The MMUF Chronicle Volume 2, Issue 1

The MMUF Chronicle

July 3, 2007

"Once A Mellon Fellow, Always A Mellon Fellow"

Volume 2, Issue 1

MMUF at Glance

200 PhDs
508 fellows enrolled in graduate school
150 fellows at the ABD level
31 PhDs are teaching at MMUF schools
15 Tenured faculty

The MMUF Survey is new and improved! Mellon Fellows,
please log on to www.mmuf.org/survey to fill out your Annual Update for 2007!

This spring City College will host the New York City Regional MMUF Conference. Other participating institutions include: Barnard College, Columbia University, Hunter College, Brooklyn College, and Queens College.

Mellon Mays Undergraduate Journal

Call for Papers

The Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship Journal is an annual collection of scholarly works by participants in the program. Submissions are now being accepted for the next edition of the journal, which will be distributed nationally in 2008.

Questions? Contact

Meg Brooks Swift
8 Garden Street, Byerly Hall
Cambridge, MA 02138
Phone:617-496-3190
Email:

Suggestions?
The second issue of the MMUF Chronicle is scheduled for release in the spring of 2007. Please contact
with suggestions for next
issue

Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship
140 East 62^nd Street
New York, NY 10021
Phone: 212-838-8400
Fax: 212-223-2778

Visit us on the Web
http://www.mmuf.org

Summer Program at Wesleyan University Broadens Fellows’ Horizons

Under the direction of MMUF coordinators Professor Krishna Winston and Associate Coordinator Renée Johnson-Thornton, Wesleyan University conducts one of MMUF’s longest-running and most extensive summer programs, the Wesleyan Summer Program. The program packs an incredible amount of instruction, preparation, and networking into a six-week session for a diverse gathering of fellows.
Qualifying undergraduate Mellon Fellows from the New York City public institutions Queens College and City College join Wesleyan University Fellows for rigorous instruction provided by graduate Mellon Fellows. The Summer Program curriculum deals with questions surrounding the role of intellectuals of color in the academy, pedagogy and cultural pluralism.
Summer Program participants visit nearby Williams College and attend an intensive GRE preparation course. The goal of the program is to create a summer session that strengthens the Fellows’ research skills in an environment free from the normal distractions of the academic year. In addition to campus visits and an aggressive curriculum, the program includes weekly faculty dinners at local restaurants intended to acclimate students to the social aspects of academia. This focused environment allows coordinators more time to work with fellows, thus creating meaningful mentor-student relationships.
The summer session also encourages cross-cultural exchanges, providing new encounters for fellows from New York City public institutions. The Queens College Fellows are often older students accustomed to living alone and unfamiliar with nights free of the usual city noises. For Wesleyan Fellows, the experience is similarly horizon-expanding as they compare their institution’s well-appointed campus facilities to those of the Queens’ Fellows who, in addition to having fewer institutional resources, are often forced to work full-time while pursuing a degree. “The Summer Program,” says Krishna Winston, “gives Fellows the sense that MMUF extends far beyond the confines of our campus.”

Symposium at Claflin University’s Wright Institute a Huge Success

On April 14th, Claflin University’s Jonathan Jasper Wright Institute for the Study of Southern African American History, Culture and Policy held its inaugural symposium.
The Institute invited junior and recently tenured scholars to present their research, which focused on new analyses of African-American life and culture. The work presented ranged from Mellon Fellow Jason Glenn’s “The Birth of the Crack Baby and the History that ‘Myths’ Make” to Quianna Whitted’s “Skeptics, Backsliders, and Blasphemers: God and the African-American Writer.” Mellon Fellow Fay Yarbrough presented her work entitled “From Kin to Intruder: Indigenous/African Interactions in the Nineteenth-Century Cherokee Nation.”

“Not only did I hear exciting presentations on innovative work,” says Yarbrough, “but the symposium also offered the chance to reconnect with other Mellon alumni and to share our academic and personal successes and to share experiences about life in the academy—it really recharged my batteries.”

SSRC Seminar Bolsters Doctoral Students’ Dissertation Writing Skills

This past March, 20 Fellows in their third and sixth year of graduate study met in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to attend the second Proposal Writing and Dissertation Development Seminar. Graduate Fellows spent a week writing, revising and presenting their dissertation work to a panel of expert advisors. Mellon PhDs served as faculty and enjoyed the opportunity to give back to the program and to improve their advising skills. Dr. Cally Waite, the SSRC/Mellon program director, says, “This seminar builds community in a short amount of time; through the writing groups arranged by the Fellows, significant regional connections were made.”
The SSRC will begin accepting applications for the March 2008 seminar in the first week of January 2008. Please visit the SSRC’s website for more details.

