About the Fellowship
The McCausland Faculty Fellowship was established as part of a $10 million endowment from College of Arts and Sciences alumnus Peter McCausland (’71) and his wife Bonnie. The three-year fellowship is available to early career faculty who bring innovation to their research and teaching.
As can be seen by the fellows’ accomplishments, this award allows faculty to explore new areas of research and share findings in their field and beyond. Students gain from innovative courses and education opportunities outside the classroom sparked by the fellows’ creativity and dedication.
Eligibility
Tenure-track faculty members in the CAS who have successfully completed the third-year review process and are within 10 years of earning their doctoral degrees are eligible. Faculty members who are more than 10 years away from earning their doctoral degrees are ineligible. A list of eligible faculty in each unit has been forwarded to the chair/director by the Dean's Office.
Nominations
CAS department chairs/school directors may each nominate two eligible tenure-track/tenured faculty member from their respective departments or schools during each fellowship cycle. Each chair/director should submit: 1) a brief letter of recommendation from the chair/director; 2) an up-to-date curriculum vita for the nominee.
Nominations must be submitted online. A separate online form should be submitted for each candidate.
Expectations
- Each fellowship begins with the academic year (August 16, 2020) and has a term of three years. A fellowship may be renewed one time, subject to eligibility (within 10 years of doctoral degree-applies to renewal period) and available funding.
- Each fellowship provides both a $5,000 salary supplement each academic year of the three-year term and a one-time $5,000 research fund . The research fund cannot be used to provide compensation to the faculty and cannot be used for course buyout. The funds do not carry-over and cannot be extended.
- Fellowship recipients must continue to fulfill normal expectations of teaching effectiveness, professional development, research and scholarship, and departmental and university service during the duration of the fellowship.
- Fellowship recipients are expected to participate in a limited number of special events during the duration of the fellowship, such as admitted student days, open houses, and recognition events.
Nomination Evaluation
The associate deans will comprise the selection committee, chaired by Dean Ford, to which they will appoint two faculty: one faculty member from the natural sciences and the other faculty member representing the arts, humanities, and social sciences.
Fellowship selection is a highly competitive process based on merit. Fellows will be chosen based on the extent to which the requested nomination materials demonstrate the expected combination of scholarly and pedagogical excellence.
McCausland Faculty Fellows
Select a year below to view the fellowships awarded and learn about the individual fellows and their research.
Samuel Amadon: Associate Professor, English Language and Literature
Associate Professor Samuel Amadon is the director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing.
He is the author of two books of poems, Like a Sea and The Hartford Book, and two
forthcoming books, Listener and Often, Common, Some, And Free. His poems have appeared
in The New Yorker, The Nation, American Poetry Review, Poetry, and Kenyon Review.
He edits the journal Oversound with Liz Countryman.
Tia Andersen: Associate Professor, Criminology and Criminal Justice
Dr. Tia S. Andersen holds a PhD in Criminal Justice from Michigan State University.
Her scholarly work explores the intersection of service learning, mentoring, and the
prevention of juvenile delinquency and juvenile justice system contact. In 2017, she
developed the USC Adolescent Mentoring Program, an innovative experiential service
learning class and community partnership program. Taught as a class for university
students, this intensive school-based mentoring program matches trained university
students to adolescents attending a local disciplinary alternative school who have
been expelled from their base school and are at a significant risk for school failure
and justice system involvement. Her current research projects document the impact
of participation in the service-learning experience on USC students’ personal development,
learning outcomes, social outcomes, career development, and relationships with the
university and surrounding community, as well as the impact of program participation
on the attitudes, values, and behaviors of adolescent mentees. Dr. Andersen’s work
has appeared in Justice Quarterly, Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice, Criminal Justice
and Behavior, and Crime & Delinquency.
Jennifer Augustine: Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology
Professor Augustine joined the Department of Sociology in 2015 and has taught courses
on the Sociology of Education and Inequality among others. She earned her doctorate
in sociology from the University of Texas at Austin and was a post-doctoral fellow
at Rice University. Professor Augustine's research aims to understand the complex
forces that contribute to the reproduction of inequality across generations in modern
American society. She is particularly interested in the role that the historic increases
in U.S. women's educational attainment has played in this process. She has peer reviewed
publications featured in such journals as Social Science Quarterly, Population Research and Policy Review, and Journal of Marriage and Family.
