Press Releases

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

SSRC Congratulates 2009 Guggenheim Winners with Connections to Our Work

The Social Science Research Council extends warm congratulations to eleven scholars who have won 2009 fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, all of whom have been connected to us through fellowships, research initiatives, or committee projects:

Kate Brown, Associate Professor of History at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). With a teaching fellowship from the SSRC's Eurasia Program, held in 2005, Brown developed a syllabus requiring students to participate in trials of four eras of Soviet history: 1) political violence in pre-Soviet Russia, 2) the Great Purges of the mid-1930s, 3) dissident movements for civil rights in the 1960s, and 4) the legacy of the Communist Party after its collapse in the 1990s. Her other SSRC connections include an advanced graduate training grant (1994–1995), a dissertation fellowship (1997–1998), and a summer language grant for Kazakh (1996).

Kanchan Chandra, Associate Professor of Politics at New York University. Chandra wrote her Ph.D. dissertation, "Why Ethnic Parties Succeed: A Comparative Study," with fellowship support from the SSRC-MacArthur Program on International Peace and Security, 1996–1998. Her thesis, examining the conditions under which ethnic parties gain support from their target ethnic constituencies across the three Indian states of Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Karnataka, eventually became her first book: Why Ethnic Parties Succeed: Patronage and Ethnic Head Counts in India (Columbia University Press, 2007). With her Guggenheim fellowship, Chandra will continue work on a book on the relationship between ethnic diversity and democracy. Her study will offer a novel theoretical perspective, based on new cross-national data, on this association. Go to Kanchan Chandra's Home Page.

Veena Das, Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Anthropology, Johns Hopkins University. Das participated in the Committee on Culture, Health, and Human Development of the SSRC (1991–2001), and was one of the editors of a triptych of volumes examining human problems that have their origins in state violence and other social forces. The first, Social Suffering (University of California Press, 1997), which she coedited with Arthur Kleinman and Margaret Lock, grew out of their specially produced issue of Daedalus (Winter 1996) and helped to define a new field. In recent years, Das has been a frequent contributor to the SSRC's online fora. She wrote a post, “Jihad, fitna, and Muslims in Mumbai” for a discussion of the Mumbai attacks on the SSRC blog The Immanent Frame; served as a member of the editorial advisory committee for SSRC's “Pakistan in Crisis” essay forum, published just before Benazir Bhutto's assassination; and contributed an essay, “Violence and Translation,” to the SSRC's “After September 11” forum. Earlier this year she served a member of the selection committee for the SSRC's three-year-old Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship (DPDF). Das's Guggenheim project is entitled “Entangled Identities: Muslims and Hindus in Urban India.” Go to Veena Das's Home Page.

Caryl Emerson, Watson Armour III University Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Princeton University. Emerson made a key contribution to the SSRC by chairing the Language Training Selection Panel (Russian and Non-Russian Languages) of the Joint SSRC-ACLS Committee on Soviet Studies, 1989–1993. Her Guggenheim project on the drama adaptations, scenarios, and literary criticism of the Russian modernist writer Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky stems from her preliminary studies of the lost theater repertory of the Stalinist era. Go to Caryl Emerson's Home Page.

Susan T. Fiske, Eugene Higgins Professor of Psychology, Princeton University. Among her contributions to the SSRC, Fiske served as the psychology representative on the SSRC Board of Directors from 1995 to 2000. More recently, she interviewed SSRC president, Craig Calhoun, about the role of psychology in the SSRC's work in an article for the Observer, the publication of the Association for Psychological Science. Go to Susan Fiske's Home Page.

Joshua Gamson, Professor of Sociology, University of San Francisco. The SSRC funded Gamson as a mentor for its Sexuality Research Fellowship program in 2003–2004. He advised Mary L. Gray on her Ph.D. thesis about the use of communications technology by queer youth coming of age in small town America. Go to Joshua Gamson's Home Page.

