Meet the Fellows
Spring 2020 Buchanan Library Fellows
Cursive & Recursive: Generating Transcriptions of Archival Documents Using Machine Learning
Fellows: Abrahan Liddell, Rachel Wei, Kai Malcolm, Indraneel Pai, Nilai Vemula, Sahas Goli, Alfred Prah and Michelle Lin
Fellowship: Cursive & Recursive: Generating Transcriptions of Archival Documents Using Machine Learning
Encoding Music Manuscripts in Vanderbilt University Special Collections
Fellows: Anna Jandura-Cessna, Sara Clements, Cheston Humphreys, and Jeremiah Kamtman
Fellowship: Encoding Music Manuscripts in Vanderbilt University Special Collections
Ethics of Information
Fellows: Benjamin Bryce, JoJo Dong, Brian Duncan, Giselle Hengst, Chetan Immanneni, Jack Pantlin, and Annie Zhou
Fellowship: Ethics of Information
Gateway to Traditional Chinese Monuments: Data Curation and Web Development for Cultural Heritage Preservation
Fellows:Meilan Lu, Cameron Sheey, and Qisen Song
Netsuke: Gucci of the Edo Period
Fellows: Gawon Lee and Jiayi Hou
Fellowship: Netsuke: Gucci of the Edo Period
Tending to Popular Thought: What People Read and Why
Fellows: Qingyang Cui, Emma Claire Geitner, Jessica Prus, and Gabrielle Rodgriuez
Fellowship: Tending to Popular Thought: What People Read and Why
Vanderbilt Historical Tree Tour
Fellows: Taylor Hopkins, Alex Ismodes and Yuehao Yang
Fellowship: Vanderbilt Historical Tree Tour
Fall 2019 Buchanan Library Fellows
Strengthening Ties: Cornelius Vanderbilt and the Founding of Vanderbilt University
Fellows: Sterling Akers, Brigitte Jia, Grace LaFrentz, Linh Nguyen, and Jacob Schroeder
Fellowship: Strengthening Ties: Cornelius Vanderbilt and the Founding of Vanderbilt University
The Evolution of the Peabody Esplanade
Fellows: Alice Chen, Shrey Derasari, Varsha Nair, Summer Rucker, Cole Sullivan, and Robin Young
Fellowship: The Evolution of the Peabody Esplanade
Text Mining at Scale
Fellows: Rachel Fan, Nathan Guzman, Jong Eun Jung, Albert Shub
Fellowship: Text Mining at Scale
Spring 2019 Buchanan Library Fellows
Our Crowd: Student Life at the University of Nashville
Fellows: Eric J Asen and Sheronda G Adams
Fellowship: Our Crowd: Student Life at the University of Nashville
Fall 2018 Buchanan Library Fellows
Data Visualization and the Humanities
Fellows: Rasul Dent and Justin DeMello
Fellowship: Data Visualization and the Humanities
The News as It Happened: Journalism in Vanderbilt’s Special Collections
Fellows: Jenna Moldaver, Emma Oliver, and Skylar Froese
Fellowship: The News as It Happened: Journalism in Vanderbilt’s Special Collections
Summer 2018 Buchanan Library Fellows
From Listeners to Leaders: A History of Women at Vanderbilt
Fellows: Leah Koffler, Elizabeth Pearson, Daniel Mativo, Emilie Martinez
Fellowship: From Listeners to Leaders: A History of Women at Vanderbilt
Spring 2018 Buchanan Library Fellows
Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
Fellows: Mary Catherine Cook, Wills Dunham, Rachel Flores, Julie Jones and Shawn Perry
Fellowship: Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
The Power of Propaganda
Fellows: David Zou, Jorge Enrique Delgadillo Nunez Diaz, Justine (Ji Yoon) Hong and McKalee Steen
Fellowship: The Power of Propaganda
Fall 2017 Buchanan Library Fellows
The Once and Future Book
Fellows: Emma Dahill, Mason Eiss, Joseph Ghianni, Iksha Patra, Kelly Perry, and Tori Phillips
Fellowship: The Once and Future Book
Spring 2017 Fellows
Janna Adelstein is a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences from New York City majoring in American History and Art History. Currently, she is working on her history honors thesis on refugees from the Iranian Revolution who sought asylum in the United States. She is a congressional intern for Congressman Jim Cooper (TN - 05) and an editor for the Vanderbilt Historical Review.
