Celebrating Scholarship

Curtis Dozier, Assistant Professor of Greek and Roman Studies, received a Loeb Classical Library Foundation Fellowship from Harvard University for the 2023–2024 academic year to support his book project Hateful Classicism: Greco-Roman Antiquity and White Nationalism.

Sofia Ortiz-Hinojosa, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, is the recipient of a New Directions Fellowship from the Mellon Foundation in support of her project “Mesoamerican Worldviews: How Indigenous Philosophies Influence Latin America.”

Simon Hoellerbauer, Post Doctoral Fellow in Data Science and Society, has secured a project award from the Liberal Arts Collaborative for Digital Innovation (LACOL) in support of his class titled “Applied Machine Learning” for Summer 2023.

Thanks to the efforts of Professor Mootacem Mhiri, Senior Lecturer in Arabic, Vassar has been selected to host a Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant (FLTA) in Arabic. Professor Mhiri will serve as the Academic Advisor of the FLTA. “As part of the Fulbright Foreign Student Program, the Fulbright FLTA Program is designed to develop Americans’ knowledge of foreign cultures and languages” (Fulbright Foreign Student Program).

Mia Mask, The Mary Riepma Ross Professor of Film, is the author of Black Rodeo: A History of the African American Western published for 2023 by University of Illinois Press. The new book examines the African American western hero in the broader context of film history by considering how African American westerns evolved and approached various goals.

Dianne Pater, Assistant Professor of Biology, has secured a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to support her project “BRC-BIO: Investigating ecophysiological strategies and drought tolerance of temperate lianas.”

Yumiko Naito, Visiting Instructor in Chinese and Japanese, has secured a grant for Arts and Culture from The Japan Foundation, New York, for her project Taishu Engeki: Discovering “Popular Theater” in Japan. “Taishu Engeki” is a lesser known performing art in Japan.

“Migration, Displacement, and Higher Education: Now What?” was recently published by Palgrave Macmillan, an effort of the numerous Vassar faculty and alumni involved in the Mellon Foundation-funded Consortium on Forced Migration, Displacement, and Education (CFMDE). Maria Höhn, Professor Emerita of History on the Marion Musser Lloyd ’32 Chair; Matthew Brill-Carlat’19, former Coordinator of Research and Pedagogy with CFMDE; and Brittany Murray, former Adjunct Assistant Professor of International Studies and CFMDE program coordinator, are the editors—and amongst the contributors—of this book.

April M. Beisaw, Associate Professor and Chair of Anthropology, is the author of “Taking Our Water for the City: The Archaeology of New York City’s Watershed Communities,” recently published by Berghahn Press.  Over 100 Vassar students contributed to the fieldwork for this book.