Evelyne Huber, Morehead Alumni Professor of Political Science, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Huber had an SSRC/ACLS International Dissertation Research Fellowship in 1975–76 for Peru and then a dissertation write-up fellowship (1976–77).  In 1981–82, she and John Stephens (see below) received a Research Fellowship from the joint SSRC-ACLS Latin American Program for a project in Jamaica, which resulted in their jointly authored book, Democratic Socialism in Jamaica: The Political Movement and Social Transformation in Dependent Capitalism (Princeton University Press, 1986). In the 1990s, Huber served as a member of the SSRC-ACLS Joint Committee on Latin America (1995–96) and on the SSRC-ACLS Regional Advisory Panel on Latin America from (1997–2001). More recently, she edited a volume sponsored by the SSRC's Program on Latin America and the Caribbean, called Models of Capitalism and Latin American Development (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001), as well as participating in the program's September 2001 meeting, held at UNC-Chapel Hill, on crises in the Andes. Huber was also invited by SSRC President Craig Calhoun to serve on a planning committee for an SSRC-led initiative on international collaboration in the social sciences. At a meeting held on this topic in 2005, she appeared on a panel to discuss possibilities for international collaborative research on inequality. Huber's project for the Guggenheim Fellowship, another collaboration with Stephens, will compare social policy regimes in Latin America with those in Southern Europe, looking at their capacities to reduce poverty and inequality in human capital. Go to Evelyne Huber's Web site.

Sanford M. Jacoby, Howard Noble Professor of Management, UCLA Anderson School of Management. Jacoby was awarded an Abe Fellowship in 1999. He used it in 2000–2001 to produce his latest book, The Embedded Corporation: Corporate Governance and Employment Relations in Japan and the United States (Princeton University Press, 2004), a comparative analysis of senior HR executives in large Japanese and U.S. corporations focused on the question of whether different varieties of capitalism are becoming more similar as a result of globalization. Go to Sanford Jacoby's Home Page.

Mae M. Ngai, Lung Family Professor of Asian American Studies and Professor of History, Columbia University. Ngai received a postdoctoral fellowship from the SSRC's International Migration program in 1998 for a project examining U.S. immigration policy and racial formation between 1945 and 1965. Her research eventually led to her first book, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America, which has been described as a “stunning history of U.S. immigration policy.” Ngai, who often writes for mainstream publications on immigration history and policy matters, contributed her 2006 Los Angeles Times op-ed, "How Grandma Got Legal," to the SSRC's “Border Battles” Web forum. She will use her Guggenheim fellowship to research her third book, a study of Chinese gold miners in the North American west, Australia, and South Africa. Go to Mae Ngai's Home Page.

Robert Courtney Smith, Associate Professor of Sociology, Immigration Studies and Public Affairs, Baruch College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY). Smith had a dissertation fellowship with the SSRC in 1991–1992, for research on the urban underclass. He subsequently received a postdoctoral fellowship from the SSRC's International Migration program for a project entitled “Gendered Ethnicity at Three Strategic Sites: Explaining Variation in Second Generation Mexican American Men and Women's Work and School Mobility” and was a faculty member for the SSRC-sponsored Summer Institute on International Migration, in June 2005. Go to Robert Smith's Home Page.

John D. Stephens, Gerhard E. Lenski, Jr., Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Sociology, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Stephens had an SSRC/ACLS International Dissertation Research Fellowship in 1974–75 for Sweden. In 1981–82, he and Evelyne Huber (see above) received a Research Fellowship from the joint SSRC-ACLS Latin American Program for a project in Jamaica, which resulted in their jointly authored book, Democratic Socialism in Jamaica: The Political Movement and Social Transformation in Dependent Capitalism (Princeton University Press, 1986). More recently, Stephens contributed a chapter, “European Welfare State Regimes: Configurations, Outcomes, Transformations,” to the SSRC volume Models of Capitalism and Latin American Development (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001), which Huber edited. Stephens's project for the Guggenheim Fellowship, another collaboration with Huber, will compare social policy regimes in Latin America with those in Southern Europe. Go to John Stephens's Web site.

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The above scholars are among the 180 fellows chosen from more than 3,000 applicants to the 2009 Guggenheim competition for the United States and Canada. Often characterized as “midcareer” awards, Guggenheim Fellowships are intended for men and women who have already demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts. For more information, go to the Guggenheim Foundation site.

--Compiled by Mary-Lea Cox