Fellowship: Tracing the Movement of Populations
Andrea Delgado is a first-year Master’s degree candidate in Latin American Studies at Vanderbilt University focusing on Andean anthropology. She graduated from Harvard College in 2015 with a B.A. magna cum laude in Romance Languages and Literatures and a minor in Archaeology. Andrea has traveled extensively across Latin America, having studied and conducted research in Peru, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico. Her research interests include the uses of the archaeological past in 21st-century modernity; commodity studies; economic development; and indigenous languages. As a Library Fellow for the Helguera Project, Andrea is looking forward to expanding her breadth and depth of knowledge about 19th-century Colombian history and gaining experience working with library special collections.
Fellowship: Helguera Colombiana Independence Project (1790-1830)
Ellen Dement is a junior double majoring in American History and History of Art with a minor in American Studies. In the past, she has worked as a research assistant on a forthcoming book on early modernist female architects, an intern with a historic preservation consulting firm, and an office assistant with the Vanderbilt History Department. Ellen is also on the executive committee of the Vanderbilt History of Art Society, historian for her sorority, and a member of Historic Nashville, Inc.'s Easement Program Committee. She hopes to pursue a career in architectural history and historic preservation.
Fellowship: Visualizing Cass Gilbert’s Woolworth Building
Jessica Fletcher is a graduate student in the Center for Latin American Studies’ master’s program. She is interested in researching legal history, race and slavery, and the movement of peoples in colonial Latin America and the Atlantic World. Jessica studies history, Spanish language and literature, anthropology, and law, and is a recipient of a Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship in which she is learning Portuguese. Jessica is originally from Morgantown, West Virginia, and previously attended West Virginia University where she earned a Bachelor of Arts in history with minors in Spanish, Latin American Studies, and Professional Writing and Editing. Following graduation, she served as an English Teaching Assistant at the University of Salamanca in Spain and later taught Spanish with the West Virginia Department of Education as an elementary school Spanish teacher.
Fellowship: Helguera Colombiana Independence Project (1790-1830)
Dora Saclarides is from Northfield, Illinois, and attended Vanderbilt University where she earned a Bachelor of Arts in Spanish, Portuguese, and Latin American Studies and is currently a candidate in the 4+1 master's program at the Center for Latin American Studies. Her passion for languages led to her participation in the Fulbright U.S. Student Program during the 2016 academic year, where she worked as an English Teaching Assistant at the Federal University of Paraíba in João Pessoa and the Federal University of Campina Grande. She has an ongoing interest in inter-American literature and the sociology of literary translation. For her thesis, she is researching the proliferation of translated texts about Eastern Orthodox Christianity in the United States and Brazil and will examine how translated texts have contributed to the formation of "American" and “Brazilian” Orthodox identities in an eastern tradition.
Fellowship: Helguera Colombiana Independence Project (1790-1830)
2016 Fall Fellows
Jennifer Alexander, a PhD candidate in the graduate department of religion and fellow in the program in theology & practice, studies the gospel of Matthew and Jewish/Christian relations. Before coming to Vanderbilt, Jennifer received master’s degrees from Brite Divinity School and Cornell University. She was the recipient of the Thomas W. Mackesey Prize for Academic Excellence at Cornell and three faculty book awards at Brite. A native Texan, Jennifer earned her bachelor’s degrees in international business and German from the University of Texas at Austin with high honors and completed coursework in German during her junior year abroad in Salzburg. Since 2011 she has been an active member of the Vanderbilt Holocaust Lecture Series Committee. Jennifer is also the mother of two wonderful children, Sophie and Isaac.
Fellowship: The United States of America vs. Alfried Krupp, et al.