Joshua Grace: Assistant Professor, History
Grace’s work explores the intersection of technology and development in African history.
It tackles a common stereotype about the continent’s past: that its societies lack
development because they historically have not had the technology or knowledge societies
in the Global North possess. Grace debunks this myth using hundreds of oral histories
in Kiswahili, his apprenticeship in an automobile repair shop in Dar es Salaam, and
archives in East Africa and the United Kingdom. His book, African Motors: Technology,
Gender, and the History of Development in Tanzania (Duke University Press, 2021),
demonstrates that Africans have shaped car designs and motor vehicle culture since
the early-1900s. That East African societies possess these cultures of mobility and
mechanical expertise, he argues, should reshape assumptions about which societies
possess useful knowledge for pursuing economic development or more sustainable societies
in world history. Grace’s next book-length project, Cars After African Socialism:
Sustainability and Skill in Tanzanian Repair Shops, will examine the impact of privatization
policies on Tanzanian repair shops since the late-1970s. As global societies grapple
with the environmental limits of car-based livelihoods, this project will explore
the more sustainable worlds Tanzanian mechanics created during periods of shortage
through reuse and modification.
Conor Harrison: Associate Professor, Geography and Earth, Ocean and Environment
Conor Harrison researches the relationship between energy and society, with a particular
focus on how economic, political, and cultural forces are part of energy system transformation.
His current research, funded by the National Science Foundation, investigates how
financial actors and institutions are driving change in the U.S. electricity. His
past research traces the flows of investment capital, expertise, and technology in
the ongoing energy transition to renewable energy in the Caribbean, portions of which
have been published in Energy Research and Social Science and the Journal of Latin American Geography. Portions of his work have been published in the Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Geoforum, and Local Environment. Harrison’s teaching focuses on energy, environment, and sustainability, and he was
awarded the 2019 Michael J. Mungo Undergraduate Teaching Award at the University of
South Carolina.
Zhenlong Li: Assistant Professor, Geography
Professor Li's research focuses on geospatial big data analytics, high-performance
computing, and spatiotemporal modelling within the area of data- and computational-
intensive GIScience. He established the Geoinformation and Big Data Research Laboratory
in 2015, a successful collaborative effort of a group of faculty and students conducting
interdisciplinary research with applications to disaster management, human mobility,
climate analysis, and public health. Professor Li has more than 70 publications including
over 40 peer-reviewed journal articles, most of which appeared in high impact top-ranked
international journals in GIScience. Recently, he was named as a Breakthrough Star
for research excellence by the Office of the Vice President for Research.
Professor Li has a great passion for bringing his research expertise to advising both graduate and undergraduate students in their own research. His students have won various awards including the AAG Robert Raskin Student Competitions, SPARC research grant, Magellan Scholar grant, USGIF/NVIDIA Essay Challenge award, and NSF travel award.
Nicole Maskiell: Assistant Professor, History
Dr. Maskiell is an Assistant Professor of History and specializes in family slaveholding
networks in Anglo-Dutch colonial America. Dr. Maskiell has been the recipient of numerous
fellowships and awards, including the U.S. Department of Education Foreign Language
and Area Studies Fellowship in Dutch, the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies
Travel Grant for research in the Netherland Antilles (Curaçao), The Gilder Lehrman
Fellowship for research in New York repositories, the Huntington Mayers Fellowship
for research in San Marino California, the John Carter Brown Library, Charles H. Watts
Memorial Fellow, and the University of South Carolina ASPIRE I Track I Grant. Her
current book project, under consideration with Cornell University Press, is entitled
Bound by Bondage: Slavery and the Creation of a Northern Gentry (https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/big-history/).
It examines the dense slaveholding ties that knit together Anglo-Dutch slaveholding
families and spanned the colonial boundaries of the Atlantic, connecting the estates
and manors of the Northeast to the plantations and great houses of the Southern colonies,
Caribbean and European metropoles.