MMUF Coordinator’s Conference Focuses on American Indian Recruitment

This year’s MMUF Coordinators’ Conference was held in New York City at the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI). NMAI was chosen as the site for this year’s event as part of an effort to focus on American Indian higher education. The conference was also an opportunity to introduce The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation’s new president, Don Michael Randel, to the MMUF community.

Mellon Fellow and talented classical singer Dr. April Lynn James performed selections by Handel, Mozart, and others to open the event. MMUF Director Dr. Lydia English expressed her gratitude to former Mellon Foundation Vice President Mary Patterson McPherson and introduced the Foundation’s new vice president, Philip Lewis. University of Cape Town MMUF Faculty Coordinator Professor Gideon Nomdo gave the first and very well-received plenary presentation, “The Discourses of Being Successfully ‘Black: (Re)valuing Human Capital in Creating Possibilities of Change,” based on his developing thesis.

In keeping with the theme of the conference, the second plenary, entitled “Maintaining our Mission in the 21st Century: American Indian PhDs – The Journey and its Challenges,” included panelists Darren Ranco, Mellon Fellow and assistant professor of Native American Studies and Environmental Studies at Dartmouth College; Venida Chenault, vice president for academic affairs at Haskell Indian Nations University; and Dr. Henrietta Mann, professor emeritus at Montana State University at Bozeman, and interim president of Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribal College. Each panelist spoke of the particular challenges that American Indians face when pursuing PhDs. Dr. Mann also gave an inspiring keynote address in which she discussed the history and current state of American Indian education in the United States.

The Conference’s last speaker was the always-stirring Director-Counsel and President of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Theodore M. Shaw. Mr. Shaw spoke of the challenges that we all face in this current anti-affirmative action environment and the necessity of remaining steadfast in our efforts to diversify the academy.

Q&A With Mellon Fellow of the Semester Kaysha Corinealdi

So tell me a bit about yourself—where you grew up, how you spend your precious spare time?

I was born in Panama and immigrated to the United States with my mother and sisters when I was 11 years old. When not researching or teaching, I am entertaining my nieces and nephew, dancing, reading lots of fiction by women of color and searching for good desserts.

Why did you decide to pursue your PhD in history?

The absences in history drew my attention to the field. Since high school, I noticed that people of color in U.S. immigration history and world history beyond Europe had little if any role in history texts. Once in college, my interest in expanding Caribbean and Latin American history, particularly along issues of race, grew. Now in graduate school, that interest continues. I have also incorporated a greater examination of U.S. history and Caribbean immigration to this country. My current research looks at issues of race and nation in mid-to-late-twentieth century Panama, U.S. imperialism, and the experiences of black Panamanians with civil rights campaigns in the United States and Panama. In a way, I view my current research as bringing me full circle to some of the questions that gripped me as a high school student.

How has MMUF assisted you in preparing for your future as an academic?

MMUF made me seriously consider academia at a time when I was contemplating law school. I envisioned law as the best means of addressing the silences I saw in history and bringing about definitive changes. Through history courses in college and the guidance of really good mentors, I realized that I would have more agency in terms of historical production as a historian than as a lawyer. I cannot emphasize how supportive of me and my work MMUF alumni whom I have encountered during my academic career have been. When I find myself about to scream about some crazy aspect of my department or graduate school, I often find that alumni understand me, which helps.

I know that you’ve been assisting MMUF Coordinator Saveena Dhall at Yale. Can you tell me what you do there and share some of your impressions of the program and the undergraduate Fellows at Yale?

Here at Yale, I work as coordinator of the program under the directorship of Saveena Dhall. This means I coordinate bi-weekly meetings for the Fellows on topics such as applying to graduate school, finances, social life in graduate school, effective mentorship etc. I also served in the Fellowship application committee. I have also tried to provide Fellows with some of the non-academic advice that I would have liked to have known before undertaking graduate school. Some Fellows approached me with questions and concerns that they were hesitant or uncomfortable in posing to professors or their peers. As a whole, I have really enjoyed serving as coordinator this year and feel that I have learned a great deal about mentoring, committee commitments, and some of the things I can expect as a future faculty member.