Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

April 14, 2015

By Simon Goodacre | GSAS

Eight PhD candidates have been awarded the 2015-16 Dissertation Year Fellowship (DYF), which provides a $36,000 stipend for students completing a dissertation. Students who are entering their 5th or 6th year and writing dissertations in an area of the humanities or humanistic social sciences are eligible for the award, which was made available by a generous gift from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. In addition to the stipend, the 2015-16 DYF carries a $2,000 research grant and a full credit toward the Brandeis Health Insurance option.

The mission of the Mellon Foundation is to "strengthen, promote, and, where necessary, defend the contributions of the humanities and the arts to human flourishing and to the well-being of diverse and democratic societies." They support "exemplary institutions of higher education and culture as they renew and provide access to an invaluable heritage of ambitious, path-breaking work."

Brandeis received a $1.8 million renewal from the foundation in the summer of 2012. "We are sincerely grateful for the generosity of the Mellon Foundation," says Eric Chasalow, the Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. "Their gift provides some of our most accomplished PhD candidates in the humanities the support they need to focus on researching and writing very ambitious dissertations and completing their degrees in a timely fashion."

Here are the 2015-16 Dissertation Year Fellows:

Ian Campbell

State of Reform: The Politics of Perfection in New England, 1787-1860"

"My dissertation, entitled "State of Reform: The Politics of Perfection in New England, 1787-1860," examines the relationship between state governments and moral and humanitarian reform movements. In the half century before the Civil War, reform movements proliferated in the Northern states, seeking to address the bevy of social evils they had identified: slavery, intemperance, poverty, ignorance, religion, and crime. As these reform movements developed and grew, many sought to entangle state governments in new initiatives like abolition, prison reform, and prohibition, even as conscientious lawmakers sought to expand existing state programs aiding the poor, providing primary education, and caring for the mentally ill. My dissertation explores the unprecedented ways in which activists and legislators alike sought to bring the power of a republican state to bear on problems traditionally addressed locally by communities, churches, or families. “State of Reform” reveals and examines these changes, which reflected a growing identification of state power with social policing and humanitarian values, as well as a redefinition of state responsibility in a republican government. In tracking the process by which New Englanders came to regard the state as the defender of humanitarian virtue, I hope to explain not only the hardening of Northern opinion that exacerbated tensions with the South, but also the role of conscience in American public life over two centuries of history."

Catherine Worsnop

Commitment, Compliance, and Contagion: Disease Containment and the WHO"

"My research examines the role of international organizations (IOs) in international politics. Specifically, my dissertation analyzes the World Health Organization’s (WHO) International Health Regulations (IHR), which govern the international response to disease outbreaks like Ebola, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, and H1N1 influenza. The project studies two questions: first, why in 2005, after 50 years of stagnation, did states revise the IHR and significantly expand the authority of the WHO? And, second, when commitments to the revised regulations were first challenged, why did some states comply while others did not? I argue that though states eventually revised the IHR to overcome a collective action problem that impedes outbreak containment, WHO leadership’s initial resistance to these reforms delayed this expansive revision. This finding reveals that IOs themselves can independently affect outcomes. I then argue that, in spite of the 2005 revision, governments’ domestic political incentives continue to encourage non-compliance with the IHR, suggesting that leaders prioritize their own political fortunes during disease outbreaks rather than the protection of the population."

Drew Flanagan

Radiance on the Rhine: The French in Occupied Germany 1945-55"

"My dissertation focuses on the cultural and political history of the French military occupation in southwest Germany after the Second World War, from 1945 to 1955, focusing on two closely related aspects of that occupation. First, it explores the ways in which the occupation practices of the French occupier evolved over time. It will analyze the meaning of the transition from pacification of the zone by military means in the early years of the occupation to a more subtle and indirect policy of "presence" in the early 1950s. Second, it explores the process of peacemaking that occurred between ordinary French and German people within the French Zone of Occupation. I will investigate French and German attitudes toward one another and how they changed over time. In day-to-day encounters between French soldiers, civilian administrators and their families on one hand and the German population on the other, mutual fear and distrust slowly faded and wartime narratives regarding each other's national characters gradually changed. My project considers the French occupation within the long history of Franco-German cultural and political rivalry. It is rooted in the geographic and cultural context of the Upper Rhine, a region that had long been part of one of Europe's most contested borderlands. Finally, my project places events in the French Zone of Occupation in a global and imperial context, considering how the French colonial experience and French notions of their country's "universal civilizing mission" shaped French occupation practices, as well as how it shaped German perceptions of the French occupier."  

Ryan LaRochelle

Social Policy and the Development of Democratic Citizenship: Community Action Agencies and Patterns of Civic Participation, 1964 – Present"

"While socioeconomic status stratifies political voice, public policy also powerfully shapes citizen behavior. My dissertation examines whether and how social welfare programs—in particular community action agencies (CAAs), the primary administrative incarnation of President Lyndon Johnson’s Community Action Program—affect low-income individuals’ civic participation. Research suggests that individuals may develop civically useful skills as a byproduct of their participation in social welfare programs. However, extant research fails to truly capture individuals’ lived experience with the complex web of U.S. social policy. Utilizing interviews with participants at contemporary CAAs in New England and the Deep South, this project seeks to clarify the mechanisms that link macro-level institutions and policies with individual political attitudes and behavior. The project’s ultimate goal is to highlight ways in which American social policy and programs can enhance democratic participation and foster economic, social, and political equality."

Emily Fine

Dying to Write: Mothers' Memento Mori Legacy Texts in England, 1600-1650

"In my dissertation, I analyze mothers’ legacy texts, writings that women either left behind for their children upon death or styled as legacies or final testaments, in England from 1600-1650. I survey both manuscripts and printed texts, focusing in particular on those that served as a sort of memento mori, or reminder about mortality, for the readers. In exploring these texts, I propose an alternative critical understanding of death as an opportunity for productivity rather than loss; the mother’s voice emerges against the prospect of death as women instruct their children even in absentia through the texts they leave behind."

Mengqi Wang

Home Liquidated, Home Nailed: Value Bricolage and the Politics of Housing Prices in China

David Dominique

Composition: Anomaly, for Jazz Sextet (album)

Theory: Beat Furrer and the Collapse of Aesthetic Hierarchy in Contemporary Music

"My dissertation is in two parts. The music theory portion is an analysis of the style of Swiss-Austrian contemporary composer, Beat Furrer. In my dissertation, I demonstrate how Furrer's music blends stylistic elements of historically distinct aesthetic factions: American Minimalism, Post-Serialism, and timbrally-driven contemporary European music. The music composition portion of my dissertation is the follow-up to my 2013 album, Ritual. On my new album, Anomaly, composed for my LA-based sextet, I will explore syntheses of jazz with electronic music, rock, and contemporary classical influences."