Observer, Volume 16, Number 18, Thursday May 25 1995


Fellowships will support seniors and alumni in 1995-96

Two seniors--David Getsy and Christopher LeCluyse--have won Andrew W. Mellon Fellowships in Humanistic Studies, and three alumni have won National Science Foundation fellowships for graduate study. Another senior, Margaret "Maryn" Duke, has been named a junior fellow for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. These recently announced awards add to Oberlin's 1995 national fellowship winners, who also include Goldwater, Fulbright, Watson, Churchill, and Marshall fellows (Observer 13 April, 30 March, 1995; 8 December 1994).

David Getsy and Christopher LeCluyse. Photo Credit: Rick Sherlock

Double honors

David Getsy will use his Mellon fellowship at Northwestern University, where he will do graduate work in critical theory and visual-culture studies. At Oberlin he is taking honors in two majors. Last semester he wrote his honors paper in his individual major, cultural philosophy and criticism, on the subject of camp and its relation to gay identity. This semester he wrote his honors paper in art history on minimalism and post minimalism's impact on contemporary sculpture. His research led to the exhibition now in the Allen Memorial Art Museum's Ellen Johnson Gallery, "Minimalism and Post Minimalism"--probably the museum's first exhibition to be conceived and curated by an undergraduate. Last year he was research assistant to the curator of modern and contemporary art, and this year he is helping with research for the museum's cd-rom catalog. Getsy also has a minor in women's studies.

As a second-year student Getsy won the Laurine Bongiorno prize in art history, and as a junior he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. Last summer, under a National Endowment for the Humanities Younger Scholar Award, he did research on the artist Jeff Koons (Observer 3 March 1994). This Saturday Getsy is presenting a slide lecture on Koons to a student art-history symposium at Ohio State University. Getsy is a member of Oberlin's lesbian, gay, bisexual union and in 1993 founded outrage Oberlin, a radical queer political group. He has been a member of the student senate and the film series organization, and for three years he was a disc jockey in Wilder's Dionysus disco.

Tenth-century poem

Christopher LeCluyse will use his Mellon fellowship to study Old English literature at the University of Texas at Austin. He learned the Old English language in a private-reading course at Oberlin, having been attracted to it by his interest in etymology. He wrote his English honors thesis on an anonymous 10th-century poem, The Dream of the Rood, which, he explains, is an account of the crucifixion--as told by the cross--that mediates between conflicting Germanic values and Christian ethics.

As well as being an English major, LeCluyse is a music major in the college and studies voice with associate professor Marlene Ralis Rosen. A tenor, he sang in Albert Herring, Die Fledermaus, and other operas and in the Tappan Singers. He was chosen to sing in a conservatory honors recital, and he was elected to Pi Kappa Lambda. He is liturgy director of the Newman Community.

Mellon Fellowships in Humanistic Studies, which are awarded by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, pay a $13,250 stipend for the first year of graduate study and also cover tuition and fees. This year the foundation received more than 800 applications and awarded 97 fellowships to students and recent graduates in 54 colleges and universities. Since 1983, when the foundation began awarding Mellon Fellowships in the Humanities (a program somewhat different from the present one), Oberlin students or graduates have been among the winners in every year but two.

NSF awards

Oberlin alumni did well in the National Science Foundation regular award competition, winning three fellowships and nine honorable mentions. Two seniors also won honorable mention: Melanie Rosay, who held a Goldwater scholarship this year, and Jennifer Hampton, who won a Churchill fellowship for next year (Observer 14 April 1994, 30 March 1995). Alumni who won NSF fellowships, which pay graduate school tuition and fees plus a stipend, are James Cook '93, Heidi Swarts '78, and Ray Scott Wakeland '84. Swarts received honorable mention last year; Cook was an assistant commons coordinator at Oberlin in 1993-94.

Alumni winning NSF honorable mentions are Daniel Butts '94, Meredith Cornett '90, Liam Downey '88, David Ebenbach '94, Gregory Harris '90, Robert Boanian Hu '93, Mary-Esther Malloy '89, Makoto Saito '94, and John Warren Williams '93.

'Professional milieu'

As a junior fellow for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington DC, Margaret "Maryn" Duke will spend next year working with senior researchers on two projects: the United States foreign policy and Africa project and the United Nations assessment project.

"This is a highly competitive, much-coveted" fellowship, says Duke's honors advisor, professor of politics Ben Schiff. "Working with the endowment gives young people interested in issues of foreign policy the opportunity to jump into the professional milieu in Washington." Duke is the first Oberlin student to become a Carnegie Endowment junior fellow since 1983. "I'm sure that Maryn's interest, motivation, and achievement appealed to them," Schiff says.

Duke, a politics and religion major, is particularly interested in issues of Islam and the West. For her honors thesis in politics she is examining US foreign policy towards Islamism--which she defines as "social and political aspirations that take the language of Islam"--in the Middle East and Central Asia. She studied one summer in Morocco and spent the fall semester of her junior year at the University of Cairo. The summer before going to Cairo she studied Arabic with a fellowship from the Program for International Collaboration in Area Studies (PICUS); the previous winter term she received another PICUS fellowship to do research on women's participation in Islamism in North Africa.

"I'm very excited about this opportunity," Duke says. "I'm looking forward to working with exceptional researchers and policy making professionals." According to information from the Carnegie Endowment, junior fellows are encouraged to publish and speak on their own, as well as assisting senior researchers.

--Janet Degges and Carol Ganzel

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