Junior fellowship announced

Updated 4:00 PM September 2, 2003

Junior fellowship announced

By Office of the Provost

The University's Public Goods Council has awarded a new fellowship through its Postdoctoral Fellowship Program: Teaching with Research Collections.

Deerman (Photo by Paul Jaronski, U-M Photo Services)

Martha Eugenia Deerman has been awarded a junior fellowship under the auspices of the Postdoctoral Fellowship Program of the Public Goods Council. Deerman will offer courses on the exploration of social movement narratives involving American utopian communities, the women's movement, and the American Left and Right. She will draw upon research resources across the University, particularly those at the Special Collections, William Clements and Bentley Historical libraries.

She also has been appointed a visiting assistant professor of history in the Department of History for the academic years 2003-04 and 2004-05.

Deerman received her Ph.D. in sociology from U-M in 2001. Subsequently, she was awarded a Minority Faculty Fellowship at Indiana University, Bloomington. Over the last academic year she has held a research position in the Sociology Department, working with Intersections—a new LSA initiative promoting research and teaching across the divisional divide of the social sciences and the humanities.

Funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the program seeks to enrich the teaching of undergraduates by giving students opportunities to work with primary historical materials in research collections on campus. The faculty fellows engage in original research based on the rich and varied archives, manuscripts, books and other printed materials of the University's libraries. Then they create undergraduate research seminars that engage students in serious scholarship based on the collections.

Deerman's research interests include social movements, gender, the construction of whiteness and the politics of narrative. Her dissertation, entitled "On the Side of Angels: Redemption, Race, and Gender in the Politics of the Christian Right," is a narrative analysis of the race and gender politics of the Christian Right, from mobilization in the late 1970s to the mid-1990s. She is working on a book on this subject, as well as on several articles.

"The Public Goods Council Fellowship program is significant from a number of perspectives," says Francis X. Blouin Jr., director of the Bentley Historical Library and principal investigator of the program. Blouin notes that the Public Goods community has an "integral role in shaping the academic offerings of the University, that the program is a recognition that U-M is part of a select group of universities that can offer undergraduates "important intellectual experiences through the encounter with significant vestiges from the past," and that the program is a way to actively recognize the Public Goods Council units as academic resources for the University that distinguish its work and academic mission.

"I recently told a colleague that what sets Michigan apart is its genuine commitment to interdisciplinary work," says John McGuigan, a junior fellow in his second academic year of his two-year fellowship. "Rather than lip service, there is the time, space and money to make such interaction a reality. Nothing illustrates this so well as the Public Goods Council."

Along with McGuigan, Kent Kleinman and Donald Davis also were chosen as fellows last year.

"This program is terrifically exciting," says Paul N. Courant, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs. "To combine excellent scholarly collections with undergraduate education is something that can only be done by a handful of universities, and is exactly the sort of thing we had in mind when we established the Public Goods Council. Thanks to the generosity of the Mellon Foundation, and the hard work of the Public Goods Council members, we are able to enhance the undergraduate experience and bring these wonderful scholars to Ann Arbor."

The Public Goods Council comprises academic units that advance scholarship and culture for the University and the public community. The units report centrally, have a particular relevance to the academic work of the University, and are characterized by their collections or other assets, or by their roles as facilitators. The council includes the Arts of Citizenship Program, Arts at Michigan Program, Bentley Historical Library, Clements Library, Detroit Observatory, Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, Matthaei Botanical Gardens, Museum of Art, Museum of Natural History, Nichols Arboretum, University Musical Society and the University Library.

For further information about the fellowship program, visit http://www.umich.edu/~provost/publicgoods/fellow.htm.

Junior fellowship announced By Office of the Provost

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Junior fellowship announced

By Office of the Provost