Past Mellon Mays Fellows
Mimi Borders: Class of 2018
Majors: History and Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies
Project: The Possibility of Desire: Sexual Choice within US Colored Troops Widow’s Pensions
My project examines the function of slave marriage in the production of familial ties within the lives of black women at the moment of “freedom”. I utilize queer theory in defining the contours of black sexuality and non-normative kinship structures. Overall, I will explore the creative ways black females produced their own sexuality in an attempt to thrive within a violent society.
Savannah Jacobson: Class of 2018
Majors: History and African and African American Studies
Project: “The Evil Was in Her”: African American Women’s Participation in Informal Economies During the Great Migration in New York City
My project takes place in New York City during the early years of the Great Migration, and looks at how black women formed informal economies as a means of survival and resistance. I use the Great Migration and the Harlem Renaissance to explain the rise of sex work and other forms of criminality. My project then explores how working-class black women catered these informal economies to their needs on both an individual and community level.
T-Herbert Jeffrey: Class of 2018
Major: Philosophy
Project: An Inconsistent Triad: Conflicting Intuitions on the Nature of Suspicion
This project explores the ethics of suspicion. What, if anything, is wrong with suspecting that a person from a certain demographic will do some action based on how others in his demographic act? Can police permissibly pull over unknown people simply because they match a description, and if they can, how should they act when they do it?
Kiara Sample: Class of 2018
Majors: African and African American Studies and Psychological and Brain Sciences
Project: “The Walking Wounded”: Race, Gender, and Surveillance in the Lives of Radical Black Women
My research creates an understanding of the influence of race and gender on the FBI’s surveillance of radical Black women. The methods and tactics used by agents under the FBI’s Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO) is the focus of my research. Components of their FBI file such as the language used to describe them, the content included and not included in each file, and the narrative built by the agents and informants, are comparatively analyzed across gender and across time beginning in the 1940s.
Clayton Covington: Class of 2019
Majors: International and Area Studies: Global Cultural Studies and Latin American Studies
Project: Unsettling Homophobia: Sex, Marriage, and the Law in Jamaican Statecraft, 1930-1970
In 2006, Time Magazine released an article referring to Jamaica with the title, “The Most Homophobic Place on Earth?” Citing the notorious lyrics of dancehall artist, Buju Banton, antiquated anti-sodomy laws, and high rates of violence against LGBT individuals, this article catalyzed a wave of international criticism directed at Jamaica’s alleged “backwardness.” In suggesting that Jamaica is an exceptionally homophobic place, cultural and scholarly critics often pathologize Jamaicans—even going so far as to identify the source of homophobia as a “collective cultural dementia.” Rarely do these critics discuss the experiences of struggle and triumph for LGBT Jamaicans. Instead, they focus on ways to socially and economically punish Jamaica for its “immorality.” This project, however, complicates the generalized narrative regarding Jamaican homophobia as pathological. Arguing that Jamaican homophobia is a
colonial legacy that persisted within Jamaican statecraft even after the period of decolonization, this project traces nationalist projects, dynamic legal frameworks, and the work of religious institutions in the era of independence. Reframing Jamaican homophobia in this manner acknowledges the dangerous realities that face the LGBT community without participating in the frequent erasure of Jamaican LGBT individuals and their equally important resistance.
Misael De la Rosa: Class of 2019
Majors: Spanish and Comparative Literature
Project: Voice Alchemy: Alurista, Floricanto, and the Translation Poetics of Chicañol
During the 1960s, Chicanos defined themselves and their literature through the deliberate use of code-switching in order to best represent their lived speech in literature. This led to the development of what I call Chicañol: a hybrid form of language that combines English and Spanish in order to best translate the experience of the Chicano. Central to this project is the Chicano poet Alurista (Alberto Baltazar Urista Heredia) due to his leading role in the development of Chicano poetry as an established poetic tradition. Taking inspiration from the Nahuatl poetic tradition of the Floricanto, Alurista borrowed certain aspects such as the orality of the poetry in order to develop his foundational poetry collection Floricanto en Aztlán. As a result, Alurista was successful in creating a tradition that contained multiple layers of history, culture, colonization, and marginalization that needed to be considered and translated into a communicable form. This resulted in the adoption of Chicañol as the form that such experiences needed in order to be communicated to the Chicano, the Mexican, and the American. This project examines the translation poetics of Chicañol from its origins in the Floricanto to its revamping by Alurista.