Jorge Delgadillo
is a second-year doctoral student at the History Department. He is interested in the history of the African and African-descended population in the western part of colonial Mexico. Particularly, his research pretends to bring Guadalajara into the Atlantic World. His studies have been funded by the Secretaría de Educación Pública (Mexico). He also was the recipient of the Tinker Summer Research Award 2016, which allowed him to conduct preliminary research for his dissertation prospectus. During this past summer he also had to opportunity to transcribe 16th and 17th century documents for the ESSSS database. Jorge’s research has been published by the University of Guadalajara. He works under the direction of professors Jane Landers, and also works closely with professors Celso T. Castilho and Edward Wright-Ríos.
Fellowship: Helguera Colombiana Collection
Fernando Varela
is a graduate student in the department of Spanish and Portuguese. Last year, he received his Bachelor’s degree (summa cum laude) from Florida Atlantic University. He is interested in 20th century Latin American literature and culture, particularly on issues regarding gender and sexualities studies. He was born and raised in Asunción, Paraguay, and moved to Florida when he was 15 years old.
Fellowship: Helguera Colombiana Collection
Christina Wang
is a senior pursuing a major in computer science and a minor in math. She was previously a member of the Varsity Women's Swim Team and has worked in both the McLaughlin Neuroscience Lab and the Category Laboratory at Vanderbilt. Currently, she is a swim instructor for the Nashville Dolphins team for children of special needs and is also a past participant in Alternative Winter Break and VSVS.
Fellowship: Augmented Realty Sandbox
2016 Summer Fellows
Jenifer Dodd
is a Ph.D. candidate in Vanderbilt's History department. She studies twentieth century U.S. cultural history, with specializations in women’s and gender studies and the history of psychiatry. Her dissertation examines attempts by feminists and psychiatrists to redefine sexual assault in the 1980s; the project argues that sexual violence and its definitions became a site where ideas about gender, socialization and mental illness were debated and ultimately transformed. More broadly, the project looks at the process of change in psychiatric thought and its institutional manifestation, as well as the interconnections between psychiatry, popular culture, and the law. Her research is supported by the Woodrow Wilson Dissertation Fellowship in Women’s Studies and the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe. Jenifer has also done research on the role of psychedelic drugs in shaping psychiatric thought in the 1960s and 1970s. This work examines the use of these drugs in attempts to re-frame schizophrenia as a perceptual disorder. More broadly, this research looks at theories of the mind that emphasize the continuity between pathology and normality.
Fellowship: Creating a Vernacular Archive for the History of Medicine: Science & the Subject’s Perspective
Tessa A. Eidelman
is a PhD student in the Community Research and Action program at Peabody College. She is interested in the fields of urban studies, critical geography, and qualitative research methods. Her research interests include the social justice, policy, and governance issues bound up with processes of urban change and urban renewal and how meaning is made around acts of resistance pertaining to claims on space. Tessa is from Cape Town, South Africa. Prior to pursuing her doctoral studies at Vanderbilt she worked as an occupational therapist for several years.
Fellowship: Mapping Access
2016 Spring Fellows
Jennifer Alexander, a PhD candidate in the graduate department of religion and fellow in the program in theology & practice, studies the gospel of Matthew and Jewish/Christian relations. Her dissertation focuses on an enigmatic verse: Matthew 19:12. During the 2014-15 academic year she taught at Belmont University. Before coming to Vanderbilt, Jennifer received master’s degrees from Brite Divinity School and Cornell University. She was the recipient of the Thomas W. Mackesey Prize for Academic Excellence at Cornell and three faculty book awards at Brite. A native Texan, Jennifer earned her bachelor’s degrees in international business and German from the University of Texas at Austin with high honors and completed coursework in German during her junior year abroad in Salzburg. Since 2011 she has been an active member of the Vanderbilt Holocaust Lecture Series Committee. Jennifer is also the mother of two wonderful children, Sophie and Isaac.
Fellowship: The United States of America vs. Alfried Krupp, et al.
