Grants and Fellowships - Scholarship & Academic Achievements

Grants and Fellowships

(12/20/02) Two faculty members have received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities to support book-length projects during 2003–04.
    Janet Galligani Casey, visiting associate professor of English, will use the fellowship to work on “Fertile Grounds: Women, Modernism, Rural America,” a study of women and agrarianism in the United States from 1920 to 1940.
    Jordana Dym, assistant professor of history, will devote the year to “They Also Mapped: The Cartography of Western Travel Writers, 1750-1950,” an analysis of the relationship between travelers and maps over 200 years.
    Casey, whose ongoing research focuses on labor and ideologies of gender, will use that perspective to frame her study of the American farm during the early years of the 20th century. Her book’s foundation is a selection of novels from the era written by and about agrarian women that challenge longstanding associations of Americanism with a masculinist control of the landscape.
    Historian Jordana Dym’s research on travelers and maps is designed to appeal to scholars as well as those for whom travel means a call to AAA for their TripTiks: “Until the mid-20th century," she explained, "travelers were as likely to create or commission maps to accompany their travel accounts, as to consult them for way-finding. Whether the maps produced were rough sketches for private journals or measured surveys for publication, they were important enough to travelers and their publishers to appear in most types of published travel accounts.”
    Dym's book will be the first systematic study of map use and production by travelers who went from being seekers of knowledge to seekers of entertainment during an era when travel and publishing changed dramatically. All of these developments significantly influenced the maps that were produced. More

(11/22/02) Skidmore will share an $80,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to study faculty concerns. The one-year grant, to be shared with Union and Hamilton colleges and Colgate University, will be used to examine such topics as teaching, research, and institutional expectations. Faculty surveys and focus groups will identify challenges related to faculty development at each school and gather information on responding to them.
    Issues to be addressed include the pressures on faculty who are expected to be excellent teachers, productive scholars, and active members of the campus community; helping junior faculty understand what’s expected of them; building a strong campus community; effective participation in faculty governance and administration; recognizing and rewarding interdisciplinary work; the importance of mid-career assistance; the role of emeriti faculty; and finding balance among teaching, scholarship, and service. More

(6/18/02) Assistant Professor of Biology Marc J. Tetel has garnered $892,000 in a four-year grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), through its National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.
    Tetel's research will focus on how estrogen interacts with other chemicals activate specific genes in the brain. Results of his research, begun with an earlier grant of $100,000 from NIH and the Office of Research for Women’s Health, have implications for hormone-influenced diseases and disorders, including depression and breast cancer. More

(4/15/02) Assistant Professor of Religion Nicola Denzey planned to travel to the American Academy of Rome for an intensive summer seminar on Roman Religions, with support from a National Endowment for the Humanities summer study grant. More

(4/6/02) Associate Professor of English Linda Simon has received an American Philosophical Society (APS) Sabbatical Fellowship for the Humanities and Social Sciences that will enable her to spend academic year 2002-03 writing a book about the cultural anxiety surrounding the coming of electricity during the second half of the 19th century. More

(2/7/02) Jill Sweet, professor of anthropology, received a Resident Scholar Fellowship from the School of American Research in Santa Fe, N.M. Sweet will spend eight weeks in residency there to work on a new edition of her book, Dances of the Tewa Pueblo Indians: Expressions of New Life. More

(1/25/02) Skidmore received a $160,000 grant from the Rathmann Family Foundation of Minnesota to develop its new Environmental Studies major. ES students will study contemporary environmental issues and seek to grasp the connections among scientific understanding, economic choices, humanistic perspectives, and public policy concerns. More

(12/20/01) Steve Frey, assistant professor of chemistry, has received a grant of nearly $50,000 from the Petroleum Research Fund to study environmental toxins. More

(12/20/01) Francisco Gonzalez, associate professor of philosophy, has received both a Humboldt Research Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Humanities Research Fellowship to support sabbatical research on German philosopher Martin Heidegger. More

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