The Radcliffe Institute names 2004-5 fellows

Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study Dean Drew Gilpin Faust has announced the names of 46 men and women selected as 2004-05 Radcliffe fellows. While at Radcliffe, the fellows – among them eight creative artists, 14 humanists, 12 social scientists, and 11 scientists – will work individually and across disciplines on projects chosen for both quality and long-term impact. Together, the fellows’ distinguished academic, professional, and creative endeavors are the center of a scholarly community that was established when Radcliffe College merged with Harvard University to form the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Recent past fellows have included fiction writer Zadie Smith; author and attorney Jennifer Harbury; geophysicist Maria Zuber; historian Darlene Clark Hine; and anthropologist husband-and-wife team Jean and John L. Comaroff.

“The purpose of a residential fellowship like ours is to bring artists and scholars together to interact in ways that will change both them and their work,” says Dean Faust. “We strive to offer enough similarity – clusters of common intellectual concern – and enough difference to generate intersections that are predictable as well as ones that are unanticipated and even surprising.”

Radcliffe fellows in the creative arts will include Julia Glass, an independent writer whose first book, “Three Junes,” won the 2002 National Book Award in fiction, and Tarik O’Regan, a young British composer of orchestral, chamber, and choral music who has been called “one of the most exciting composers to emerge in recent years.”

Other fellowship projects include “Transnational Knowledges, Transnational Politics: Making Our Bodies, Ourselves” by Kathy Ellen Davis, who teaches in an interdisciplinary program at the Universiteit Utrecht in the Netherlands; “Measuring This Particular Elegant Universe” by Melissa Franklin, an experimental particle physicist and Harvard professor; “Development, Intersubjectivity and Dynamical Systems,” by Evelyn Fox Keller, a professor of history and philosophy of science at M.I.T. who is regarded as America’s foremost scholar on issues of science and gender; and “The Unheard History, Unsung Heroines and Unvoiced Community Rights: THAILAND IN CRISIS” by Cholthira Satyawadhna, an anthropologist and human rights activist from Thailand.

Each year, a group of fellows converges within the larger fellowship program to focus both individually and collectively on specific areas of study. These thematic clusters in the past have studied cosmology, computer science, and immigration. In 2004-05, Carol K. Pforzheimer Professor at the Radcliffe Institute Mahzarin Banaji, who is also the Richard Clarke Cabot Professor of Social Ethics, will lead a small cluster focusing on issues of unconscious prejudice and the law titled “The Legal Design of Equality Based on the Science of Ordinary Prejudice.” The participant fellows in that cluster are Anthony G. Greenwald, an experimental psychologist and professor at the University of Washington, and Linda Hamilton Krieger, professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley, and former civil rights lawyer. Other, shorter-term participants will join them for research over the course of the academic year.

This year’s pool of 765 fellowship applicants was evaluated by two levels of review. In the first level, two leaders in each applicant’s field evaluated and ranked the applicant. The top 100 applicants were then submitted to a fellowship committee, which selected the diverse class of 2004-05 fellows. This year’s fellows, 35 women and 11 men, come from 30 different institutions, and include eight international fellows from seven different countries.

“The selection process is more than simply assembling individuals; it is creating a class that encompasses the diversity of fields our mission mandates and expresses as well our commitment to the study of women, gender, and society,” says Dean Faust. “Our aim is to provide the conditions that will yield the most vibrant intellectual community each year.”

Following their arrival in September, Radcliffe Institute fellows will receive office space and access to libraries and other scholarly resources at Harvard. In addition to attracting and sponsoring leading academic researchers, the Radcliffe Institute is unique among the nation’s other centers for advanced studies in that it also hosts artists, musicians, fiction writers, and professionals.

The Radcliffe Institute is a scholarly community where individuals pursue advanced work across a wide range of academic disciplines, professions, and creative arts. Within this broad purpose, the institute sustains a continuing commitment to the study of women, gender, and society.

For more information about the institute’s fellowship program, call (617) 495-8212, or visit http://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/fellowships/.

The 2004-05 Radcliffe Institute Fellows are as follows:

Homi Bhabha, Anne F. Rothenberg professor of English and American Literature and Language at Harvard University, “Cultural Citizenship.”

Sandra Citi, Grass Fellow, University of Geneva, molecular and cellular biology, “Molecular Mechanisms of Tight Junction Function.”

Joan Copjec, State University of New York, Buffalo, multidisciplinary/humanities, “Kiarostami’s Reserve: Shame, Cinema and the Social Bond.”

James Thomas Costa, Jeanne Rosselet Fellow, Western Carolina University, evolutionary and organismic biology, “The Other Insect Societies: Reconsidering the Insect Sociality Paradigm.”

Kimberly McClain DaCosta, Bessell Fellow, assistant professor of African and African American studies and of social studies at Harvard University, “Creating Ethnicity: Multiracialism as Marketing Tool and Target.”

Kathy Ellen Davis, Utrecht University (the Netherlands), women’s and gender studies, “Transnational Knowledges, Transnational Politics: Making Our Bodies, Ourselves.”

Sylvie Delacroix, Evelyn Green Davis Fellow, University of Kent (United Kingdom), law, “Religious Absolutism and Secular Normativity.”

Roxanne L. Euben, Jeanne and Joseph Sullivan Women’s Middle East Peace Fellow, Wellesley College, political science, “Travel, Theory and the Search for Knowledge: Western and Islamic Journeys to ‘The Other Shore.’”

Melissa Eve Bronwen Franklin, Emeline Bigelow Conland Fellow, professor of physics at Harvard University, “Measuring This Particular Elegant Universe.”

Julia Glass, independent writer, fiction, “A Piece of Cake.”