Hannah Rule: Assistant Professor of Composition and Rhetoric, English Language and
Literature
Hannah J. Rule, an Assistant Professor of Composition and Rhetoric in the Department
of English, thinks about the teaching of writing and literacies in postsecondary contexts.
In her primary research field of composition studies, writing activity and its instruction
tends to be grounded in abstractions or unmoored metaphors, like process, freewriting,
or voice. Her recent book, Situating Writing Processes (The WAC Clearinghouse/University
Press of Colorado, 2019) enacts this motivating focus: Situating Writing Processes
is a novel take on histories of the process paradigm in composition studies (a longstanding
view of writing instruction as matters of thinking, drafts, development, and rational
authorial control of writing) as it reimagines contemporary process teaching as embodied,
situated, and improvisatory. Her scholarly attentions now are focusing on genre pedagogies,
as well as our urgent social need for critical instruction in information and digital
literacies, practices that might stand a chance against the many information ills,
conspiracy theories, and misinformation campaigns we face.
Deena Isom Scott: Assistant Professor, Criminology & Criminal Justice and African
American Studies
Dr. Deena A. Isom Scott is a critical scholar, particularly one guided by feminist,
Black feminist, and critical race traditions. Her research broadly focuses on the
causes and consequences of inequities and injustices for marginalized people at the
hands of individuals, communities, as well as institutions. In particular, her work
has assessed how distinctly racial and/or gendered experiences differentially influence
people’s likelihood of engaging in criminal behaviors as well as how internalized
beliefs may provide resilience against such outcomes. Her research has appeared in
journals such as the Journal of Criminal Justice, Social Science & Medicine, Youth
& Society, Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, and Race and Justice. Through
her research and teaching, she aims to bring marginalized and oft-forgotten experiences
and voices forefront to promote equity and inform socially just change.
Michael Gavin: Associate Professor, English Language and Literature
Michael Gavin is author of The Invention of English Criticism, 1650-1760 (Cambridge University Press, 2015) as well as numerous articles. His primary area
of research is digital humanities: a field of inquiry devoted to understanding how
new computational technologies will affect knowledge in traditionally book-based disciplines
like literature. He regularly teaches courses in digital humanities, Enlightenment
literature, and British literature, as well as courses in writing and research methods.
His current book project, Language of Place, a Digital History, uses the methods of digital humanities to study the history of geographical discourse
from the Renaissance period to the present.
Courtney Lewis: Assistant Professor, Anthropology
Dr. Courtney Lewis is a socio-cultural economic anthropologist with research specialties
in American Indian entrepreneurialism and small business ownership, Native Nation
economic sovereignty, and Native Nation economic development. Her broader research
areas of indigenous rights, economic justice, political economy, food sovereignty,
and settler-colonialism also span American Indian studies, American Studies, and Southern
Studies. She earned her PhD at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill in the
Department of Anthropology in 2012. This followed two degrees in economics (B.A. University
of Michigan, M.A. Wayne State University). She is an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee
Nation.
Mercedes Lopez-Rodriguez: Assistant Professor, Language, Literature and Culture
Originally from Colombia, where she studied anthropology, Dr. Lopez-Rodriguez holds
a PhD in Spanish literature and cultural studies from Georgetown University. Her scholarly
research lies at the intersection of literary studies, ethnography, history, and art
history, combining textual analysis and anthropological methods and theory. She is
the author of two books, Blancura y otras ficciones raciales en los Andes colombianos del siglo XIX (Whiteness and Other Racial
Fictions in the Nineteenth-Century Colombian Andes, Iberoamericana Veuvert, 2019), and Tiempos para rezar y tiempos para trabajar (ICANH 2001). She is now working on a new book titled Sensing and Feeling the Other: Hearing, Smelling, Tasting, and Touching Emotions in
Colombia 1850-1970.
