The IHC offers dissertation fellowships to support doctoral candidates whose research facilitates dialogue across the traditional disciplinary boundaries within the arts and humanities, and/or between the arts & humanities, sciences, and social sciences. Each fellowship carries a stipend of $7,000, with payment of basic resident fees for one quarter of the academic year. Doctoral students must have advanced to Ph.D. candidacy by the application deadline. Click here for more information about dissertation fellowships.
2023-2024
Jéssica Malinalli Coyotecatl Contreras, Anthropology: “‘Sovereign and Deadly Energy Transition: Communal Life against Extractivism in Mexico”
Amy Fallas, History: “‘Their Own Poor’: Communal Identities, Charitable Societies, and the Making of Sectarianism in Modern Egypt, 1879-1939”
Anthony Greco, History: “Flows of History: Science, Colonialism, and the Cairo Nilometer, 1700-1920”
Christina Guirguis, Global Studies: “Potty Politics”
Albert Ventayol-Boada, Linguistics: “Reconstructing an Indigenous past in Siberia: From assembling the archive to the digital humanities”
2022-2023
Christopher Erdman, Classics: “Voting Culture and Political Theater in Late Republican Lawmaking”
Addison Jensen, History: “Blowin’ in the Wind: Media, Counterculture, and the American Military in Vietnam”
Nicky Rehnberg, History: “White Roots, Redwoods: Racializing German and U.S. Conservation, 1920-1945”
Isabella Restrepo, Feminist Studies: “Transcarceral Care: Racialized Girlhood, Behavioral Diagnosis, and California’s Foster Care System”
Reem Taha, Comparative Literature: “‘Of Here and Everywhere’: (Re)Mapping Mediterranean Identities at the Ibero-African Frontier”
2021-2022
Nicole de Silva, History: “From Homemaking to Peacemaking: Women’s International Organizing and the Practice of Consumer Diplomacy, 1918-1945”
Jonathan Dickstein, Religious Studies: “Animals in Hindu South Asia: From Cosmos to Slaughterhouse”
Julie Johnson, History: “Commodifying Contraception: A Political Economy of Interwar Britain”
Somak Mukherjee, English: “Elemental City: Ecology, Media, and Narratives of Crisis in Postcolonial Calcutta”
Mesadet Sözmen, Global Studies: “Gender, State and Women in Turkey: The Making of and the Challenge against Conservative Consensus, 1935-1960”
2020-2021
Tymoteusz Chajdas, Global Studies: “Silk Road Redux: The Specter of Ambitious China in the 21st Century”
Julia Fine, Linguistics: “Decolonial vitalities: Agency and creativity in Kodiak Alutiiq language revitalization”
Matthew Harris, Religious Studies: “‘Medicine for a Nightmare’: Sun Ra, Metaphysical Religion and the Black Radical Imagination, 1946-1961”
Joseph Lovell, East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies: “The Maoist Soundscape: Sonic Politics in the People’s Republic of China, 1949-1976”
Maite Urcaregui, English: “Visual Grammars of Citizenship: Reading Image in Multiethnic American Literature”
2019-2020
Bianka Ballina, Film and Media Studies, “Vital Exports: Mediating Cuban Solidarity and Global South Imaginaries”
Anna Bax, Linguistics, “Young Mixtec Women’s Multilingual Language Practices in the Indigenous ‘Oaxacalifornian’ Diaspora”
Yanitsa Buendia de Llaca, Religious Studies, “The Macehual Path: Neo-Aztec Spiritualities and Embodied Practices”
Thomas Franke, History, “Black Spaniards: Color, Status, and Community in Valencia, 1500-1550”
John Schranck, Comparative Literature, “Sonic Alterities”
2018-2019
Rosie Bermudez, Chicana and Chicano Studies, “Doing Dignity Work: Alicia Escalante and the East Los Angeles Welfare Rights Organization, 1967-1974”
Nicole Dib, English, “Taking Route in Kinship: The Affective Life of the American Road Trip”
Doug Genens, History, “Whither the Rural? The Debate over Rural America’s Future, 1945-1980”
