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Society of Fellows Appoints Four MellonsBy Marsha Manns he Society of Fellows in the Humanities has announced the appointment of four Mellon postdoctoral fellows in the humanities for the 1997-98 academic year. The incoming fellows, with their field of study and the institution at which they received the doctorate, are D. Graham Burnett, history (Cambridge, Ph.D. 1997); Wendy B. Heller, music (Brandeis University, Ph.D. 1995); Darrin M. McMahon, history (Yale, Ph.D. 1997), and April G. Shelford, history (Princeton, Ph.D 1997)
Fellowship recipients were selected from among 560 applicants in the 22nd annual fellowship competition. Eight members of the Society's 42-member faculty governing board--Mark Anderson, German; Joseph Connors (co-chair), art history and archaeology; Kathy Eden, English and comparative literature; Martha Howell, history; Robert Hymes, East Asian languages and cultures; Alfred Mac Adam, Spanish; Frank Miller, Slavic languages, and Elaine Sisman, music--interviewed twenty candidates during an intense two-day period. The appointments of Burnett, Heller, McMahon and Shelford bring to 117 the number of fellows who have come through the Society's program. Fellows teach in the general education program of Columbia College, pursue independent research, and participate in the intellectual activities of the Society. Burnett's dissertation was on "Crafting Colonial Space in South America: Exploration, Science and the British in the Guianas 1803-1875." While with the Society he plans to pursue research on Darwin and La Condamine and to teach Contemporary Civilization. Heller will teach in Music Humanities and will open the Society's fall brown bag series on Sept. 25. Her research project considers "Opera as History: Imperial Rome in the Italian Opera of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries." In the fall, McMahon will present ideas from his dissertation, "The Ideological Origins of the French Far Right, 1778-1815," at a brown bag lunch. He will teach Contemporary Civilization. Shelford, who will also teach Contemporary Civilization, plans work on an expanded treatment of her dissertation, "Faith and Glory: Pierre-Daniel Huet and the Making of the Demonstratio evangelica (1679)." Three additional Mellon fellows have been reappointed for 1997-98: Rebecca Lesses, religion; Claudio Saunt, history, and Richard Serrano in French and comparative literature. Also in 1997-98, the Society welcomes Martha Ann Selby, the recipient of the second Hinduja Post-Doctoral Fellowship awarded by the Dharam Hinduja Indic Research Center. Selby, who is on leave from the department of religious studies at Southern Methodist University, will participate in the activities of the Society as well as teach a course of her own design. The Society of Fellows in the Humanities was organized in 1975 with endowments from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the William R. Kenan Trust. Offices for the Society are located in the Heyman Center for the Humanities. Among the many regular programs sponsored by the Society are the weekly brown bag lunch lectures held on Thursdays in the Heyman Center for the Humanities.
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