Nearly $1.5 Million in Graduate Center Dissertation Fellowships Awarded to 66 Doctoral Candidates

The Graduate Center awarded close to $1.5 million in dissertation fellowships to 66 doctoral candidates chosen in this year’s Graduate Center Dissertation Fellowship competition. The awards, which also cover one year of in-state tuition for students reaching candidacy, provide critical support to aid them in successfully completing their dissertations.

“Our doctoral students faced unprecedented disruptions this year because of the coronavirus pandemic, including lost income, canceled field research, and closed labs,” said Interim Provost and Senior Vice President Julia Wrigley. “These awards are a wonderful validation of their work at a time when the support is so essential. We are deeply grateful to the many generous donors who contributed to these needed funds over the years.”

The individual awards range from $5,000 to $25,000 and were distributed to students in doctoral programs from anthropology to physics to urban education. 

In announcing the results of this year’s competition, David Olan, associate provost and dean for academic affairs, thanked the faculty members who served on review panels and completed the process of evaluating and ranking the proposals. 

The B. Altman Foundation Dissertation Fellowship ($25,000) 

Madeline DeDe-Panken, History, Gathered Knowledge: Gender, Authority and the American Mushroom Fad, 1880-1920

Maria Victoria Salazar, Philosophy, The Power of Political Eros in Plato's Philosophy

LaToya Strong, Urban Education, Critical Ethnic Studies: Disrupting Eurocentrism in Science Education

Kasey Zapatka, Sociology, An Affordability Crisis: The Differential Impacts of Gentrification and Segregation on Housing Affordability

Alumni Fund Dissertation Fellowship ($25,000) 

Donald Brown, Psychology, Social Identity, Scientific Practice, and the Production of Social Knowledge: An Ethnographic Investigation of Experimental Social Psychology

Fabiola Fernández Adechedera, LAILAC, Reading Across Borders: Translation, Mobility and Language in Contemporary Latin American Literature and Visual Arts

Martin Jensen, Comparative Literature, Genres of Labor

Gregory Slack, Philosophy, Marx, Race, Black Radicalism, and Racial Justice

Friederike Windel, Psychology, An Affective Technology of Heimat: Whiteness, Nation Building and Social Media

American Studies Dissertation Fellowship ($25,000) 

Maya Harakawa, Art History, After the Renaissance: Art and Harlem in the 1960s

Ralph Bunche Dissertation Fellowship ($15,000) 

Liang Wu, Anthropology, Contained at Sea: Multinational Seafarers, Mobility Politics, and the International Shipping Industry

Mario Capelloni Dissertation Fellowship ($25,000) 

Kyungjin Jo, Theatre and Performance, US Theatre and Cosmopolitics: Imperfect Reimagining of US-Asia Relations on Stage Since 1945

Ercio Munoz Saavedra, Economics, Essays on Intergenerational Mobility and Applied Econometrics

Sophie Tunney, History, The Lost and Forgotten Plants: The French Botanical Network during the Old Regime

Carell Dissertation Fellowship ($25,000) 

Meir Amir Farjoun, Theatre and Performance, Epistemic Theatres and the Performance of Knowledge

Bhargav Rani, Theatre and Performance, Banarasipan as Revelation: Immanent Utopias in the Performance of Everyday Life

The Center for Place, Culture and Politics Dissertation Fellowship ($10,000) 

Labanya Unni, English, Past (Dis)Continuous: Literary Historiography and the Limits and Possibilities of National Discourse

Amy Martinez, Criminal Justice, “Santa Bruta, Home of El Indio Muerto:” The Settler Colonial State & the Criminalization of Santa Barbara Mexican/Chicano “Gang-Associated” Boys and Men

Sheehan Moore, Anthropology, Governing Land Loss on the Louisiana Coast

Sara Cordón Hornillos, LAILAC, Literatures on Exhibition: Show-Authors and Precarious Postures in the Hispanic Neoliberal 21st Century

Claudine Jean-Baptiste, French, Memory, Violence, Detours and Returns: Strategies of Resistance to Color Invisibility in the French Republic

Ola Galal, Anthropology, "Reconfiguring Feminism: The State, Everyday Violence, and Alternative Forms of Care in Post-Revolution Tunisia"

The Committee for Globalization and Social Change Dissertation Fellowship ($10,000) 

Caitlyn Bolton, Anthropology, The Spirit of Progress: Islamic Education, Development and Modernity in Zanzibar

Luke Church, English, Chromatic Dissensus: An Otherwise Archive of Natural Dyes, 1750-1856

Jack Crawford, Art History, Flamboyant Abundance: Performing Queer Maximalism, 1960-1990 

Dissertation Year Fellowship ($25,000) 

Nadia Augustyniak, Anthropology, "Enacting Care: Ethical Commitments and Gendered Politics in the Work of Government Counselors in Sri Lanka"

Andréa Becker, Sociology, “I Just Wanted It Gone”: Examining “Wanted” Hysterectomies through Two Gendered Case Studies

Naxhije Berisha, Chemistry, Design and Discovery of Short Peptides for Co-assembled Targeted Drug-nanoparticle Platform

Shoumik Bhattacharya, English, Untenable Spaces and Inconceivable Futures in the 21st Century Anglophone Indian Novel

Priscilla Bustamante, Psychology, Sexual Misconduct in Everyday Policing: Experiences of State-Sanctioned Racialized Sexual Violence in New York City

Paul Butterfield, Philosophy, A Better Approach to the Ethics of Humor

Lennay Chapman, Business, The Addictive Properties of Mobile Applications: How Endless Scrolling and Notifications Impact Consumer Perceptions and Behavior

Noah Davies-Mason, Classics, Silence in Hellenistic Poetry and Philosophy

Kristofer Eckelhoff, Music, Berlin's "Third Sex": Trans Identities, Queer Politics, and Gender-Variant Performance in the Weimar Republic (1919-1933)