Ebonie Pollock: Class of 2019
Major: Art History
Project: Reconstituting the Life of the Black Artists’ Model in Interwar Paris
Following the end of World War I in November of 1918, Paris increasingly operated as an essential pole of the African diaspora while simultaneously compelling diasporic peoples to navigate the city as the burgeoning center of Negrophilia and French imperialism. In 1919, at the dawn of this new era, Suzanne Valadon painted a series of five paintings with a black woman as their subject. Identified by scholars as the mistress of Valadon’s son, Maurice Utrillo, and variously referred to as a Négresse, Mulâtresse, or Esclave, the woman in the paintings carries a specific and particular likeness and yet, her identity is obscured, elided by the applied nomenclature of the exoticizing French colonial imagination. This project reimagines the lives of black artists’ models in interwar Paris through the use of photography, diaries, memoirs, periodicals and oral histories that privilege the voices of black women, thereby reconstituting the agency of the black models of the interwar period who have traditionally occupied a marginal historical space. Using Valadon’s series as a locus of inquiry, this project investigates the limits of the Western archive and its ability, or lack thereof, to accurately reflect the narratives of black women in the French interwar period.
Adon Wade-Currie: Class of 2019
Majors: Urban Studies and American Culture Studies; Arabic minor
Project: Hip-Hop in the Margins: Contemporary Hip-Hop Activism in Chicago
In recent years, the city of Chicago has become known for the rampant gun violence plaguing its black communities. Such representation in mainstream media not only racializes issues of gun violence, but encourages pathologizing black Chicagoans (and Americans, generally) as criminal by nature. This project examines how three Chicago-based underground rappers, Chance The Rapper, Saba, and Noname, who each released a breakthrough album in 2016, are challenging the prevailing narrative of black Chicagoans. My project theorizes about how the communities that each of these artists grew up in (all on Chicago’s South Side) influenced the work they do today. As underground rappers, each of these artists is also oriented towards representing the complexity of black life and community which both become flattened by mainstream media. Chance The Rapper portrays himself as a proud black father in an era where mass incarceration tears apart black families at alarming rates and single black mothers have become the norm. Facing the very real possibility that on any given day he could be on the receiving end of a bullet, Saba raps a future in which he and his fellow Chicagoans may live out their dreams. And Noname demonstrates that black women can enjoy sex without being sex objects.
Amanda Everett: Class of 2020
Major: African and African American Studies; Comparative Literature minor
Project: The Foundations of Black Feminist Theory through Literary Representations of the BlackWoman’s Experience
This project involves discovering how Black women’s creative writing and contributed to the development of Black Feminist ideology between 1975 and 1990. Through close textual analyses of Gwendolyn Brooks’s selected poems, Ntozake Shange’s nappy edges, and Toni Cade Bambara’s Gorilla, My Love, I will show how the representations of the Black woman’s experience by Black women writers were fundamental in the formation of a unified Blackfeminist ideology. I selected these works as ones that encompassed several themes, such as sisterhood and grief, that were, in many ways, definitional of the lived experience of Black women. As precursors to Patricia Hill Collin’s 1990 work, Black Feminist Thought, these creative works helped build the foundation for the developing Black Feminist movement. I chose to base my research on Collin’s Black Feminist Thought, because it is widely considered to be the first book that provided an intellectual framework for the field of Black feminist theory. My project will give an overview on how the aforementioned works informed and contributed to the growing field.
Yousef/Theaivin Gaber: Class of 2020
Major: Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Project: Sensual Power and the Nation
This project explores the mutual construction of the american nation-state and its subjects through the lense of sensation. Sensations are a vital component of our subjecthood, they organize the way in which we navigate the world; I contend that the american nation-state has, through its violent colonial history, manipulated sensations to create and maintain the categories of race and gender on which it relies. I examine the 4th of July, a spectacular display of nationalism that has become an intimate part not only of our cultural surroundings but also of our sensory surrounding. Using the 4th of July as an object of study we can imagine how this highly sensory celebration calls on american histories of whiteness and colonization in order to construct subjecthoods that are easily incorporated into the nation-state. In this, I am inspired by queer of color theorists like Jasbir Puar, Sarah Ahmed, Mel Chen, and Kyla Schuller who all probe the construction of subjects and nationalism with attention to affect. Taking from them, my project examines the nation’s sensory arrangements in order to show the racist stakes in participating in displays of nationalism.
Nya Hardaway: Class of 2020
Majors: African and African American Studies and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; Writing minor
Project: “Blue, Queer Love”: Examining the Sexual Embodiment of Black Women’s Blues Music
Exploring how Black women perform sexuality as an expression of freedom through music, my research focuses on the manner in which Blues music shaped the performance of sexuality among working-class Black women during the 1920s-1940s. I concentrate specifically on the city of Cleveland and its Black club nightlife. My examination of Cleveland will expand the discourse on the nationwide impact of women’s early 20th century Blues music as it was a popular migration city that is seldom recognized. I analyze working-class queerness and Black women’s perception of sexuality during Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey’s tours through Cleveland and the effects of their music on the manifestation of sexuality in the area. Specifically adding to previous scholarship which primarily centers on lyrical analysis, I will examine the reception of nightclubs in media, church initiatives led by Black women, and visual and textual incorporation of aspects of performances and lyrics into the embodiment Black women’s queerness. Ultimately, I provide a new understanding of working-class women’s experience of freedom and mode of rejecting middle-class values and sexual tyranny.