Alex Ayris
is a third-year PhD candidate in the religion department, focusing on historical studies. His primary interests are religion and politics in early modern England, Reformation Europe, and Western political thought from the ancient to the early modern period. His dissertation research examines religious and political polemic in Elizabethan England.
Fellowship: Linked Data from the Medieval Middle East
Jenifer Dodd
is a Ph.D. candidate in Vanderbilt's History department. She studies twentieth century U.S. cultural history, with specializations in women’s and gender studies and the history of psychiatry. Her dissertation examines attempts by feminists and psychiatrists to redefine sexual assault in the 1980s; the project argues that sexual violence and its definitions became a site where ideas about gender, socialization and mental illness were debated and ultimately transformed. More broadly, the project looks at the process of change in psychiatric thought and its institutional manifestation, as well as the interconnections between psychiatry, popular culture, and the law. Her research is supported by the Woodrow Wilson Dissertation Fellowship in Women’s Studies and the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe. Jenifer has also done research on the role of psychedelic drugs in shaping psychiatric thought in the 1960s and 1970s. This work examines the use of these drugs in attempts to re-frame schizophrenia as a perceptual disorder. More broadly, this research looks at theories of the mind that emphasize the continuity between pathology and normality.
Fellowship: Creating a Vernacular Archive for the History of Medicine: Science & the Subject’s Perspective
Mike Kohut
is a PhD candidate in the anthropology department. He studies cultural dimensions of teaching evolution in Tennessee public schools. Using a mixed methods approach that includes structured and unstructured interviews, as well as long-term ethnographic fieldwork, his doctoral research documents the ways that the contours of the conflict over evolution education are shaped by the social commitments of various actors (including teachers, students and state policy-makers). Mike has conducted research in eastern Tennessee and southern Mexico.
Fellowship: Qualitative Analysis of Research Practices in Religion
Tiago Fernandes Maranhão
is a first year PhD student at the history department working with Dr. Marshall Eakin. Tiago has a BA in history from the Federal University of Pernambuco (Brazil) and a MA in political science from the University of Lisbon (Portugal). He was a college professor in Brazil for six years and his master’s work was a comparative analysis of the Portuguese and the Brazilian migration policies during World War II under their authoritarian regimes. He is currently interested in questions concerning race, nation and region in early 20th century Latin America/Brazil.
Fellowship: Manuel Zapata Olivella Collection: The Ethnographic Collection
Brad Wright
is a PhD student in history at Vanderbilt. His research focuses on social movements and democracy in urban Mexico since the 1960s, with special emphasis on issues of class, religion, popular culture, and urban space. He holds an MA in history from Middle Tennessee State University, and a BA in philosophy from the University of Arkansas. Prior to enrolling at Vanderbilt, Wright worked as a community organizer for immigrant and social justice organizations in Tennessee and served as a United Methodist local pastor in Arkansas.
Fellowship: Manuel Zapata Olivella Collection: The Ethnographic Collection
Leah Samples
is a M.Ed. student in the community development & action program. Her research interests center on the intersection of disability and technology, as well as qualitative methods. Leah is specifically interested in barriers to participation and citizenship in the lives of disabled people. Outside of school she enjoys trying new restaurants, competing in local trivia competitions and getting together with friends.
Fellowship: Mapping Access
Queen Stevenson
is a junior in the College of Arts and Science, where she is majoring in communication studies. In addition to being a Library Dean's Fellow, she is also the opinion editor of The Vanderbilt Hustler and the vice president of Vanderbilt's African Student Union. Queen hails from Antioch, a Nashville suburb, and attended nearby Martin Luther King, Jr. Magnet High School. In her free time, she enjoys reading books and spending intentional time with friends and strangers alike, always asking questions. She hopes to one day become a speechwriter.
Fellowship: Wisdom Digitized, Wisdom Multiplied
Nadejda Webb
is a first year graduate student in Vanderbilt's English PhD program. As an undergraduate at CUNY Hunter College, she was a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow and a Pipeline Fellow. She is currently interested in hegemony and critical race theory. She mainly focuses on 20th and 21st century African American literature but also sees investments of her work within the "post"-colonial.