Matthew Melvin-Koushki: Assistant Professor, History
Professor Melvin-Koushki specializes in early modern Islamicate intellectual and imperial
history, with a focus on the theory and practice of the occult sciences in Iran and
the wider Persianate world from the 14th to the 19th century. He comes to Carolina
by way of UVA and Yale, and has held postdoctoral positions at Oxford and Princeton.
His three forthcoming books, all based on his award-winning dissertation, pivot on
the theme of science and empire, and he is co-editor (with Noah Gardiner, also at
UofSC) of the volume Islamicate Occultism: New Perspectives, the first such in the field to treat of post-Mongol Persianate developments.
Natalia Shustova: Associate Professor, Chemistry and Biochemistry
Dr. Shustova is a co-author of more than 70 papers, two book chapters, and delivered
more than 80 scientific talks. Since 2016, Natalia has also served as an associate
editor of Materials Chemistry Frontiers. In 2019, she was awarded a very prestigious
USC Distinguished Undergraduate Research Mentor Award for her involvement in training
and mentoring 28 undergraduate students.
Dewei Wang: Assistant Professor, Statistics
The primary focus of Dr. Wang's research is developing new statistical tools for analyzing
pooled testing data, which often arises in biomedical applications. His current research
in this area has resulted in a National Institutes of Health grant. Dr. Wang's other
research interests include quantile regression, order-restricted inference, and complex
data analysis. His work has appeared in peer-reviewed journals such as Annals of Statistics, Biometrika, Biometrics, Biostatistics, Environmetrics, and Statistics in Medicine. In addition to research, Professor Wang is also passionate about cultivating students’
statistical thinking. He teaches both undergraduate and graduate students about fundamental
theories of statistics in courses like Probability, Mathematical Statistics, and Large
Sample Theory.
Alissa Richmond Armstrong: Assistant Professor, Biological Sciences
Professor Armstrong joined the Department of Biological Sciences in 2016 after postdoctoral
training at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The Armstrong Lab
uses the model organism Drosophila melanogaster—commonly known as the fruit or vinegar fly— to investigate how distinct nutrient
sensing pathways function in fat cells to regulate the well-characterized stem cell-supported
ovary. Given the current obesity epidemic and the link between obesity and increased
risk for several diseases, including type 2 diabetes and cancer, Armstrong hopes that
the research performed in her lab provides a better understanding of the role adipocytes/adipocyte-dysfunction
play in controlling normal/abnormal physiology.
In addition to her research, she teaches fundamental genetics and a seminar-style course on adult stem cells and physiology. As part of her personal and professional commitment to recruiting and retaining underrepresented groups to the sciences, Armstrong participates in several outreach activities involving students from elementary to graduate school.
Lydia Mattice Brandt, Associate Professor, School of Visual Art and Design
An architectural historian and historic preservationist, Professor Brandt is known
nationwide for her expertise on George Washington’s Mount Vernon and the remembrance
of America’s early history through material objects and architecture. Her book “First
in the Homes of His Countrymen: George Washington’s Mount Vernon in the American Imagination”
was published by the University of Virginia Press in 2016.
Fellowships from the Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington at Mount Vernon; the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art; Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library; and the Henry Luce Foundation have supported her research. Her 2016 monograph received the Henry-Russell Hitchcock Award from the Victorian Society in America. The University of South Carolina recognized her outstanding teaching with the Michael J. Mungo Undergraduate Teaching Award.
Brandt is also a dedicated advocate for local history and preservation. She has authored or co-authored National Register of Historic Places nominations in Virginia, South Carolina and Illinois. She is one of three professors at the University of South Carolina who led the campaign for a monument to the university’s first African American professor, Richard T. Greener, erected in early 2018.
Eli Jelly-Schapiro: Assistant Professor, English Language and Literature
Professor Jelly-Schapiro writes about and teaches contemporary literature, within
a global and historical frame. His first book, “Security and Terror: American Culture
and the Long History of Colonial Modernity,” was published by the University of California
Press in May 2018. His articles and essays have appeared in a variety of scholarly
and popular venues, including Critique, Mediations, the Journal of American Studies, Transforming
Anthropology, the Los Angeles Review of Books, The Millions, The Chronicle Review, Transition,
and The Nation.
