Stanford Humanities Center
Next year’s cohort will span undergraduate students to senior professors, including Hume Honors Fellows and International Visitors to be appointed in the coming months.
The Stanford Humanities Center (SHC) will welcome more than 50 new and returning fellows in the upcoming 2024–25 academic year. They range from undergraduate students to tenured faculty and represent humanistic scholarship in American studies; anthropology; art history; Asian American studies; classics; communications; East Asian studies; English; gender and sexuality studies; history; music; philosophy; religious studies; and other fields. In the collegial environment of the Center, the fellows will pursue individual research projects, share ideas in seminars and lectures, and participate in the many workshops and public events that fill the Center’s calendar.
Six of next year’s fellows come from within Stanford's faculty: Charlotte Fonrobert (Religious Studies), Indra Levy (East Asian Languages and Cultures), Mark McGurl (English), Richard Meyer (Art and Art History), Barbara Pitkin (Religious Studies), and Brent Sockness (Religious Studies).
Eight highly competitive external faculty fellowships have been awarded to La Marr Jurelle Bruce (University of Maryland), Mike Chin (University of California, Davis), Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi (University of California, Los Angeles), Sun-ha Hong (Simon Fraser University), Dana Murphy (California Institute of Technology), Kristin Oberiano (Wesleyan University), Nilay Özök-Gündoğan (Florida State University), and Paul Ramírez (Northwestern University).
They’ll be joined by 12 Stanford PhD students, who were awarded Dissertation Prize Fellowships and Next Generation Scholar Fellowships. Launched in 2021, the Next Generation Scholar Program is the Center’s newest fellowship and it supports Stanford graduate students in year seven or above whose work demonstrates the highest distinction and the promise of future achievement. The program serves as a bridge between the end of the university's formal support and the transition to a postdoctoral fellowship or a faculty position.
The Center will also welcome 10 Mellon postdoctoral fellows—recent PhDs at the start of their careers who pursue research while teaching courses as a lecturer in a Stanford humanities department. Offered as a two-year term (with the possibility of a third-year extension), the Mellon Fellowship is currently directed by Kären Wigen, Frances and Charles Field Professor in History at Stanford.
In the fall, the Center will add to its fellowship community 10 undergraduate Hume Honors Fellows writing their senior theses on humanities topics, as well as five International Visitors from around the globe to share their research with faculty and students during short-term residencies. The SHC is currently co-hosting visiting scholar and lecturer Álvaro Contreras, IIE-SRF fellow (Institute of International Education’s Scholar Rescue Fund) with the Department of Iberian and Latin American Cultures, through February 2025.
Additionally, the Center offers support to 10 Stanford graduate students to serve as Digital Public Fellows, working with other SHC Fellows and speakers to identify topics and solicit content in all media to publish on Arcade, the open-access website that forms an integral part of the SHC’s online home.
“Our fellows are the heart and soul of the Center,” says Director Roland Greene. “They represent all stages of intellectual life—prominent senior figures in their fields; postdoctoral scholars at the beginning of their careers; PhD students completing dissertations; and undergraduates writing their own theses. With more than 50 of them in residence over the course of year, it’s gratifying to see how the fellows and their projects complement and often improve each other, and how their work is enlivened by our visiting speakers.”
The Center's fellowships are made possible by gifts and grants from the following individuals, foundations, and Stanford offices: The Esther Hayfer Bloom Estate, Theodore H. and Frances K. Geballe, Mimi and Peter Haas, Marta Sutton Weeks, the Mericos Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the office of the Dean of Humanities and Sciences.
The Center will begin accepting applications for the 2025–26 academic year in August. Details about fellowships, including application instructions and eligibility, are available online.
About the Stanford Humanities Center
Established in 1980, the Stanford Humanities Center sponsors advanced research in the humanities and the interpretive social sciences by investing in experiences—fellowships, workshops, lectures, and other events—that enrich research in and across the disciplines. Through a partnership with the renowned Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis (CESTA), the Humanities Center embraces emerging digital methods to complement traditional kinds of analysis and interpretation. Together, the Stanford Humanities Center and CESTA serve as the hub of an international network of fellows, visiting scholars, students, and alumni. For further information, please visit shc.stanford.edu.