Fellowship: Wisdom Digitized, Wisdom Multiplied
2015 Fall Fellows
Haley Brown is a junior in the Vanderbilt College of Arts and Science with majors in both art history and psychology and a minor in corporate strategy. She has been on the Dean's List for each of her semesters at Vanderbilt. Ms. Brown is currently Small Groups Coordinator of the Vanderbilt chapter of Best Buddies and Vice President of the History of Art Society. She studied abroad over the summer in Italy learning about ancient Roman art and architecture and plans to return in the future to continue her studies. Haley was co-curator of the Vanderbilt Fine Art Gallery's past exhibit entitled Up Close and Personal: Intimate Devotions and Everyday Objects from Late Antiquity and has plans to publish the catalog during the next year. Haley will be presenting her Dean's Fellow project at the 2016 College Book Art Association Conference in January.
Fellowship: Folding, Printing, Binding, Cutting: Contemporary Artist’s Books Project
Jenifer Dodd
is a Ph.D. candidate in Vanderbilt's History department. She studies twentieth century U.S. cultural history, with specializations in women’s and gender studies and the history of psychiatry. Her dissertation examines attempts by feminists and psychiatrists to redefine sexual assault in the 1980s; the project argues that sexual violence and its definitions became a site where ideas about gender, socialization and mental illness were debated and ultimately transformed. More broadly, the project looks at the process of change in psychiatric thought and its institutional manifestation, as well as the interconnections between psychiatry, popular culture, and the law. Her research is supported by the Woodrow Wilson Dissertation Fellowship in Women’s Studies and the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe. Jenifer has also done research on the role of psychedelic drugs in shaping psychiatric thought in the 1960s and 1970s. This work examines the use of these drugs in attempts to re-frame schizophrenia as a perceptual disorder. More broadly, this research looks at theories of the mind that emphasize the continuity between pathology and normality.
Fellowship: Creating a Vernacular Archive for the History of Medicine: Science & the Subject’s Perspective
Brian Entwistle
is a senior majoring in trombone performance in the Blair School of Music. He is a member of the Vanderbilt Wind Symphony, Vanderbilt Orchestra, the Blair Big Band, the Blair Trombone Quartet, and the Vanderbilt University Trombone Choir. He is a senior class representative on the Blair Student Council and the student manager of the Wind Symphony, as well as a member of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia music fraternity. He plans to spend a year or two in Nashville in the freelance music scene before attending graduate school to pursue his goal of orchestral performance.
Fellowship: Honoring the Life of Composer Alfred H. Bartles
Emma Banks
is a PhD student in cultural anthropology. She conducts ethnographic research in La Guajira, Colombia, home to the world’s largest open pit coalmine. Her dissertation project focuses on the ways in which Colombian laws aimed at mitigating land and resource conflicts have led to new tensions between rural communities, natural resource extraction corporations, and state institutions as they debate how to distribute land and resource wealth. She hopes her research can contribute to improving Colombia’s post-conflict land redistribution policies to better meet the needs of the most vulnerable and marginalized people. After graduating with a BA from Cornell University, she lived and worked in Cochabamba, Bolivia, for two years. Her research interests include corporations, natural resource extraction, spatial analysis, the state, violence, development, law, and conflict. She has an ongoing interest in how history and anthropology inform each other, believing that we must understand the past if we wish to comprehend the present.
Fellowship: 19th Century Broadsides in the Helguera Colombian Collection
Sean King
is a senior in the Department of Biological Sciences honors program, with a major in molecular and cellular biology and a minor in chemistry. He is currently a member of the Rokas Lab where his research focuses on the genomics of secondary metabolism in microbial eukaryotes. His thesis describes interspecies horizontal gene transfer and variations in the acquisition, expression and maintenance of clustered genes that encode complex metabolic pathways involved in the production of antibiotic and toxic biomolecules. Following graduation, he plans on pursuing a PhD in the field of genomics.