Beiyi Hu, Sociology, "Ethnoracial Inequality in Egalitarian Sweden: Swedish Exceptionalism and Racial Legacies" 

Khanh Le, Urban Education, Cùng với nhau chung tay: A Collaborative project with Vietnamese youth

Desmond Leung, Psychology, Tell Me a Story: Using Narratives to Reduce Backlash to Organizational Diversity Initiatives

Stephanie Makowski, History, From Riot to War and Back Again: Interracial Relationships in Britain from 1919 to 1963 

Amanda Mancini, Anthropology, Multi-scale movement behavior of black-and-white ruffed lemurs (Varecia variegata)

Ryan Milov-Córdoba, Comparative Literature, The Body Heuristic: The Creative Appeal of the Galenic Body through Time

Stefano Morello, English, Let's Make a Scene! East Bay Punk and Subcultural Worlding

Devry Mourra, Psychology, Characterizing the pattern of dopamine and striatal signaling in response to satiety

Luis Bernardo Quesada Nieto, LAILAC, Glottopolitical Study on the Etiquette Manual: Linguistic & Paralinguistic Normativity in the Mexican nation before and after the 1910’s Revolution

Sarah Schwartz, English, ØMimesis: Refusing representation in queer and postcolonial fiction

Elyse Singer, Theatre and Performance, "Performing Gestures of Female Madness Across Media Circa 1900"

Tamar Skaist, Biochemistry, Interrogating allosteric networks with ligands to control PTP1B function

Lan Truong, Biology, Traditional Vietnamese Medicine for Diabetes Treatment in Southern Vietnam

Qize Zhang, Chemistry, Nano-Onion/Pomegranate Metamaterial for Enhanced Cerenkov Cancer Imaging

Dissertation Year Fellowship ($15,000) 

Caitlyn Bolton, Anthropology, The Spirit of Progress: Islamic Education, Development and Modernity in Zanzibar

Claudine Jean-Baptiste, French, Memory, Violence, Detours and Returns: Strategies of Resistance to Color Invisibility in the French Republic

Dissertation Year Award ($10,000) 

Juraj Anzulovic, Anthropology, Parking in the Margins of Europe: The Politics of Infrastructure and Mobility in Zagreb

Marc Kagan, History, The Fall and Rise and Fall of Transport Workers Union Local 100, 1975-2009: Unions and Working-Class Power in New York City

Tatiana Nuñez, Comparative Literature, Collective Forms: Marriage Law Reform and the Novel in France and Britain, 1790-1850

Dissertation Year Award ($5,500) 

Sarah Mady, Anthropology, Healing Shrines in Late Antique and Medieval Lebanon

Pablo Lara Hinojos, Economics, Essays in Housing and Macroeconomics

Michael Ekema-Agbaw, Business, Three Lenses of Contrapower Harassment

David Garth Award ($5,000) 

Samuel Novacich, Anthropology, Color as a Social Force: Aesthetic Surfaces and Everyday Life in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Sophie O'Manique, Earth and Environmental Sciences, Social Reproduction in the Financialized City: Financialized Landlords and Multi-Family Rental Housing in Toronto and New York City

Marilyn J. Gittell Dissertation Fellowship ($25,000) 

Maura McGee, Sociology, Globalizing Gentrification: Immigration, race, and ethnicity on transforming streets

Alexander Steers-McCrum, Philosophy, What Does "Native" Mean? Disentangling and Decolonizing Settler Terms and Categories

Hilary Wilson, Earth and Environmental Sciences, From Urban Renewal to Tax Increment Financing: Tracing the Financialization and Spatial Politics of Redevelopment in Postindustrial Milwaukee

The Institute for Education in Retirement (IER) Dissertation Award ($5,000)

Paul Butterfield, Philosophy, A Better Approach to the Ethics of Humor

Priscilla Bustamante, Psychology, Sexual Misconduct in Everyday Policing: Experiences of State-Sanctioned Racialized Sexual Violence in New York City

The Institute for Research on the African Diaspora in the America’s and the Caribbean (IRADAC) Dissertation Fellowship ($25,000) 

Nina Angela Mercer, Theatre and Performance, Transnational Ritual Poetics of Blackness in Performance 

The Leon Levy Center for Biography Dissertation Fellowship ($25,000) 

Blair Brooks, Art History, Heinz Berggruen: Dealing and Collecting Modern Art in the Shadow of World War II 

Athena Pollis Dissertation Fellowship ($15,000) 

Ola Galal, Anthropology, "Reconfiguring Feminism: The State, Everyday Violence, and Alternative Forms of Care in Post-Revolution Tunisia"

Mina Rees Dissertation Fellowship ($25,000) 

Sara Abedi, Physics, Electron Transport in Quantum Systems with Interactions

Itamar Grunfeld, Psychology, Understanding How Chronic Stress Impacts Fear Discrimination Through Circuit Specific Investigation of the Medial Prefrontal Cortex, Basal Forebrain and Basolateral Amygdala

Naoko Kurata, Biology, Illuminating the drivers of genomic diversification in lamprologine cichlids of the lower Congo River

Aloka Paragoda Arachchilage, Chemistry, Development of new anti-cancer drug carriers to target specific organs in cancer metastasis

Spiaggia Dissertation Award ($10,000) 

Zoe Cunliffe, Philosophy, Tell Me a Story: The Normative Power of Storytelling

25th Anniversary Fund Dissertation Award ($15,000) 

Luke Church, English, Chromatic Dissensus: An Otherwise Archive of Natural Dyes, 1750-1856

The Graduate Center Dissertation Fellowship Competition is described on this webpage (under Dissertation Funding). 

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