Taylor Smith: Class of 2020
Major: African and African American Studies
Project: “The Depth Within”: Conceptualizing the Aesthetics of Black Women’s Interior Self in Media
In recent decades, Black women have taken more agency in the creation, transmission, and circulation of their art in the areas of literature, television, and digital media. My research aims to explore how Black women conceptualize and contextualize themselves intimately and socially in those realms. This will be accomplished through the cultivation of a conceptual framework of the ways Black women interpret, translate, and replicate stories of the “Black interior” into consumable media for varying audiences and registers. Scholar Elizabeth Alexander defines the Black interior as the internal intellectual space where Black people without stereotypes. The research will be conducted through close readings and textual analysis of literary texts, and visual and cultural analysis of film, and digital media. More specifically, I will explore the changes and continuities between Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) and the adaptation by Harpo Films (2005), Ntozake Shange’s For Colored Girls (1976) and Tyler Perry Studios’ 2010 film,1985 Steven Spielberg directed film recreation of Alice Walker’s The Color Purple (1982), Issa Rae’s Awkward Black Girl and her HBO series, Insecure. Ultimately, this work will add to the overall conversation about the politics and aesthetics of Black female representation in media.
Amelle Zeroug: Class of 2020
Majors: History and Political Science
Project: Nos Ancêtres Les Gauloi: Gender and National Identity in the Algerian War for Independence
Algerian women were prominent participants in the liberation struggle against French colonialism which culminated into a war lasting from 1954 to 1962. Despite their participation in both urban and rural guerrilla warfare, contemporary histories of the Algerian War consistently and systemically obscure their contributions, while those that do, fail to express nuance. Western scholars push the narrative that Algerian women’s militancy was an aberration from the Islamist, patriarchal societal expectations of women. However, these scholars fail to recognize that women joined the resistance alongside family members and were rarely discouraged from entering the conflict. On the other hand, the modern state emphasizes a hyper-nationalist rhetoric that hails the participation of women as a demonstration of gender equality in Algeria and fails to acknowledge the difficulties these women had in reintegrating society following the independence of Algeria. Both perspectives draw upon truths; Algerian society neither fully condemned or condoned these militant women, and their experiences are multi-faceted such that they cannot be defined using solely nationalist or neo-liberal rhetoric. My research attempts to locate the space Algerian women occupy and their militancy beyond traditional approaches in order to understand the relationship between gender and state in conflict.
Shayna Finkelstein: Class of 2021
Major: International and Area Studies: Global Cultural Studies
Project Title: Race and Fascism in Authoritarian Governments
Project Description: My research focuses on race and fascism in Brazil’s military dictatorship and the German Nazi Party. In particular, I am trying to address how racial hierarchies are constructed and exercised during an authoritarian rule to create a dominant ruling party, using the Third Reich and Brazil as case studies. Additionally, I would like to examine how national socialist ideology influenced 1930s Brazil and how it skewed social conditions towards fascism in Brazil.
CeCe Heard: Class of 2021
Major: English Literature
Project Title: Freedom of Quiet: Understanding the (In)authenticity of Black Women’s Intimacies
Project Description: Blackness has always been tied to resistance. In the current era, this resistance commonly manifests as performances of Blackness that are loud, unapologetic, and always having to do with race. My project aims to understand how the expression of Black women’s intimate selves – their private thoughts and desires – work for or against racial resistance, and the subsequent push for racial solidarity and acceptance. Through visual cultural analyses of media productions that exceed racial boundaries, my project explores how Black women’s intimacies become the place at which their racial authenticity is policed.
Antonia (Toni) Augilar Rosenthal: Class of 2021
Major: Classics & American Culture Studies
Project Title: The Devil Wears Dior: Cultural Appropriation in High Fashion and the American Cultural Construct of “Nativeness”
Project Description: My project seeks to analyze the appropriation of Native North American fashions, namely that of the eagle-feather war bonnet, in high fashion. I plan to examine the ways in which this appropriation enforces and builds colonial structures of oppression through re-historicizing the exploitation of Native North American fashions within changing American cultural constructions of “Native-ness” during three key periods: policies of “Indian Assimilation” of the late 19th century, the Hippie movement of the 1960s and 1970s, and John Galliano’s tenure at Dior. In doing so, I plan to gain a better understanding of what appropriation is, why it matters, and the continuing legacy of colonialism on Native communities.
