On an annual basis, the Department of History awards select graduate students with internal research funds known as the Foundation Fellowships. These fellowships and endowments are made possible by generous donors and alumni. The faculty-led Fellowship Subcommittee selects recipients who will submit a project description, CV, and writing sample, and recipients use the funds to conduct significant research on their master’s theses or doctoral dissertations. The following students are four out of seven selected this year.
Dr. Katherine Unterman, Director of Graduate Studies and member of the Fellowship Subcommittee, expressed, “The History Department is incredibly grateful to the donors whose generous gifts enable us to distribute the Foundation Fellowships. While all of our graduate students have fascinating and important projects, we seek to align our awards with the priorities and interests of the donors. Second, we look for high levels of scholarly achievement and future potential. I am especially excited to award the Foundation Fellowships because they represent a bridge between people who support historical inquiry within the university and outside of it.”
Adisson Wright, first year M.A.-Ph.D. student, has been awarded the Larry W. ’73 & Judith ’74 Luckett Endowment in history. Adisson explained, “These funds will allow me to go to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s archives this summer. Here, I will conduct research that will aid in completing my master’s thesis and hopefully expand that project into a larger doctoral dissertation.”
Adisson’s master’s thesis centers on the International Liberators Conference of 1981 and the joint establishment of liberator unit designation by the United States Holocaust Memorial Council and the U.S. Army’s Center of Military History in 1985. “Through this research, I hope to show how the 1980s are a critical decade in the shaping of American Holocaust consciousness. I am honored to be the recipient of the Larry W. ’73 & Judith ’74 Luckett Endowment in History,” Adisson stated.
Second year Ph.D. student, Mark Mallory, has received the Ron Stone Texas History Grant. Mark stated, “My work considers the contested representation and frequent erasure of Black Seminoles from the Texas-Coahuila borderlands since the mid-nineteenth century. Drawing on gender studies, anthropology, and cultural studies, I explore tensions between lived experiences of Black Seminoles and representations of their lives and histories found in songs, films, children’s books, paintings, school curricula, museum exhibits, public monuments, and government documents.”
Mark’s award will support the foundational archival and hands-on research necessary for his dissertation. Mark explained, “The Ron Stone Texas History Grant will support my ongoing oral history research among Black Seminole community members in Texas and archival research in the state, at institutions like the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection, and the Institute of Texas Cultures.”
Ph.D. candidate Nada Al-Jamal has been awarded the Keeble Dissertation Fellowship. This fellowship will allow Nada to acquire Arabic-language resources necessary to translate archival sources for her dissertation. She stated, “With this generous funding, I will be visiting the United Kingdom’s National Archive this summer to examine records on the Near East/Middle East, the Arab-Israeli Conflict, and the issue of Palestine in general. I anticipate that the Arabic records housed in these departments will be exceptionally useful in rounding out the Arab perspective of my dissertation.”
With her dissertation, Nada investigates the Arab-Israeli wars of 1967-1973 and argues that they should be studied as proxy conflicts of the broader Cold War between the U.S. and Soviet Union. Nada explained, “Studying the Arab-Israeli wars as proxy wars demonstrates how superpower competition affected these conflicts, and how regional proxy wars had the potential to significantly push the Cold War in multiple directions. Overall, internationalizing the history of the Arab-Israeli wars provides a more comprehensive understanding of both the broader Arab-Israeli conflict and the Cold War.”
Regan Grigsby, Ph.D. candidate, was awarded the DeLoach and Amelia Martin Endowment. “The funds from this endowment will support my research trips to the collections of the South Carolina State Archives and South Carolina Library this summer, where I will view a variety of documents from the American Revolution, particularly the Robert W. Gibbes Collection of Revolutionary War Manuscripts. I also plan to use the endowment to travel to the David Center of the American Revolution to examine the Sol Feinstone collection. These research trips will be essential for the completion of my dissertation.”
Regan’s dissertation focuses on the American Revolution with a South Carolinian lens. She explained, “The documents I examine will help me answer important historical questions about how individuals navigated conflicting loyalties in South Carolina from 1775-1782 as well as the ways in which military-civilian relations developed throughout the conflict. I am very grateful to have this research funded by the endowment.”
Doctoral candidates Patrick Grigsby, Tanner Ogle, and Tristan Krause have also received the following fellowships, respectively: David Chapman ’67 Graduate Fellowship, Keeble Dissertation Fellowship, and the Brian McAllister Linn Dissertation Fellowship in Military History.