Jennifer Hessler, Film and Media Studies, “The Nielsen Ratings: From Audimeter to Big Data”
Max Jack, Music, “Deviant Subjectivities: The ‘Ultra’ Movement and the Governance of Public Performance”
2017-2018
Kashia Amber Arnold, History, Trans-Pacific Values: The United States and the Regional Economy of the Pacific
Stephanie Choi, Music, Riding the “Korean Wave”: Rebuilding Social Orders in the Transnational Circulation of Korean Popular Music
Laura Hooton, History, Co-Opting the Border: The Dream of African American Integration via Baja California
Travis Seifman, History, Performing Lūchū: Identity Performance in Lūchūan Embassy Missions to Early Modern East Asia
Shawn Van Valkenburgh, Sociology, Virus Capital: Bringing Parasitology into Sociological Theory
2016-2017
Nissa Ren Cannon, English, Paper Identities and Identity Papers
Danielle Davey, English, Godly Prodigality: The Poetics of Excess in Early Modern England
Hannah Goodwin, Film and Media Studies, Archives of Light: Cinematic and Cosmological Time
Sarah E. Hanson, History, Gender, Work, and Economic Power: Women from Elite Urban Families in Medieval Douai, ca. 1285-1384
Tegan Raleigh, Comparative Literature, The Enchantments of Authenticity: The Fictive Frames of French and German Collections of Tales from Charles Perrault to the Brothers Grimm
2015-2016
Lynnette Arnold, Linguistics, Communicative Care across Borders: Language, Materiality, and Affect in Transnational Family Life
Chandra Russo, Sociology, Solidarity Witness: Resistance, Cultural Politics and the U.S. National Security State
Sahar Sajadieh, Media Arts and Technology, “Is Any-Body There?”: A Theatrical Turing Test
Lindsay Vogt, Anthropology, New Water in New India: How Does IT Sector Philanthropy Re-Cast Water and Citizenship?
Christopher Walker, English, Untimely Ecologies: Decay, Sustainability, and the Modern Ecological Imagination
2014-2015
Thomas Doran, English, Vulgar Ethology: A Prehistory of Animal Protection in Atlantic Natural History
Christopher Kegerreis, History, Alexander of Macedon’s Imperial Exploration and its Impact on Hellenistic Geography
Philip J. Murphy, Music, Annihilation in God & Remaining in the World: Sufi Devotional Song in Fez, Morocco
John Soboslai, Religious Studies, Performing One’s Own Death: Martyrdom, Self-Sacrifice and Truth-Telling
Zamira Yusufjonova, History, The Bolshevik Emancipation of the Muslim Women of Tajikistan, 1924-1982: What Went Wrong
2013-2014
Zachary Horton, English, Scale and Alterity: Ecology, Media, and Technics After the Human
Kuan-yen Liu, Comparative Literature, Animal-Human Analogy and the Order of Things: A Comparative Study of Victorian British and Late-Qing Chinese Darwinism
Andrew Magnusson, History, Muslim-Zoroastrian Relgions and Religious Violence in Early Islamic Iran
Rahul Mukherjee, Film and Media Studies, Competing Knowledges, Uncertain Futures: A Study of Mediated Technoscience Publics in India
Barbara L. Taylor, Music, The Ghosts of Banjos Past: The Early Banjo Revival and Remapping America’s Racial Terrain
2012-2013
Paul Reed Baltimore, History, From the Camel to the Cadillac: The Culture of Consumption and the U.S.-Saudi Special Relationship
Anne Cong-Huyen, English, Host and Server: The Literature and Media of Temporariness in an Age of Globalized Networks
Eric Fenrich, History, The Color of the Moon: The American Manned Space Program and Racial Inclusion, 1957-1978
Andrew J. Henkes, Theater and Dance, Profit, Performance, and Politics: Gay Nightlife in Los Angeles and West Hollywood, 1967-2010
Carly Thomsen, Feminist Studies, “I’m Just Me”: Queer Critiques of Gay Visibility, Identity, and Community from LGBTQ Women in the Rural Midwest
2011-12
Megan Carney, Anthropology, The Other Side of Hunger: Transborder Food Environments; Health and Citizenship: An Ethnographic Portrait of the Everyday Lives of Latina Immigrants in Santa Barbara