Fellowship: Bioimages: a Semantic Web Resource
Cecily Larison
is a rising senior in the Vanderbilt College of Arts and Science. She is a participant in the history department's honors program, with a second major in English literature and a minor in philosophy. Cecily has the honor of being Vanderbilt University Theatre's president for the 2015/2016 school year, and has been involved in theatre throughout her life. She is also a member of SPEAR, Vanderbilt Feminists, and a past participant in Vanderbilt Alternative Spring Break. Along with completing her Dean's Fellow project, Cecily will be volunteering this summer at the Tennessee ACLU.
Fellowship: Interactive Research Tutorials in the Law library
Lian Liu
is pursuing a Master's degree in Computer Science at Vanderbilt University. He holds a B.E. in Biomedical Engineering from Southern Medical University, China. In 2013, he worked with two other students at the Laboratory of Biomedical Imaging, Southern Medical University, helping develop an automatic cell measuring plug-in for ImageJ.
Fellowship: Responsive Web Design for the Revised Common Lectionary Website
2015 Spring Fellows
Danielle Beaujon
is a senior in the Vanderbilt History department’s highly selective Honors Program and plans to attend graduate school in History. She is the recipient of numerous awards during her time at Vanderbilt, including the Gertrude Casebier Undergraduate Research Grant (2014), and is a member of the Athenian Honors Society, Phi Alpha Theta History Major Honors Fraternity, Pi Delta Phi French Major Honors Society and other honorary organizations. Ms. Beaujon worked over the summer as an intern at the Smithsonian Institution Archives in Washington DC. She speaks fluent French and, as a dancer, has successfully choreographed musicals for Vanderbilt Off-Broadway.
Fellowship: Wish You Were Here: Enrico Caruso Postcard Project
Molly S. Lasagna
is pursuing a Masters of Divinity degree at Vanderbilt Divinity School. Previously, Ms. Lasagna served as a Research and Policy Analyst for the American Institutes for Research (AIR), providing technical assistance for the Educator Quality Team. She is the co-author of Improving Teacher Quality: A Guide for Education Leaders. Prior to her work at AIR, she earned a Master’s degree in Urban Education Policy from Brown University, a Master’s in Teaching degree from the University of Virginia in Secondary English Education, and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Columbia University. She is enrolled in the spring 2015 Vanderbilt class, The Incarnational Art of Flannery O’Connor, where the author will be studied as a “literary theologian.”
Fellowship:
The Letters of Flannery O’Connor: A Social Network Analysis
Gabriela Oré Menéndez
is a Peruvian archaeologist with interests in pre-Hispanic imperialism in the Andean region, with a focus on provincial relations in the Inka Empire. She graduated from the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (PUCP), where she earned her B.A. in Archaeology (2007) and her Masters degree in Archaeology with a mention in Andean Studies (2012). Oré taught Archaeological Survey for four years at the same university. More recently she has studied ceramic production using archaeometric methods and has been particularly interested in the development of production and exchange networks in the Inka Empire. She also has an ongoing interest in the development and application of new spatial technologies for archaeological research. Ms. Oré is a PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology at Vanderbilt University.
Fellowship: Map Digitization Project
Anjelica Saulsberry
is a senior, graduating with a major in Neuroscience and a minor in Child Development from Vanderbilt University. She has completed three summer fellowships with St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in the Mckinney-Freeman Laboratory aiding in research to further understand the maintenance and potentiation of Hematopoetic stem cells. She is currently a member of the Harrison Laboratory in the Vanderbilt Medical Center analyzing the role of diet in the relationship between metabolic syndrome and Alzheimer's pathology. She is a recipient of the Creative Enterprise and Public Policy Scholarship and completed a summer internship with Boston Healthcare for the Homeless to learn first-hand how a non-profit healthcare organization is adapting to changes under the Affordable Care Act. She was Vanderbilt University's Student Ambassador at the 2014 Southeastern Conference (SEC) Symposium on Obesity Research in Atlanta, GA, and she is excited to attend medical school in the fall of 2015.