He has begun work on a second book project, which explores how the multiple temporalities of contemporary capitalism are figured in fiction and theory.
Christi Metcalfe: Assistant Professor, Criminology and Criminal Justice
Professor Metcalfe’s research focuses on criminal case processing, developmental patterns
of crime from adolescence to adulthood, and public attitudes toward crime and the
criminal justice system. Specifically, her work has explored the influence of courtroom
workgroup familiarity and similarity on the plea-bargaining process, the intermittent
nature of offending behavior, and the correlates of support for punitive policy approaches
and policing initiatives. She has also conducted research in Israel regarding ethnic
threat, support for conciliatory solutions and perceptions of the police.
Her work has appeared in journals such as Justice Quarterly, Law & Society Review, Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, Journal of Quantitative Criminology, and Criminal Justice and Behavior. She co-authored an anthology titled “Criminal Courts in Theory, Research, & Practice: A Reader.” Metcalfe enjoys working with both undergraduate and graduate students on research projects and teaches courses on criminal courts, crime over the life course, and criminological theory.
Steven Rodney: Assistant Professor, Physics and Astronomy
Professor Rodney’s research is centered around the use of gravitational lensing to
study distant stars that are magnified by the curvature of space. He recently was
part of an international team of astronomers who used this technique with the Hubble
Space Telescope to study the most distant star ever seen. Rodney is now part of a
NASA-funded project aiming to locate stellar explosions so far away that their light
has taken some 10 to 13 billion years to reach Earth. He is working with USC undergraduates
and doctoral students to build software and design survey strategies for the James
Webb Space Telescope, which launches in 2020, and the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope,
scheduled for the mid-2020's.
In 2018, Rodney was recognized with the university’s Garnet Apple Award for teaching excellence. Rodney earned a B.S. in physics and astronomy at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, and went on to graduate studies at the Institute for Astronomy of the University of Hawaii. After completing his dissertation on stellar explosions, he became a postdoctoral researcher at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, where he was awarded a Hubble Postdoctoral Research Fellowship.
Sean Yee: Assistant Professor, Mathematics
Professor Yee’s scholarship synergizes the teaching and learning of undergraduate
mathematics. His primary focus is providing seminars and courses on teaching for mathematics
graduate students who are teaching assistants or full instructors of record for undergraduate
mathematics courses. His research has resulted in multiple National Science Foundation
grants revolving around peer-mentorship models for graduate student instructors.
With these grants, Yee has created and implemented professional development for experienced graduate students to mentor novice graduate students in teaching, thus generating a community of practice around teaching. Prior to coming to Carolina, Yee taught secondary mathematics for six years in Ohio and was an assistant professor of mathematics education at California State University, Fullerton. His scholarship has also included book chapters and journal publications focusing on mathematical proof education, educational discourse theory, conceptual metaphor theory as a means to improve teacher listening, secondary methods courses, and mathematical problem solving.
Lori Ziolkowski: Assistant Professor, School of Earth, Ocean and Environment
Ziolkowski leads a dynamic lab of graduate and undergraduate students on research
topics related to climate change in the polar regions and life in extreme environments.
Her efforts have included field work in Antarctica, as well as several Arctic locations.
Ziolkowski is also passionate about broadly sharing her knowledge of climate change
by teaching both non-major classes and sciences majors alike.
Her research has garnered international recognition as she was named the Baillet Latour Fellow, a Belgian initiative that provides young scientists with the opportunity to conduct research in East Antarctica. She also was named a USC Breakthrough Rising Star. Ziolkowski completed postdoctoral research at McMaster University in Canada, where she was a National Science and Engineering Research Council postdoctoral fellow.
Ryan Rykaczewski: Assistant Professor, School of Earth Ocean and Environment Former postdoctoral scholar at the NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory and
Princeton University, Professor Rykaczewski is now a biological oceanographer at USC
with research focusing on the sensitivity of marine biogeochemical cycles, ecosystem
structure, and fisheries production to changing ocean climate and physics. The motivation
behind this work is a desire to better understand the mechanisms through which climate
change influences the dynamics of marine ecosystems. Such knowledge would permit
better management, conservation, and exploitation of the ocean’s fish populations.
