Outstanding humanities graduate students receive Hall Center research awards, internships

LAWRENCE – The Hall Center for the Humanities has recognized several outstanding humanities graduate students with summer research awards and internships. These summer funding opportunities are part of the center’s significant level of support for graduate research.

The Hall Center's Humanities Summer Graduate Internship program supports exceptional and well-rounded doctoral or master's degree students who demonstrate the ability to make outstanding contributions in their chosen humanities or social science disciplines.

• Harley Davidson, doctoral candidate in history, will intern at the National World War I Museum. This internship position will offer Davidson the opportunity to work at a unique, world-class history museum with a large, diverse collection and museum professional staff. Projects include creating public space information displays using material from the museum's archival collection and expanding existing and creating new digital content.
• Amber Roberts Graham, doctoral candidate in history, will intern at the Truman Library Institute by assisting with two interrelated projects: marketing the museum and membership programs through several audience development strategies and conducting the internal and external research necessary for them to produce a useful summary of the opportunities for growing participation in the Truman Library's programs.
• Rebecca Dickman, master's degree student in museum studies, will intern at the Mid-America Arts Alliance. Among other tasks, Dickman will research and develop bibliographies for humanities and visual arts exhibition projects as directed; organize and create entries for an in-house library database; and assist with documentation and installation of in-house exhibitions.
• Alyse Bensel, doctoral student in English, will intern with the Kansas Humanities Council, where she will be responsible for researching and writing theater scripts exploring three key moments in Kansas environmental history since the 1860s. Following the completion of the materials outlined above, KHC will organize and premiere the work at sites across Kansas. Scripts and instructions will be made available for free download from the KHC website.
• Meaghan Kelly, master's degree student in English, will intern at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. This internship will provide a comprehensive experience in fundraising with an emphasis in prospect research, donor data management, and stewardship and grant-writing. Kelly will provide support to the museum's advancement division by assisting with varied administrative tasks.
• Katrina Lynn, doctoral student in history, will intern with the Franklin County Historical Society. Lynn will conduct the preliminary research to determine the feasibility of several large-scale projects made possible by the recent completion of the scanning of some 6,000 negatives of photographs taken during the 1930s, '40s and '50s in Ottawa and its environs, many of which were published in the Ottawa newspaper. Within this collection are several hundred images documenting the World War II era, which are representative of small-town America during the war years.

In addition to the internships, four outstanding graduate students were selected for Graduate Summer Research Awards. These awards offer summer support for graduate students engaged in humanistic dissertation research and writing. The goal of these awards is to make possible full-time dissertation work for the months of June and July.

The four winners:

• Alison Miller, art history, “Mother of the Nation: Femininity, Modernity, and Class in the Image of Empress Teimei”
• Evgeny Grishin, history, “Becoming a ‘Schismatic’: The Concepts of the ‘Schism’ and ‘Schismatic’ in the Church and State Discourses of 17th and 18th-century Russia”
• Renee Harris, English, “Reading Keats: Sociability and the Work of Affect”
• David Trimbach, geography, “Citizenship Capital in Narva, Estonia”

These students will organize the Interdisciplinary Graduate Research Workshops during the academic year following the summer of support, where they and fellow graduate students will present their work. The Hall Center will post workshop meeting dates on its website. The Graduate Summer Research Awards are made possible by the support of the Friends of the Hall Center.