2024–25 Fellows and Projects
Eduardo Acosta
Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow
PhD, University of Chicago
Department of History, Stanford University
A River of Ruined Capitals: History and Environmental Change in Early Modern Bengal
La Marr Jurelle Bruce
External Faculty Fellow
Department of American Studies, University of Maryland
The Afromantic: Black Love Out Yonder
Mike Chin
External Faculty Fellow
Department of Classics, University of California, Davis
Diocletian: A Reckless Autobiography
Austin Clements
SHC Dissertation Prize Fellow
Department of History, Stanford University
Fear for a Lost God: Religion and the Transformation of the American Right, 1890–1950
Álvaro Contreras
SHC Scholar Affiliate
Institute for International Educational-Scholar Rescue Fund, and Department of Iberian and Latin American Cultures, Stanford University (March 2023 through February 2025)
Genealogies of Police Narratives in Latin America
Jon Cooper
SHC Dissertation Prize Fellow
Department of History, Stanford University
Dealing with Money: The Invention of Economics in England, 1544–1623
Armen Davoudian
Next Generation Scholar
Department of English, Stanford University
Elizabeth Bishop and Metanoia: How Poems Change Their Minds
Samia Errazzouki
Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow
PhD, University of California, Davis
Department of History, Stanford University
The Saharan Passage: Sugar, Slavery, and Empire in the African Atlantic
Julien Fischer
Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow
PhD, Duke University
Program in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Stanford University
The Lure of Origins: Sexology and the Trans Autobiographical Mandate
Charlotte Fonrobert
Internal Faculty Fellow
Department of Religious Studies, Stanford University
Re-Placing the Nation: Jewish Diaspora and Neighborhood
Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi
External Faculty Fellow
Department of Asian American Studies, University of California, Los Angeles
Revisiting the Southern Question: South Korea, South Vietnam, and the U.S. South
Pheaross Graham
Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow
PhD, University of California, Los Angeles
Department of Music, Stanford University
Visions of the Pianistic Self: Don Shirley, Rachmaninoff, and Music Performance Studies
Emily Greenfield
Next Generation Scholar
Department of History, Stanford University
“Carry Me Back to Old Virginia”: Slavery, Memory, and the Making of a National Shrine
Munir Gur
SHC Dissertation Prize Fellow
Department of Music, Stanford University
Sensory Reimaginings of Citizenship: Makam and Belonging across Contemporary Greece and Turkey
Sun-ha Hong
External Faculty Fellow
Department of Communications, Simon Fraser University
Predictions without Futures: Repetition and Stagnation in Dreams of Artificial Intelligence
Paul Johnston
Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow
PhD, Harvard University
Department of Classics, Stanford University
Roman Literature in Greek and Latin: Bilingualism, Empire and the Shaping of the Classical Canon
Josefine Klingspor
Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow
PhD, Yale University
Department of Philosophy, Stanford University
Spinoza on Metaphysical Constitution
Mattea Koon
SHC Dissertation Prize Fellow
Department of English, Stanford University
Analogical: An Intellectual History of Early Modern Analogy
Indra Levy
Internal Faculty Fellow
Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Stanford University
Can the Meiji Man Laugh?
Ali Madani
Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow
PhD, Brown University
Department of English, Stanford University
Categorical Fictions: Literary History, Colonialism, and the Forms of Early Modern English
Mark McGurl
Internal Faculty Fellow
Department of English, Stanford University
Word Magic: The Contemporaneity of Epic Fantasy
Richard Meyer
Internal Faculty Fellow
Department of Art and Art History, Stanford University
Andy Warhol's Guide to Everyday Life
Erica Camisa Morale
Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow
PhD, University of Southern California
Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Stanford University
The Vanishing Dead Body and the Emerging Persona in Early Modern East Slavic Lyrics
Dana Murphy
External Faculty Fellow
Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences, California Institute of Technology
Foremother Love: Phillis Wheatley and Black Feminist Criticism
Bryan Norton
Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow
PhD, University of Pennsylvania
Department of German Studies, Stanford University
Fragments of the Concrete: Ecology and Technical Media in German Romanticism
Kristin Oberiano
External Faculty Fellow
Department of History, Wesleyan University
War Stories, Typhoon Tales: An Ecological History of the Marianas Archipelago
Nilay Özök-Gündoğan
External Faculty Fellow
Department of History, Florida State University
Forging Empire: Mineral Extraction, State-Making, and the Colonization of Ottoman Kurdistan, 1720–1870
Joshua Phillips
Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow
PhD, Yale University
Department of Linguistics, Stanford University
At the Intersection of Temporal and Modal interpretation: Essays on Irreality
Barbara Pitkin
Internal Faculty Fellow
Department of Religious Studies, Stanford University
Sebastian Franck (1499–1542), the Bible, and Mysticism
Paul Ramírez
External Faculty Fellow
Department of History, Northwestern University
Salt of the Santos: A History of Devoted Work
Isabel Salovaara
SHC Dissertation Prize Fellow
Department of Anthropology, Stanford University
Engendering the State: Aspiration, Government Jobs, and the Coaching Industry in Bihar, India
Brent Sockness
Internal Faculty Fellow
Department of Religious Studies, Stanford University
Ernst Troeltsch’s Ethical Thought
Rupert Sparling
SHC Dissertation Prize Fellow
Department of Philosophy, Stanford University
The Varieties of Normativity in Plato
Chepchirchir Tirop
SHC Dissertation Prize Fellow
Department of History, Stanford University
Athletics and the Politics of State and Nation Building in Kenya, 1945–2016
Morgan Tufan
Next Generation Scholar
Department of History, Stanford University
Bordering the Kurds: Imperial Governance and Traditional Authority in Sixteenth-Century Kurdistan
César Valenzuela
SHC Dissertation Prize Fellow
Department of Philosophy, Stanford University
Climate Democracy: A Philosophical Framework
Joseph Wager
Next Generation Scholar
Department of Iberian and Latin American Cultures, Stanford University
Between the “Informe” and the “Inconforme”: Disappearance, Gender, and Law in Contemporary Latin American Cultural Production
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