Mellon Faculty Fellowships

— Investing in the Future of Humanities at UC Riverside (2019-2024) —

For five years, the Mellon Humanities Grant at the UCR Center for Ideas and Society has enriched research and collegiality in the humanities at the University of California, Riverside, by supporting the development and promotion of humanities-related projects of the highest merit and significance.

Faculty fellows, selected through a competitive annual call for proposals, received research funds and time off from teaching to develop a book manuscript or other project. A special set of fellowships were reserved for the college dean’s use in recruitment or retention. Fellows met monthly to share research and build community, balancing the need for dedicated time for research with the goal of nurturing cross-college connections.

Through grants from the UCR Chancellor and the Dean of the College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, an additional two years of fellowships will be offered through the center. The CIS Fellowships will be provide similar benefits but will be one quarter in length (rather then one year).

Fellows

2023-24

Donatella Galella
Theatre, Film, and Digital Production
Mellon Second Project Fellowship
Getting Away with Yellowface: Affect, Asian Americans, and American Musical Theatre

Ademide Adelusi-Adeluyi
History
Mellon Quarterly Fellowship
The City as Archive: Street Names as a Pathway to Nineteenth-Century Lagos History

Courtney Baker
English
Mellon Quarterly Fellowship
Tyranny of Realism

Anthony Jerry
Anthropology
Mellon Quarterly Fellowship
Recipes for Recognition: An Anthropological Cookbook

Annika Speer
Theatre, Film, and Digital Production
Mellon Quarterly Fellowship
Embodied Performance: A Humanities-Based Approach to Public Speaking

Fariba Zarinebaf
History
Mellon Quarterly Fellowship
Warfare and Cross-Cultural Trade on the Silk Roads between Iran and the Ottoman Empire

Luca Ferrero
Philosophy
Mellon Term Professorship
The Memory of the Will: Agency, Time, and Value

Elyse Ambrose
Religious Studies
Mellon Quarterly Fellowship
A Living Archive: Embodying a Blackqueer Ethics

Maria Firmino-Castillo
Dance
Mellon Quarterly Fellowship
Placing the Three Stones: Insurgent Acts of Ixil Worldmaking

Bronwyn Leebaw
Political Science
Mellon Quarterly Fellowship
East of the 15: Environmental War Crimes, Frontline Pedagogies, and Transformative Landscapes of
Memory

Chikako Takeshita
Gender and Sexuality Studies
Mellon Quarterly Fellowship
Radioactive Speak: The Science and Politics of Radiation Exposure in Fukushima

2022-23

Jonathan Eacott
History
Mellon Second Book Fellowship
Elephantasmagoria: Elephants in British and American Imperialism

Dana Simmons
History
Mellon Term Professorship
Hunger Stories from the Science Archive

Kim Dionne
Political Science
Mellon Dean’s Professorship
Pandemic Politics in Africa

Jason Weems
History of Art
Mellon Second Book Fellowship
Inventing the Americas: Art, Archaeology, and the Modern Making of a Pre-Columbian Past

Allison Hedge-Coke
Creative Writing
Mellon Dean’s Professorship
Dust Upon Us

Sage Whitson
Dance
Mellon Dean’s Professorship
Ongoing Research Projects

2021-22

Philipp Lehmann
History
Mellon Second Project Fellowship
Data Migration: Global Climates Between Africa and Europe

Deborah Wong
Music
Mellon Term Professorship
Rogue Methodologies: Ethnomusicology, Woman, Other

Wesley Leonard
Ethnic Studies
Mellon Dean’s Professorship
Toward a Native American Linguistics

Jennifer Syvertsen
Anthropology
Mellon Second Project Fellowship
Imaginative counter-geographies of the opioid crisis in the Inland Empire

Susan Zieger
English
Mellon Term Professorship
Logistical Life

2020-21

Crystal Baik
Gender and Sexuality Studies
Mellon Second Project Fellowship
Reparative Horizons: On Korean American Activisms

Eric Schwitzgebel
Philosophy
Mellon Dean’s Professorship
Philosophy Meets Science Fiction

Sherryl Vint
English
Mellon Term Professorship
The Ethics of Debt: Speculation, Imaginaries, Futures

Thomas Cogswell
History
Mellon Term Professorship
The Murder of the Duke of Buckingham and the Transformation of English Political Culture

Padma Rangarajan
English
Mellon Second Project Fellowship
Thug Life: The British Empire and the Birth of Terrorism

2019-20

David Biggs
History
Mellon Term Professorship
Pacific Gyres and the Base Archipelago: An Environmental History of Militarized Circulations in the Pacific, 1945-Present

Matthew King
Religious Studies
Mellon Second Project Fellowship
Faxian and the Invention of Asia

Stephen Sohn
English
Mellon Term Professorship
War Everlasting: The Militarized Technogeometries of Korean American Literature

Marissa Brookes
Political Science
Mellon Second Project Fellowship
Bringing Labor Back In: How Histories of Conflict Tame Corporate Power Over Time

Jade Sasser
Gender & Sexuality Studies
Mellon Dean’s Professorship
Many Cooks in the Kitchen: Stoves, Fuels, and Women’s Agency in the Global South

Learn more about current and past fellows’ research on our Fellows page.