Adams Fellows for the Public Humanities | Carolina Public Humanities

Please join us in welcoming our inaugural cohort of Maynard Adams Fellows in the Public Humanities!

Carolina Public Humanities is pleased to announce a new fellowship and workshop for graduate students in the humanities, arts, and social sciences: “The Maynard Adams Fellowship for the Public Humanities.” This fellowship honors the distinguished philosopher Maynard Adams (1919-2003), who was a long-time professor at UNC-Chapel Hill, a prominent advocate for the value of the humanities in public education and in public cultures, and a campus leader who established the Program in the Humanities and Human Values in 1979. The new Adams Fellowships are made possible by a generous gift from the Taylor Charitable Trust.

The application process for the 2017-2018 Fellows will begin in August 2017

Meet our 2016-2017 Fellows

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Kiran Bhardwaj is a Royster Fellow and Ph.D. Candidate (and now, Adams Fellow!) in the Philosophy Department here at Chapel Hill. She is a Nebraskan who loves living in the South, and who plays the oboe in her spare time. She works on the nature of ethical ideals (in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant) and on the cases in which we can permissibly give up on others.

[/row_column] [/table_row] [table_row] [row_column]Joshua Blanchard is ABD with MAs in philosophy from UNC and Brandeis, and a BA in philosophy and near eastern studies from the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor). His major research interests are in metaethics, social epistemology, and philosophy of religion. Some of his current research in these areas includes the role that first-order normative judgments play in metaethical theorizing, the authority of expert consensus with respect to marginalized and minority views, and the contribution of Jewish thought to contemporary problems in the philosophy of religion.[/row_column] [/table_row] [table_row] [row_column]Paolo Bocci is a cultural anthropologist interested in the challenges that the global environmental crisis pose to our thinking and social practices. His current work is on the Galapagos Islands. Prior to his graduate studies in the Department of Anthropology at Chapel Hill, he has earned a B.A. and M.A. summa cum laude in philosophy in Italy. He is fluent in four languages and enjoys learning from people from all walks of life.[/row_column] [/table_row] [table_row] [row_column]Lindsay Brainard is a Philosophy Ph.D student from Gustavus, Ohio. She has a B.A. from the College of Wooster, an M.Phil from Cambridge University, and an M.A. from UNC. She is currently completing a dissertation in the Philosophy of Science that explores several ways that the growing prevalence of computer simulations in scientific practice challenges traditional conceptions of the scientific method. She is also interested in ethics, epistemology, the philosophy of religion, and Plato. At UNC, she is heavily involved in the Parr Center for Ethics’ outreach program. In this capacity, she leads philosophy discussion groups at a local retirement center and elementary school. Her favorite film is Clueless, and she is a roller coaster enthusiast.[/row_column] [/table_row] [table_row] [row_column]Miranda Elston is a Ph.D. candidate at UNC Chapel Hill, working with Dr. Tania String. Her dissertation project, “Spatial Interaction: Architectural Representations in Henrician England” explores the theme of sixteenth-century experience and perception of architectural space through pictorial representations in England. Last year she was a Kress Fellow for Applied Research at the Ackland Art Museum, working on a digital project around a single work of art in the museum’s collection. She has previously worked as a consultant, researcher, and freelance content developer for Local Projects, working closely with the National Building Museum, the National Museum of American Jewish History, and the National September 11 Memorial & Museum.[/row_column] [/table_row] [table_row] [row_column]Gale Greenlee is a Greensboro native and doctoral candidate in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at UNC-Chapel Hill. She holds master’s degrees in English and Africana Women’s Studies, and she teaches courses in literature and cultural diversity, popular fiction, and composition. As a kids lit aficionado, she is interested in relationships between race, ethnicity, gender, class, and citizenship in children’s and young adult literature. Her dissertation examines how Black and Latina girlhood narratives function as civic responses to social inequities and as vehicles that envision social change. Gale previously worked for the Greensboro Public Library where she coordinated community outreach initiatives, expanded services for immigrants and refugees, and helped organize citywide reads and literary festivals.[/row_column] [/table_row] [table_row] [row_column]Joanna Lawson is a second year philosophy PhD candidate, whose interests include metaphysics and epistemology. After a year teaching English to elementary school students in Ecuador, she received her undergraduate degree in philosophy and French from Grove City College. Then (after a year-long stint as a clerk in a law firm) she went on to get a masters in philosophical theology from the University of Oxford. She decided that graduate school was probably the place for her when she realized that the best parts of her day were those spent secretively reading Richard III and The Consolations of Philosophy in her cubicle at work (after discharging her duties, of course). She is delighted to report that she no longer has to be at all secretive about her reading.[/row_column] [/table_row] [table_row] [row_column]Meredith McCoy is originally from Chapel Hill,NC. Her current research in American Studies examines federal education legislation and tribally self-determined education. She received her bachelor’s degrees in Anthropology and Music with a minor in Native American Studies from UNC and her master’s in education from Lipscomb University. Meredith has several years of K-12 classroom experience, having taught Spanish, English/Language Arts, and Social Studies in middle schools in Nashville, Tennessee and Atlanta, Georgia before returning to UNC. Meredith has served as a Policy Assistant at the White House Initiative on American Indian and Alaska Native Education and hopes to continue contributing to American Indian education policy[/row_column] [/table_row] [table_row] [row_column]

Macy Salzberger hails from the Midwest where she acquired a taste for cheese curds and craft beer and an unfortunate habit of talking about how she is from the Midwest. She is currently a doctoral student in the philosophy department at UNC with research interests in ethical theory, philosophy of education, philosophy of gender, and social philosophy more broadly construed. She is particularly interested in questions of how race, class, and gender affect or should affect the contents of civic education, where civic education is understood as preparation for democratic citizenship.[/row_column] [/table_row] [table_row] [row_column]Brook Wilensky-Lanford is a second-year PhD student in Religious Studies, studying the history of American religious liberalism. The author of Paradise Lust: Searching for the Garden of Eden, she received her MFA in Nonfiction Writing from Columbia University, and her BA in Religion and Theater from Wesleyan University. A Mainer who spent much of her adult life in New York City, she is excited to be living in the land of chicken and biscuits.[/row_column] [/table_row] [table_row] [row_column]Parr Center Fellow: Keshav Singh is a 3rd year graduate student in the philosophy department at UNC Chapel Hill, with research interests in ethics, metaethics, epistemology, and philosophy of action. He is particularly interested in researching the nature of reasons and their role in human practical life. His role as Parr Center Fellow is to help arrange logistics for our Adams Fellows meetings and he also participates in the discussions.[/row_column] [/table_row] [/table_body] [/table]