Fellowship: Minecraft Project
2014 Fall Fellows
Corey Mackenzie Bowen
is a senior majoring in Anthropology and Classics. Mr. Bowen spent eight months working with the Mississippi Band of the Choctaw Indians as a research assistant for the USET-VU Native American Research Center for Health. In summer 2013, he served as crew chief and GIS specialist on the Proyecto de Investigación Arqueológio Regional Ancash archeological operation in the Peruvian Andes. He worked at the same site this past summer, conducting independent research, and mapping and documenting architecture using photography, GPS, mobile GIS applications and computer illustrations. Mr. Bowen is in the Honors program in Anthropology and is a member of the Spirit of Gold Marching Band and Victory A Cappella.
Fellowship: Historical Tour of the University
Akailah Jenkins
is a senior in the College of Arts and Science majoring in Sociology and American Studies with a minor in English. She is a recipient of the 2014-2015 Spouses Education Scholarship from the Congressional Black Caucus, a 2014 GPA Award recipient of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., and a Dean’s List Award recipient. She has been accepted as an early decision applicant with the Teach for American 2015 Corps and will be working in Baltimore, Maryland, after graduation. While at Vanderbilt University, Ms. Jenkins has worked as a research assistant with HALF (Helping At-Risk Students Learn Fractions) from 2011 to 2014, involving data collection at Nashville elementary and middle schools. She has also served as a research assistant for Betty’s Brain Study, which examines the effectiveness of guided skill practice in open-ended learning environments on student comprehension. Ms. Jenkins is the president of the Vanderbilt NAACP Chapter.
Fellowship: Recording History as It Happened: The Vanderbilt IMPACT Symposium
Nicolette M. Kostiw
is a PhD candidate in Latin American history at Vanderbilt University. In 2012, she received the Ida B. Wells Dissertation Award from the Coordinating Council for Women in History and was also appointed a J. León Helguera Endowment Fellow. Previously, Ms. Kostiw was the recipient of UCLA’s James and Sylvia Thayer Research Fellowship, a Boren Dissertation Fellowship from the National Security Education Program, and a Binkley & Weaver Grant for Preliminary Dissertation Research. She holds a B.A. in history and Spanish as well as a M.A. in Spanish from West Virginia University.
Fellowship: Vanderbilt Libraries Collections Topics in Wikipedia
Fernanda Bretones Lane
is a PhD candidate in history at Vanderbilt University and is engaged in research on Cuba and its connections with the greater Caribbean. She holds a master’s in social history from the University of São Paulo, Brazil, a master’s in Iberian history from the University Jaume I, Spain, and a B.A. in history from Pontificia Universidade Católica de São Paulo, Brazil. Ms. Bretones has worked in archives in Cuba, Spain and Brazil and received a Pre-Prospectus summer fellowship from the Cuban Heritage Collection. She is the recipient of a Vanderbilt Latin American Studies field research grant and two research grants from the Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo.
Fellowship: Manuel Zapata Olivella Collections Correspondence
Gretchen Selcke
is a PhD candidate in Spanish at Vanderbilt University, completing her doctorate on “Isolation on and off the Island: The Politics of Displacement in Contemporary Spanish Caribbean Fiction.” She was the recipient of the E. Inman Fox Graduate Teaching Award, the Enhancing Graduate Education Grant (2009-2011) and was a graduate scholar summer fellow at the Center for the Americas at Vanderbilt. She graduated summa cum laude from Bowdoin College with a B.A. in Spanish and history. Ms. Selcke has served on the editorial board of the Afro-Hispanic Review since 2006 and edited a special issue honoring Zapata Olivella while she was serving as assistant editor on the journal.