Nicole Pacino, History, Prescription for a Nation: Public Health in Post-Revolutionary Bolivia, 1952-1964
Daniel Reynolds, Film and Media Studies, Forms and Platforms: Emergence, Media, and the Contemporary Mind
Jean Smith, History, Race and the Politics of British Migration to Southern Africa, 1939-65
Li (Lily) Wong, Comparative Literature, Deflowering Attachments: Prostitutes, Popular Culture, and Affective Networks of Chineseness
Catherine Newell, Religious Studies, The Wheels of Titan: Faith, the Future, and America’s Final Frontier
2010-2011
Thomas Carrasco, Chicano Studies,Oppositional Performance: A Social History of the Avant-Garde Comedy Troupe Chicano Secret Service
Hye Jean Chung, Film & Media Studies, Media Heterotopias: Spectral Effects in Transnational Cinematic Space
Haru Ji, Media Arts & Technology, A-Life Worldmaking as a Contemporary Art
Joshua Neves, Film & Media Studies, Projecting Beijing: Cinema and Culture in the Olympic-era
Luke Manning, Philosophy, The Metaphysics of Fictional Object
2009-2010
August Black, Media Arts & Technology, Re-writing the Web
Denise Gill, Music, “May God Increase Your Pain”: Turkish Classical Music, Gender Subjectivities, and Being in/as Depression and Love
Laura Miller, English, Narrating Newton, Narrating Truth: Fame, Print, and Scientific Authorship
Nicole Starosielski, Film and Media, Surfacing: A Cultural Geography of Underwater Media
Jamel Velji, Religious Studies, Fashioning an Empire at the Edges of Time: Islamic Apocalyptic and the Early Fatimids
2008-2009
Jennifer Caldwell, Theater and Dance, Whose Nation Is It Anyway?: Performing “America” Through World War II Soldier Shows
Nicki Lisa Cole, Sociology, Global Capitalism, Global Knowledge: The Case of Fair Trade Coffee
Aaron Gross, Religious Studies, The Question of the Animal and Religion: Dietary Practices, Subjectivity and Ethics in Jewish and South Asian Traditions
Danielle Hidalgo, Sociology, Embodying Krungthep: Mapping Geographies of Genders and Sexualities in Bangkok Nightclubbing
Shalini Kakar, History of Art and Architecture, Fashioning the Divine, Religiousity, Fandom and Cultural Politics in Contemporary India
Kimberly Knight, English, Media Epidemics: Viral Structures in Literature and New Media
Jung Eun Lee, Linguistics, Lingistic Citizenship: Language and the Construction of American Identity in Citizenship Classes
2007-2008
Nicole Archambeau, History, Miracle, Medicine and Magic: Healing Emotional Distress in Fourteenth-Century Southern France
Simone Chess, English, “Where’s your man’s heart now? “: Male to Female Crossdressing in Early Modern Literature
Jennifer Rogers, Sociology, On the Trail of Mexican Maize: Tracking a Vanishing Seed theough a Maze of Globalization and the Struggle from Below
Ly Chong Thong Jalao, English
Yan Liang, Comparative Literature, Media and Narrative: A Sixteenth-Century Chinese Novel Xiyou ji and its Modern Media Remakes
2006-2007
Carlos Alamo-Pastrana, Sociology Department
Edward M. Test, English Department
Dan Overholt, Media Arts and Technology Department
Sonja Lynn Downing, Music Department
Donna Beth Ellard, English Department
2005-2006
James Vincent Maiello, Music, Music at the Cathedral of San Pistoia
Eric Boyle, History, Beyond Mirage and Magic Bullets…
Sarah McLemore, English, The Architectonics of Terrible Beauty: Dublin…
John Brian Springer, Art, Hiding is the First Act
Mark O’Tool, History, Caring for the Blind in medieval Paris…
2004-2005
Jessica Chapman, History. Debating the Will of Heaven: South Vietnamese Politics and Nationalism in International Perspective, 1954-56.
Sandra Dawson, History. Islands of Leisure: British Camp Culture in War and Peace.
Ning Zhang, Political Science. The Dynamics of Trust in Chinese Local Politics.
