Mellon Postdoctoral Fellows

The Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellows program at Wesleyan University's Center for the Americas has greatly enriched the University's intellectual resources and has provided the mentoring, encouragement, and support that have enabled the Fellows to flourish. Interaction between the Fellows and the community of teacher/scholars at the Center for the Americas has benefited both groups and has led to exciting developments in the Center's commitment to creating a comparative hemispheric approach to the study of the Americas.

Mellon Fellows at the Center are appointed in cohorts of two; the initial appointment is for one year, renewable for a second. Mellon Fellows teach one course per semester (half the normal university teaching load) and have the opportunity to teach courses that are diverse both in content and in format. During the first year, each Fellow will teach a small, research-related seminar and a larger lecture course that will offer students a broader understanding of the field. In the second year, each Fellow will offer a course in his/her area of expertise; together they will design and team-teach a course with a comparative perspective.

As members of the Center for the Americas, the Mellon Fellows have an opportunity to work with nationally recognized teacher/scholars who are committed to the professional development of young scholars. Fellows can expect to work closely with senior colleagues who will read and comment on articles and book manuscripts, offer advice on career development decisions, support fellowship applications, and help Fellows to become integrated into the various professional networks. In terms of their development as teachers, Fellows will receive guidance on the organization and delivery of course materials and on the preparation of syllabi and assignments. The Fellows are also welcome to participate in a wide range of campus lecture series and colloquia.

The Center for the Americas Andrew W. Postdoctoral Fellows for 2008-2009 are:

Abby Clouse specializes in the contemporary politics of indigenous cultural property rights, material culture and identity politics, and North American cultural museums as the sites (or contact zones) in which these cross-cultural contestations and collaborations play out.  In her dissertation, “The Social History of a National Collection: Anthropology, Repatriation, and the Politics of Identity,” she traces an assemblage of Native American objects at the Smithsonian from their initial collection by the U.S. Army in the mid nineteenth century to their partial repatriation in the late twentieth century.  The history of this collection is used to situate contemporary issues of indigenous cultural property rights within a larger colonial framework that continues to shape representations and understandings of culture, race, and scientific authority.  Her work appears in Journal of Popular Culture and Journal of Material Culture.

Marc Hertzman defended his dissertation in Latin American history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in May, 2008.  The dissertation and forthcoming book trace the rise of samba music in Brazil from the end of slavery to the 1970s.  Researched in over twenty archives, the project uses police documents, union records, economic data, oral interviews, and a host of other sources to place samba within a larger post-Abolition matrix of social and economic control.  He has taught courses about Brazil, the Caribbean, Spanish America, and the African Diaspora and won two teaching awards while at the University of Wisconsin.  He has also received numerous fellowships and in 2008 was invited to participate in the Emerging Scholars Speaker Series at Penn. State’s Africana Research Center. http://mhertzman.faculty.wesleyan.edu