/History) has been hired by Auburn University to teach in their history of technology program next year. Best wishes to both Onur and Diana; we have all benefitted enormously from your presence on campus.
Faculty Achievements:
Two of our faculty affiliates were awarded tenure this year and promoted to the rank of Associate Professor: Adia Benton (Anthropology) and Keith Woodhouse (History).
Three of our own faculty have been awarded fellowships at the Kaplan Humanities Institute for 2019-20: Ken Alder (History) for his project on the history of technology (although Ken will also continue to serve as director of SHC next year); Gary Fine (Sociology) for his project on arts training in the American university; and Noelle Sullivan (Anthropology) for her project on “volunteer tourism” in the Global South.
Stefanie Graeter (postdoc, 2015-2017) has accepted a tenure track job in Latin American Studies at the University of Arizona, and has also been awarded a one-year postdoctoral fellowship to work with Kim Fortun at UC-Irvine.
Daniel Immerwahr (History) published his book: How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States (FSG, 2019).
Paul Ramírez (History) published his book: Enlightened Immunity: Mexico's Experiments with Disease Prevention in the Age of Reason (Stanford, 2018).
Keith Woodhouse (History) published his book: The Ecocentrics: A History of Radical Environmentalism (Columbia, 2018).
Graduate Student Achievements:
Kevin Baker (History) defended his dissertation in June 2019. It is entitled “World Processors: Computer Simulation, the Limits to Growth, and the Birth of Sustainable Development.” He will be taking up a two-year postdoctoral fellowship at UC-Berkeley in the Computer Science Department in affiliation with the Center for Science, Technology, Medicine and Society.
Jessica Biddlestone (History) defended her dissertation in July 2019. It is entitled “Empire in Ruins: France in Roman Africa 1830-1900". She will be taking a one-year postdoctoral fellowship in 2019-2020 from the Chabraja Center for Historical Studies, here at Northwestern.
Colin Bos (History) has received both a CLIR/Mellon Fellowship and an SSRC International Dissertation Research Fellowship to support his dissertation research on West African archeological sciences next year.
Bonnie Ernst (History, PhD 2018) has accepted a position as tenure-track assistant professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminology & Law at the University of Florida.
Dexter Fergie (History) has received a coveted 3-year SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship from the Canadian government to support his graduate training on post-WWII international platforms.
Chelsea Frazier (AfAm) will this fall be taking up a position at the English Department at Cornell University, first as a faculty fellow, and then as a tenure-track assistant professor in Fall 2021. Her dissertation is an ecocritical study of contemporary Black women artists, writers, and activists.
Melanie Hall (History) has won one of the three prizes awarded each year by the Weinberg College for “Outstanding Graduate Student Teacher” (2019).
Bennett Jones (History) has received a fellowship from Northwestern’s Center for Native American and Indigenous Research.
Andrew Kim (Anthropology) has won several awards: National Institutes of Health Fogarty International Center Global Health Fellowship; NSF Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant; Wenner-Gren Foundation Dissertation Fieldwork Grant; 2019 William S. Pollitzer Student Travel Award to the American Association of Biological Anthropologists; the 2018 Oshinsky-McKern Award for Best Student Podium Presentation, for the Canadian Association for Physical Anthropology.
Jayson Porter (History) has received has received a Fulbright-García Robles (IIE) grant for 2019-2020 to fund his dissertation research in Mexico in 2019-20 for his project on engineering modernity and extermination campaigns.
Ari Tolman (Sociology) has received a 2019-20 Doctoral Fellowship from the American Bar Foundation to complete her dissertation, “Criminal Prosecution of Prisoners with Mental Illness.”
Rachel Wallner (History) has been awarded a TGS Graduate Research Grant and a Travel Grant from the China and Inner Asia Council of the Association for Asian Studies.
Devin Wiggs (Sociology) has been awarded an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship for his project entitled “Understanding the Desire for Insecurity in the ‘World’s Most Important Number.
Undergraduate Achievements:
Ashorne Mahenthiran is the winner of our annual SHC student essay prize for his essay, “The Ethics of Embryos: An Evaluation of Whether Embryonic Stem Cell Research Should be Federally Funded.”
Christina Shehata is the winner of our annual SHC student citizenship prize for her work as the program’s representative to the WCAS Student Advisor Board, as a co-director of the Community Health Corp. and as a member of the Executive Board of GlobalMed.