2021 Newcombe Fellows Named

NEWS RELEASE
FOR RELEASE: May 13, 2021
CONTACT:  Frances Hannan | Director of Multimedia Projects | 201-587-4755
Jeré Hogan | Program Officer, Newcombe Fellowship

Note: Prospective applicants should email newcombe@citizensandscholars.org

Program Supports Promising Scholars Completing Dissertations Related To Ethics And Religion

PRINCETON, NJ (May 13, 2021)—The Institute for Citizens & Scholars has named 22 Fellows to the 2021 class of the Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship.

Fellows in this year’s class are exploring topics of religion and ethics in their dissertation research. They are working in such departments as African American studies, anthropology, history, politics, and philosophy. The group also included the first-ever Robert M. Adams–Charlotte W. Newcombe Fellow in Philosophy, co-named for distinguished philosopher Robert Merrihew Adams, the program’s co-founder, as well as a Carpenter-Newcombe Fellow jointly supported by the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation. (See the full list of Fellows, institutions, and dissertation titles below.)

The Newcombe Fellowship is the largest and most prestigious award for Ph.D. candidates in the humanities and social sciences addressing questions of ethical and religious values in interesting, original, or significant ways. Fellows receives a 12-month award of $27,500 to support the final year of dissertation writing.

Funding at the dissertation stage remains a vital way to support young scholars. Since its creation in 1981, the Fellowship, funded by the Charlotte W. Newcombe Foundation, has supported nearly 1,300 doctoral candidates with essential time and resources to complete their writing. Newcombe Fellows have gone on to be noted faculty at domestic and foreign institutions, leaders in their fields of study, Pulitzer Prize winners, MacArthur Fellows, and more.

The Newcombe Dissertation Fellowship is a crucial part of the Citizens & Scholars portfolio in higher education, helping promising scholars generate momentum, strengthening fields of study, and preparing new generations of citizens of the academy and scholars of the world. These leaders in higher education will help shape generations of citizens through their teaching and research. For more information on the Newcombe Dissertation Fellowship, please visit http://woodrow.org/fellowships/newcombe/.

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About the Institute for Citizens & Scholars
The Institute for Citizens & Scholars (citizensandscholars.org) is a 75-year-old organization that has played a significant role in shaping American higher education. Now, with an expanded mission, Citizens & Scholars prepares leaders and engages networks of people and organizations to meet urgent education challenges. The overarching goal is to shape an informed, productively engaged, and hopeful citizenry. 

2021 CHARLOTTE W. NEWCOMBE FELLOWS

Marzouq Alnusf • Northwestern University, philosophy
Global Racial Capitalism: How Race Matters to Global Justice

Nathaniel Berndt • Duke University, history
Descendants of Zabarkan, Citizens of the World: A History of Cosmopolitan Imagination in Decolonizing Niger, 1958-1974

Valerie Black • University of California, Berkeley, anthropology
Dehumanizing Care: An Ethnography of Mental Health Artificial Intelligence

Shannon Brick • CUNY Graduate Center, philosophy
Rehabilitating Authenticity

Erez DeGolan • Columbia University, religion
Affect in Power: Public Joy in Roman Palestine and the Lived Experience of the Rabbis

Amanda Joyce Hall • Yale University, history & African American studies
Triumph: Grassroots Activism against Apartheid and the Global Challenge to Anti-Black Racism, 1971-1991

Omar Hammad • Rutgers University, New Brunswick, media studies
Digital Islam: The Emergence of Muslim Counterpublics on Social Media

Anusha Hariharan • The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, anthropology
“In Solidarity”: Feminist Friendship, Care and Ethical Life in Southern India

Gili Kliger • Harvard University, history
Colonial Reformation: Religion, Empire, and the Origins of Modern Social Thought

Abby Kulisz • Indiana University, religious studies
Sacred Friendship, Holy Hatred: Christian-Muslim Encounters with the Book in the Medieval Middle East

Tatiana Llaguno Nieves •New School for Social Research, politics
Paradoxes of Dependence: Towards a Political Theory of Our Dependent Condition

Gana Ndiaye • Boston University, anthropology
“Plastic Migrants”: Race, Performance, and the Making of a Senegalese Muslim Community in Brazil 

Alexis Riley • University of Texas at Austin, theatre and dance
Patient Acts: Performance, Disability, and the Making of Mad Memory

Kevin Rose • University of Virginia, religious studies
Living Green: The Neoliberal Climate of Protestant Environmentalism

Sherri Sheu • University of Colorado Boulder, history
“Parks for the People”: The National Park Service and the Long 1960s

Aaron Stamper • Princeton University, history
Reconfigured and Remade: A Sensory History of Islamic Granada’s Reformation as a Civitas Christiana, 1474-1614

^*Alex Steers-McCrum • The Graduate Center, CUNY, philosophy
What Does “Native” Mean? Disentangling and Decolonizing Settler Terms and Categories
^*Robert M. Adams–Charlotte W. Newcombe Fellow in Philosophy

Raffaella Taylor-Seymour • University of Chicago, anthropology & comparative human development
Intimate Rites: Localizing Queerness through Ancestral Spiritualities in Contemporary Zimbabwe

^**Claire Urbanski • University of California, Santa Cruz, feminist studies
On Sacred and Stolen Lands: Desecration and Spiritual Violence as United States Settler Colonialism
^**Carpenter/Newcombe Fellow

Tara Weinberg • University of Michigan, history
Land ‘Bonds’: Imaginaries of Property Ownership in South Africa, 1900-1994

Karolina Wisniewska • University of Arizona, philosophy
Identity, Inequality, Injustice

Kristine Wright • Princeton University, religion
Bodies of Light and Knowledge: Mormon Women, Religious Authority and Theologies of Health