Professor Rykaczewski is active in international oceanographic organizations, most
prominently the North Pacific Marine Science Organization. He teaches both graduate
and undergraduate students about the connections between marine ecosystems and human
activity in courses like Ocean and Society, and Marine Fisheries Ecology.
Jessica Barnes: Assistant Professor, School of Earth Ocean and Environment and the
Department of Geography Professor Barnes work focuses on the culture and politics of resource use and environmental
change in the Middle East. Professor Barnes’ first book, Cultivating the Nile: The Everyday Politics of Water in Egypt (Duke University Press, 2014), received the 2016 James M. Blaut Award from the Cultural
and Political Ecology Specialty Group of the American Association of Geographers.
Other publications include a volume (coedited with Michael Dove), Climate Cultures: Anthropological Perspectives on Climate Change (Yale University Press, 2015), and articles in several academic journals, including Environment and Planning D, Geoforum, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Social Studies of Science, Nature Climate Change, and Critique of Anthropology. In 2013 she was awarded the Junior Scholar Award of the Anthropology and Environment
Society of the American Anthropological Association. Professor Barnes’ current project,
which has been funded by fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies
and George A. and Eliza Gardner Howard Foundation, draws on ethnographic and archival
work to examine food security in Egypt and the longstanding identification of security
with self-sufficiency in wheat and bread. Professor Barnes teaches courses on the
environment, water resources management, food politics, and international development.
Jennifer Augustine: Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology Professor Augustine joined the Department of Sociology in 2015 and has taught courses
on the Sociology of Education and Inequality among others. She earned her doctorate
in sociology from the University of Texas at Austin and was a post-doctoral fellow
at Rice University. Professor Augustine's research aims to understand the complex
forces that contribute to the reproduction of inequality across generations in modern
American society. She is particularly interested in the role that the historic increases
in U.S. women's educational attainment has played in this process. She has peer reviewed
publications featured in such journals as Social Science Quarterly, Population Research and Policy Review, and Journal of Marriage and Family.
Gretchen J . Woertendyke: Associate Professor, Department of English Professor Woertendyke published her book “Hemispheric Regionalism: Romance and the
Geography of Genre” (Oxford University Press, 2016) as a McCausland Fellow. The book
constructs a new literary genealogy by bringing together popular culture, fugitive
slave narratives, advertisements, political treaties and fiction that centers on Haiti
and Cuba. Woertendyke has begun writing and researching her next book, “A History
of Secrecy in the New World,” which explores how Jacobin terror, slave conspiracy
or Freemasonry are perceived as threatening. Her exploration of cultural dynamics
in literature expands into the classroom where she teaches a Piracy and the Atlantic
World course and an African American Literature course that drew on modern racial
conflicts. In the department of English, she has started the Undergraduate Literary
Society INK!
Michael Gibbs Hill: Associate Professor, Department of Languages, Literature and Culture Before becoming a McCausland Fellow, Professor Hill published his first book “Lin
Shu Ink.: Translation and the Making of Modern Chinese Culture,” (Oxford University Press, 2013) and regularly contributed as a Chinese translator.
He recently returned to the classroom to study modern standard Arabic so that he could
begin his next project working on the history of cultural relations between China
and the Middle East. In April 2016, he conducted a one-day workshop on the topic for
the Center for Asian Studies in the Walker Institute for International and Area Studies.
Sharon DeWitte: Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology and Biological Sciences Professor DeWitte has used her fellowship to publish research on the health and demographic
consequences of the Black Death and the context of the emergence of this first outbreak
of medieval plague. This research takes on an interdisciplinary nature. She has begun
new research to examine the associations between diet, migration, death and mortality
in the medieval and early modern period in London. For the Department of Biological
Sciences, DeWitte has planned online courses for Human Anatomy and Physiology I and
II. She also mentored graduate students as they applied for National Science Foundation
dissertation grants.
