Download PDF Version - Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study

September 2005
8–13
Fellows’ Arrival and Orientation
Works-in-Progress
“One might think an operations researcher on sabbatical would
prefer to interact with others from the same discipline, or at the
very least, with other scientists and engineers,” said Radcliffe fellow
Anna Nagurney, a mathematician from the University of Massachusetts
at Amherst. “But some of the most interesting questions after
my seminar came from nonscientists, and some of the presentations
that I found most profound and even haunting were by the
nonscientists.”
In this reflection, Nagurney describes an experience that occurs
again and again at the Radcliffe Institute: intense learning across
disciplines and the arts. One of the many venues for these
exchanges is the weekly fellows’ presentations, which occur every
Wednesday during the academic year.
Held in the third-floor Colloquium Room on Concord Avenue, fellows’
presentations ranged this past year from a discussion of biblical
satire in the eighteenth century to the legal rights of today’s
prisoners. Each member of the group of ten creative artists, sixteen
humanists, thirteen social scientists, and twelve natural scientists
presented his or her work-in-progress to Radcliffe colleagues and
the wider Harvard community.
Judith Vichniac, director of the fellowship program, introduced fellows
before their presentations, providing background and context
for listeners. She described several highlights of the past year’s
presentation calendar. Artist Ann Carlson gave an overview of her
interdisciplinary work that included dancing (“We’re never not
dancing,” Carlson claims) and discussed how things become commodities
or consumer goods in American life.
Three fellows presented work on different aspects of slavery. Tera
W. Hunter, who held a Mary I. Bunting Institute Fellowship, presented
research on black marriages among slaves, free blacks, and
ex-slaves during the nineteenth century. Eve M. Troutt Powell,
who held the Sargent-Faull Fellowship, discussed her work on Saint
Josephine Bakhita, a Sudanese woman kidnapped and sold as a
slave in the nineteenth century. And Vincent Brown, the Lillian Gollay
Knafel Fellow, talked about Jamaican slave society.
Another high point in the fellows’ presentations was materials scientist
Rachel S. Goldman’s discussion of her research on energysaving
technologies. Goldman, who held the Augustus Anson
Whitney Fellowship at Radcliffe, used a scanning tunneling microscope
in the basement of Harvard’s Bauer Laboratory to conduct
her research.
Institute Celebrates Pulitzer Wins
The Institute celebrated on April 19 when a current and a former
Radcliffe fellow were honored with Pulitzer Prizes. Geraldine
Brooks, who held the Vera M. Schuyler Fellowship at Radcliffe, won
in fiction for her novel March (Viking, 2005); and Caroline Elkins RI
’04, now the Hugh K. Foster Associate Professor of African Studies
in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard, won in nonfiction
for Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag in Kenya
(Holt, 2005). While other Radcliffe and Bunting fellows have won
Pulitzer Prizes, this was the first time that two
fellows received the awards simultaneously.
Homi Bhabha and Theda Skocpol Join Institute as Senior
Advisors
Homi K. Bhabha RI ’05 and Theda Skocpol AM ’72, PhD ’75, distinguished
members of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, joined
the Radcliffe Institute as senior advisors this past year. Bhabha, the
Anne F. Rothenberg Professor of English and American Literature
and director of the Humanities Center, became the Institute’s
senior advisor in the humanities on July 1, 2005. He was a Radcliffe
Institute fellow in 2004–2005 and served as a faculty associate at
the Institute for three years before becoming a senior advisor.
Skocpol, dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, is
the Victor S. Thomas Professor of Government and Sociology and
director of the Center for American Political Studies. She was
named the Institute’s senior advisor in the social sciences effective
January 1, 2006. Both professors hold three-year appointments at
Radcliffe.
12
www.radcliffe.edu