Fellowship: Manuel Zapata Olivella Collections Correspondence
Xueqing (Ashley) Shan
is a junior in the College of Arts and Science studying sociology and philosophy. She has been on the Dean’s List at Vanderbilt since her freshman year. Ms. Shan has worked on several faculty-guided research projects with topics including organizational studies literature, globalization of American education, and racial differences in Christian music. She interned at the New Economy Project in New York in the summer of 2014, working on financial justice and community development issues. Ms. Shan is a member of the Vanderbilt chapters of Phi Eta Sigma Honor Society and the Alpha Lambda Delta National Honor Society and a member of the Vanderbilt Lotus Eaters Sophomore Honor Society. She presented at the Vanderbilt Undergraduate Writing Symposium in the spring of 2014, and will be presenting findings of the racial differences in Christian music research at the Association of Sociology of Religion Annual Meeting in San Francisco in mid-August.
Fellowship: Prepare to Practice
2014 Fellows
M. Brielle Harbin
is a fourth-year doctoral student in political science. Her dissertation examines how political leaders use narratives to engage citizens and their effect on citizens' political beliefs and behavior. Brielle holds an M.A. in political science from Brown University and a B.A. in government from Smith College. She is a recipient of a Provost Graduate Fellowship and is a Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) Scholar.
Fellowship: Vanderbilt Television News Archive: Online Exhibit of Presidential Speeches
Kevin Patrick Milewski
is a Vanderbilt junior, majoring in history with minors in French and English. A member of the Arts & Sciences College Scholars Honors program and the Phi Alpha Theta Historical Honor Society, Kevin recently participated in the Vanderbilt-in-France program in Aix. He was twice named a junior fellow at the Library of Congress, where he worked on the Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection of book illustration
Fellowship: Illustrated editions of Les Fleurs du Mal (1857) by Charles Baudelaire
Gloria Clemencia Perez
is a first-year doctoral student in Socio-Cultural Anthropology, conducting work on how internally displaced groups bargain and navigate their environment in difficult times. For ten years, Gloria worked as a physician in the Colombian Andes, followed by research at the Immune Disease Institute at Harvard Medical School. A native Colombian, Gloria holds an M.A. in Socio-Cultural Anthropology and a B.A. in Anthropology from the University of Toronto. She is the 2013 recipient of The Bob Shirley Prize in Anthropology and also the recipient of the Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Doctoral Fellowship, the most important award for social scientists in Canada.
Fellowship: Helguera Colombian Collection
Robert C.P. Steiner
is a first-year candidate for Master of Education in human development counseling. He holds his J.D. from the University of Wyoming and an M.S. in family financial planning & counseling and B.A. in history and political science, cum laude, from the University of Alabama. Robert is the recipient of the Peabody College Dean’s Tuition Scholarship and numerous past scholarships and awards.
Fellowship: Historical Tour of the University
2013 Fall Fellows
Taylor Elyse Bryant
is a junior, double majoring in human and organizational development and Spanish. She is a Chancellor's Scholarship recipient, on the Dean's List, and a member of the Junior Athenian Honors Society. Taylor has a background in web design and blogging, and contributes to magazines and websites as a writer and photographer.
Fellowship: Vanderbilt Libraries Website Visual Communications
Yun Cha
is a junior majoring in Sociology. A member of the Sociology Department Honors program, Yun is also a College Scholar and a member of Collegiate Leadership Vanderbilt. He has worked as a teaching assistant at the Gyeonggi Academy of Foreign Languages in South Korea and attended the International Summer Institute at Seoul National University.
Fellowship: Vanderbilt Libraries Special Collections Topics in Wikipedia
2012 Spring Fellow
Emily Carlton Cook
, a Vanderbilt senior, curated an interactive exhibition with photographs selected from the Jack Corn Collection at Vanderbilt University Special Collections. Mr. Corn worked for The Tennessean for 23 years, after which he worked as the director of photography for the Chicago Tribune from 1984 to 1991. His photograph was selected by Lady Bird Johnson to be part of the publicity for President Johnson’s War on Poverty. His collection of photographs of coal mining communities in Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia and West Virginia, taken from 1956 to 2003, convey the hardship, exploitation, and steadfastness of the communities during the 49-year period.
Fellowship: Jack Corn Collection of Appalachian Photographs