Cienna Townson: Class of 2021
Major: Linguistics
Project Title: Who’s Laughing Now?: Characteristics and Implications of Mock White Voice in Black Stand-up
Project Description: My project will identify the linguistic characteristics of Mock White voice used by Black stand-up comedians. In addition to discerning the phonological, lexical, and morphosyntactic features of Mock White voice, my project will examine these performances through a sociocultural lens. Given the long history of using Black people as a source of entertainment, I plan to evaluate the ways in which Black stand-up comedians reconcile their dynamic, on-stage performances that mock White people with the fact that they perform for predominately White audiences.
Siddhi Vora: Class of 2021
Major: Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Project Title: Speaking Her Truths
Project Description: The Kutch district in the state of Gujarat in India is home to the various semi-nomadic and pastoral Kutchi people who speak the Kutchi language, a language with no written script. While most Kutchis are bi and trilingual, using modified versions of other languages, a large part of Kutchi heritage is connected to its oral history and folklore. I am interested in what groups are “allowed” to record the Kutchi history and make their way into formal histories. Who is rendered invisible in history and left out of the discourse? What are the entry points into this process for marginalized groups? Most importantly, I am interested in discovering the ways that marginalized women make a space for themselves, their truths, and their history.
Zari Muhammad: Class of 2022
Major: African & African American Studies. Minor: Arabic
Project Title: "'Nothing but the Son of a Black woman': What makes Black Islam 'inauthentic'"
Project Description: My project will focus on the creation of Black branches of Islam from North and West Africa to North America. In order to understand the implicit social and racial hierarchies within Muslim communities in North America, one must fully understand the history of Islam in Africa. After the expansion of Islam in North Africa the religion mixed with the values, beliefs, and practices of indigenous ethnic groups, like the Amazigh’en of North and West Africa, which ultimately creates forms of Islam racialized as “Black.” These forms are often considered inauthentic from the global Muslim community. My project will aim to understand why this disconnect occurs in the encompassing Muslim community and how to understand Islam and its racial components.
Yohanes Aleligne Mulat: Class of 2022
Majors: Religious Studies, Political Science. Minor: Arabic
Project Title: "Trans-generational Solidarity: How Fighting Imperialism Kept a Bond Alive"
Project Description: My project is an analysis of the trans-generational solidarity between Black American activists and Palestinians both in the '60s era with the rise of Black Power and today through the Black Lives Matter movement, tracing the rhetoric used in both eras and highlighting how the current BLM uses the same anti-imperial, pro-liberation rhetoric used during the '60s. Reexamining Black American and Palestinian solidarity is key to understanding how the transcontinental collaboration of marginalized groups fits into the Black freedom struggle both in the 1960s and now. By tracing this shared rhetoric, I intend to show how modern-day movements continue to emphasize a global responsibility in their fight for freedom.
Gabi Senno: Class of 2022
Majors: International and Area Studies (Global Cultural Studies), American Culture Studies. Minor: Spanish
Project Title: "Constructing Citizenship: The Role of Borders in Human Rights Violations"
Project Description: Sparked by the question “What happens when a border follows you?,” my research will focus on the capacity of state-imposed borders to suspend or limit access to citizenship and human rights. Specifically, I will analyze how racial minorities residing within the U.S., such as Japanese Americans, Latinx Americans, Native Americans, and African Americans experience borders, and how their status as racial “others” affects the degree to which they are integrated as American citizens. My goal is to highlight the common factors that unite these case studies, while also providing the nuance and individual attention each deserves.
Kennedy Young: Class of 2022
Majors: Sociology, African & African American Studies. Minor: Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Project Title: “'Armed’ Career Criminals: An Examination of the Contradictions and Consequences of Firearm Possession”
Project Description: Despite the national trends towards decarceration, Arkansas’ prison population is rising, which makes the state a unique case study for revealing the ways macro-level policies shape local Black communities. My project aims to explore the racialized social impact of the Armed Career Criminal Act, a federal mandatory minimum policy, in the Eastern District of Arkansas for Black men and women. The project will integrate historical and feminist analyses with ethnographic methods and in-depth interviews to understand the personal experiences of Black people sentenced under the policy and members of their support systems. By viewing the policy through a feminist lens, my research will reveal the gendered contradictions of firearm possession and usage for women who are either incarcerated under the Act or who may be connected to loved ones imprisoned as a result of the Act. Ultimately, my work deepens the emergent field of Carceral Studies by lobbying for a more grounded case study approach.