Anthony G. Greenwald, University of Washington, psychology, “The Legal Design of Equality Based on the Science of Ordinary Prejudice.”

Wendy Jacob, Mary I. Bunting Institute Fellow, M.I.T., sculpture, “Intimate Architecture.”

Mehrangiz Kar, Rita E. Hauser Fellow (jointly sponsored by the Harvard Scholar-at-Risk Program), independent scholar, law/literature, “A Comparison of the Constitutional and Institutional Processes in the Islamic Republic of Iran and Democratic Parliamentary Systems.”

Evelyn Fox Keller, Matina S. Horner Distinguished Visiting Professor, M.I.T., history and philosophy of science, “Development, Intersubjectivity and Dynamical Systems.”

John Kelly, Sargent-Faull Fellow, John Kelly & Company, theater performance, “Recycling My Muse While Musing on Caravaggio.”

Linda Hamilton Krieger, University of California, Berkeley, law, “The Legal Design of Equality Based on the Science of Ordinary Prejudice.”

Susan S. Lanser, Augustus Anson Whitney Scholar, Brandeis University, women’s and gender studies, “Sapphic Subjects and the Making of Modernity.”

Mary Lum, Alfred University, printmaking and drawing, “Tracing the City.”

Jane J. Mansbridge, Adams Professor of Political Leadership and Democratic Values at Harvard University, “In Praise of Less Accountable Representation.”

Barbara McCaskill, Augustus Anson Whitney Scholar, University of Georgia, Literature, “William and Ellen Craft in the Trans-Atlantic World.”

Rebecca Mercuri, research fellow at Harvard University, computer science, “Transparency and Trust in Computational Systems.”

Claire Messud, independent writer, fiction, novel-in-progress.

Eun Kyung Min, Bunting Fellow, Seoul National University (Korea), literature, “Representing China in Early Modern England.”

Stephen A. Mitchell, American Fellow, Professor of Scandinavian and Folklore at Harvard University, “Nordic Witchcraft, 1250-1550.”

Steven D. Nelson, Magalen O. Bryant International Fellow, University of California, Los Angeles, art history, “Dakar: The Making of an African Metropolis.”

Olabode Omojola, University of Ilorin/Nigerian Baptist Seminary College (Nigeria), musicology, “Sounds Without Borders: Style and Identity in Modern African Art Music.”

Tarik O’Regan, University of Cambridge (United Kingdom), music composition, “Heart of Darkness – An Opera.”

Irene Maxine Pepperberg, Bunting Fellow, M.I.T. and Brandeis University, psychology, “Cross-Species Studies on the Development of Numerical Competence.”

Mica Pollock, Mary I. Bunting Institute Fellow, assistant professor of education at Harvard University, “Disputing Discrimination: U.S. Educational Civil Rights Analysis and Everyday Arguments Over Analyzing Inequality in School.”

Karin Alejandra Rosemblatt, Bessell Fellow, Syracuse University, history, “A Transnational History of Ideas Regarding Race and Poverty in the Americas, 1920-Present.”

Cholthira Satyawadhna, Ford Foundation International Fellow, Rangsit University (Thailand), anthropology, “The Unheard History, Unsung Heroines and Unvoiced Community Rights: THAILAND IN CRISIS.”

Barbara Dianne Savage, Augustus Anson Whitney Scholar, University of Pennsylvania, history, “Religion and African American Political Culture.”

Martha Ann Selby, Walter Jackson Bate Fellow, University of Texas, Austin, literature, “A Study of Form, Style and Symbol in a Late Old Tamil Romantic Anthology.”

Laurie Sheck, New School University, poetry, book of poems.

Mary Margaret Steedly, Benjamin White Whitney Scholar, professor of anthropology at Harvard University, “Citadel Culture: Educating Citizen-Soldiers for a New World Order.”

Lynn Stephen, University of Oregon, anthropology, “Cultural Difference and Globalization: Indigenous Migrants in the U.S. and Mexico.”

Ann Steuernagel, Constance E. Smith Fellow, visiting assistant professor at Mount Holyoke College, filmmaking, “Audio Visions.”

Montserrat Teixidor i Bigas, Vera M. Schuyler Fellow, Tufts University, mathematics,”Vector Bundles on Curves and Applications.”

Corinna Treitel, Frieda L. Miller Fellow, Wellesley College, history, “Why Hitler Was a Vegetarian and Dachau Had an Herb Garden.”

Veronica Vaida, University of Colorado, Boulder, chemistry, “Organic Aerosols as Reactors in Present, Past and Planetary Atmospheres.”

Marie-France Vigneras, Universite Paris 7 Denis Diderot, mathematics, “Modular Representations of P-Adic and Adelic Reductive Groups.”

John R. Wakeley, Augustus Anson Whitney Scholar, Thomas D. Cabot Associate Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University, “Whole Genome Evolutionary Histories.”

Tiffani L. Williams, Edward, Frances, and Shirley Daniels Fellow, University of New Mexico, computer science, “An Integrated Approach to Building Evolutionary Trees.”

Michael Willrich, Brandeis University, history, “Speaking Law to Power: Struggles for Civil Liberties in the Progressive Era, 1890-1920.”

Elizabeth Anne Zimmer, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, evolutionary and organismic biology, “Exploring Evolutionary Experiments in Floral Form.”

David Zuckerman, Augustus Anson Whitney Scholar, University of Texas, Austin, computer science, “Pseudorandomness and Cryptography.”

The 2004-05 cluster leader is Mahzarin Banaji, Carol K. Pforzheimer Professor at the Radcliffe Institute, “The Legal Design of Equality Based on the Science of Ordinary Prejudice.”