2003-2004
Mark Elmore, Religious Studies, Envisioning Religion: Aesthetics, and Public Cultures in Contemporary Himachal Pradesh
Diana Solomon, English, Textual Excess: Actresses’ Prologues and Epilogues on the London Stage, 1660-1731
James Revell Carr, Music, Sea Music and Global Culture: American Sailors and Polynesians
Stephen Deng, English, Money’s Absent Presence in More and Shakespeare
2002-2003
Katy Berry, English, Of Cradles and Graves: The Maternal Grotesque in the Southern United States
James Revell Carr, Ethnomusicology, Sea Music and Global Culture: American Sailors and Polynesians in the Nineteenth Century
Sara Gerend, English, Spectral Modernity: Ghosts of Empire in Early Twentieth Century
Kenneth Habib, Music, The Sound of Lebanon: Fairuz and the Construction of Identity through Music
William Robert Hodges, Jr., Music, Toba Batak (North Sumatra, Indonesia) Lament Singing in Contemporary Practice: Continuity, Change, and the Dialectics of Belief
Tony Samara, Sociology, United States and the War on Crime in Post-Apartheid South Africa
Thomas Sizgorich, History, Martyrs, Monks, and Mujihadun: Militant Piety in Late Antiquity and Early Islam
Anna Viele, English, Games and Genre in the Eighteenth-Century British Cultural Imagination
Wendy A. Wiseman, Religious Studies, Nietzche Wept: The “Morality of Pity,” Ambivalence, and the Gods
2001-2002
Josh Ashenmiller, History, The Strange Career of Environmental Impact Assessment.
John Baranski, History, Making Public Housing in San Francisco: Liberalism, Social Activism, and Social Prejudice, 1933-1998.
Anna Bigelow, Religious Studies, Sharing Saints, Shrines and Stories.
Kathleen Garces-Foley, Religious Studies, Crossing the Ethnic Divide: Multiculturalism in American Evangelicalism.
John Lardas, Religious Studies, Specters of Moby Dick: Religious Visions of an American Classic.
Nancy Ann McLoughlin, History, The Secular-Mendicant Divide on Gerson’s Understanding of Institutional Identity.
Tiffany J. Willoughby Herard, Political Science/ Women’s Studies/ Black Studies, Civilizing Settler Society in South Africa: the Carnegie Commission Study of Poor Whites, 1927-1932.
Joseph Sung-Yul Park, Linguistics, How we know when to start: A conversation analytic study of Korean terminal intonation contours.
2000-2001
Gretchen C. Icenogie, Dramatic Art and Dance, Towards a Theatre of Inaction: Danton’s Death, Lorenzaccio, and Hamlet.
Janet A. Lewis, Dramatic Art, Bodies and Souls: Constructing Jewish Women on the Twentieth Century American Stage.
Eric Lutz, History of Art and Architecture, At the Intersection of Architecture and Photography: The Formation of Rudolph Schindler’s Modernist Vision.
Shari Marden, Religious Studies, At the Crossroads of Identity and Modernity: A Religious, Political and Medical Examination of Tibetan Trauma Narratives.
Jeanne Scheper, English, Moving Performances: Traversing Trans-Atlantic Modernism, 1892-1940.
Darcie Vandergrift, Sociology, Paradise Under Development: Social Inequality and Memory in a Costa Rican South Caribbean Tourist Town.
Phillip Zwerling, Dramatic Art, Making Theatre/ Saving Lives.
1999-2000
Robert Bennett, English, Aesthetic Politics of Urban Space: Interart Representations of Post-WW II New York City.
Claire Busse, English, Child’s Play: Children and Childhood on the Early Modern English Stage.
Richard Callahan, Jr., Religious Studies, Working with Religion: Industrialization and Resistance in the Eastern Kentucky Coal Fields, 1880-1935.
Stephen Cory, History, Chosen by God to Rule: Messianic Islam and Political Legitimacy in Early Modern Morocco.
Jennifer Jones, English, Virtual Sublime: Transcendance, Education, and the Book – 1800/ 2000.
Jeffrey Lidke, Religious Studies, That Which Transcends the Three Cities: Hindu Esotericism and the Politics of Being God.
Jessica Robey, History of Art and Architecture, Visual Culture and the Microcosmic Collection in the Netherlands, 1550-1600.
Jessica L. Winston, English, Civil Servants: Poets, Playwrights and Translators.