Sarah Schneckloth: Associate Professor, School of Visual Art and Design Professor Schneckloth is based in the School of Visual Art and Design, but through
the McCausland Fellowship, she has made research connections throughout the College
of Arts and Sciences. Her research centers on the intersection of biology, geology
and architecture as understood through the practice of drawing. She has mounted nine
exhibitions, including solo exhibitions in New York and Chicago. Schenckloth is equally
dedicated to her students, spending her time advising and mentoring students on top
of studio class time. She teaches a three-week Summer Drawing Intensive.
Federica K. Clementi: Associate Professor, Department of English and Jewish Studies
Program During her time as a McCausland Fellow, Professor Clementi has completed two manuscripts:
“Out of America,” a memoir of her own experiences as an emigre to the United States
and “Holocaust Mothers and Daughters” (UPNE, 2013), a study of Holocaust memoirs,
autobiographies and dairies by Jewish women. Her course work and her research are
tied together through her personal experience and the courses she develops. For the
Women and Gender Studies Program and the department of English, Clementi teaches a
Women Writers course. She has also completed a screenplay, Pour la vie – For Life.
It is based on the life of a Holocaust survivor. Because of the in-depth research
and writing that Clementi has done though the McCausland Fellowship, she has been
able to speak at numerous conferences and publish many articles.
Adam M. Schor: Associate Professor, Department of History Prior to becoming a McCausland Fellow, Professor Schor published his first book, “Theordoret’s
People,” (University of California Press, 2011). With the McCausland Fellowship, Schor has
been able to research his second historical monograph: a broad study of the ways in
which the early Christian clergy (2-5th century) organized itself, under the leadership of bishops and claimed influence over
the hitherto diffuse Christian community. In the classroom, he has developed a half
online-half flipped classroom format for the European Civilization course. On campus,
Schor formed the Jewish Faculty and Staff Council, which is now part of the Provost’s
Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Committee, to increase support for Jewish students
at Carolina.
Catherine Keyser: Associate Professor, Department of English Language and Literature Professor Keyser has used her time as a McCausland Fellow to explore food studies
and race, which inspired her current book project. The increase in her research has
drawn the attention of scholars in her field, and Keyser has been invited to present
her research at several major conferences. In the classroom, Keyser furthered her
study of American literature by developing courses like the graduate seminar Vehicles
of Modernity, which focuses on transportation technology in modern American literature.
She has directed four doctoral dissertations and served on several Master of Fine
Arts thesis committees.
Joseph A. November: Associate Professor, Department of History Professor November’s research takes place at the nexus of technology and history. The McCausland Fellowship has allowed him to begin research for his two books: first a story of volunteers who used their computers to transform the relationship between science and the public, and the second of which is a biography of Robert Ledley, inventor of the whole-body CT scanner. He has presented this research at invited talks. In the classroom, November has developed a Video Games and History course that garnered national attention.
Blaine Griffen: Associate Professor, School of Earth, Ocean and Environment and the
Department of Biological Sciences Professor Griffen’s National Science Foundation supported research explores human
effects on marine life and variation between individuals within populations. He developed
the Marine Conservation Biology course and has been active in mentoring students and
encouraging student research. Griffen has mentored five doctoral students, two graduate
students, and has had 22 undergraduate students conduct research in his lab. Griffen
has also contributed to the larger academic community by providing over 100 education
outreach presentations to local K-12 classes and serving as the associate editor for
the “Journal of Animal Ecology” since 2014.
Hunter H. Gardner: Associate Professor, Department of Languages, LIterature and Cultures Professor Gardner has been able to expand her research because of the McCausland
Fellowship. She increased her study of plague narratives and of Greco-Roman antiquity
in film and popular culture. She also co-authored “Odyssean Identities in Modern Cultures,” (Ohio State University Press, 2014), an edited volume on the reception of the Odysseus myth in the 20th century. She brought the themes from her research into the classroom and developed
a new course on plague narratives that allowed students to explore everything from
Boccaccio’s “Decameron” to the modern day AMC show “The Walking Dead.”Gardner has mentored McNair Scholars and Magellan Scholars and organized the Classics
Day outreach program at USC.