Marilyn Blatt Young Dissertation Completion FellowshipSHAFR invites applications for its dissertation completion fellowship. SHAFR will make one year-long award in the amount of $25,000 each, to support the writing and completion of the doctoral dissertation in each academic year. This highly competitive fellowship will support the most promising doctoral candidates in the final phase of completing their dissertations. Membership in SHAFR is required. Applicants should be candidates for the PhD in a humanities or social science doctoral program (most likely history), must have been admitted to candidacy, and must be at the writing stage, with all substantial research completed by the time of the award. Applicants should be working on a topic in the field of U.S. foreign relations history or international history, broadly defined, and must be current members of SHAFR. Because successful applicants are expected to finish writing the dissertation during the tenure of the fellowship, they should not engage in teaching opportunities or extensive paid work, except at the discretion of the Fellowship Committee. At the termination of the award period, recipients must provide a one page (250-word) report to the SHAFR Council on the use of the fellowship, to be considered for publication in the society newsletter. The submission packet should include:
The research statement should run no longer than three double-spaced pages; statements exceeding this limit will not be reviewed. The letter may be single-spaced. Both the letter and statement should be formatted with 1-inch margins and 12 point font, Times New Roman preferred. Questions can be sent by electronic mail to [email protected]. The annual deadline for submissions is 1 April. Fellowship awards will be announced formally during the SHAFR annual meeting in June, with expenditure to be administered during the subsequent academic year. Recent Winners: 2024
2023
2022
2021
2019 Yalzadeh's dissertation,“Solidarities and Solitude: Tracing the Racial Boundaries of the Iranian Diaspora,” examines U.S. foreign relations through the lens of immigration history. It explores the increasingly contentious relationship between the United States and Iran over six decades through its impact on Iranian-Americans. Beginning with the 1953 coup that overthrew Prime Minister Muhammad Mossadeq, Yalzadeh reveals how racial formation within the United States and Iranian strategies of belonging reflected the changing political relations between Washington and Tehran. From Cold War propaganda to Third World solidarity activism and domestic lobbying today, Yalzadeh interrogates notions of U.S. and Iranian exceptionalism, whiteness and brownness, and the implications of foreign policy on the lived experiences of Iranian-Americans. Her transnational study benefits from rich multilingual, multi-archival sources that intersect with and contribute to the historiography of U.S. foreign relations, immigration, and ethnic studies.2018 Caleb Hardner, University of Illinois at Chicago A graduate student at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Caleb Hardner’s dissertation, “Infectious Intruders, Helpless Hawaiians: Public Health and the Meaning of Race in Colonial Hawai’i, 1879-1914,” explores an exciting intersection of public health and racialization in U.S. imperial management in Hawai'i. Building on extensive research in the Hawaii State Archives and multidisciplinary methods, Hardner reveals the contingent process by which the U.S. imperial state attempted to construct tidy racial hierarchies along supposed disease vectors—most notably, leprosy but also venereal disease and other pathogens—among a decidedly multiracial and transnational population of indigenous, Chinese, Japanese, and Portuguese plantation laborers. Over time, indigenous Hawai’ians were deemed assimilable, while migrant laborers were deemed incurable vessels of contagion. In the end, the seemingly mundane and neutral practices of scientific medicine became key sites, or “laboratories,” in which the boundaries of inclusion and exclusion on Hawai’i were determined on the murky path from territorial holding to statehood.2017 Nguyet Nguyen, American University Nguyet Nguyen, of American University is bringing the Vietnamese diaspora into the history of the global movement against the Vietnam War. She examines the ways in which Vietnamese exiles built support among activists in the United States and Western Europe in an effort to persuade the American government to withdraw its forces. In this account of international diplomacy from below, state and nonstate actors collided as migrants, university students, and transnational social movements mobilized support for the National Liberation Front. Nguyen’s research moves impressively across continents, integrating Vietnamese, American, and French sources into a single, globe-spanning story. Operating in the best tradition of the “new diplomatic history,” she offers new explanations for the failure of American foreign policy in Vietnam and Washington’s inability to win over international public opinion. In this way, she sheds new light on an important and previously neglected aspect of the conflict.Aileen Teague, Vanderbilt University It is widely accepted that the US War on Drugs has left its mark Mexico, but the history and consequences of this process have not been well understood. Aileen Teague, of Vanderbilt University, is breaking through this barrier with a dissertation that explores how US drug control policies shaped Mexican domestic politics. It makes a major contribution to the history of the United States and the world by illuminating the actors, institutions, and policies that shaped patterns of drug addiction and violence in two societies. Navigating the national and local levels of this story, Teague examines the perspectives of US policymakers, Mexican leaders, local drug enforcement agents, Mexican soldiers, opium producers, and insurgents. Her dissertation reveals how the United States and Mexico constructed an antidrug worldview that has provided an essential framework for more recent policies concerning immigration, manufacturing, and border enforcement. Teague’s multisited and multilingual work breaks new ground and offers important insights into present-day problems.2016 Patrick Chung, Brown University The story of U.S. industrial jobs moving overseas is well known. But Patrick Chung, of Brown University, puts this transnational phenomenon in an appropriately global context by writing a twinned history of industry in the United States and South Korea. Chung identifies the U.S. military as the key broker, not only through its purchase orders but through its imposition of U.S. industrial standards on South Korea, which then allowed for the easy establishment of transnational supply chains. Korea appears here not just as a central arena of the Cold War, but as a proving ground for late twentieth-century capitalism. With a multi-sited, multi-lingual study stretching from the 1950s to the 2000s, Chung is writing nothing less than the history of globalization.James Lin, University of California, Berkeley James Lin, of the University of California, Berkeley, is writing the next chapter in the growing history of international development. It is the story of developmentalist thought and policy, not as seen from the United States, but as seen from China and then, after the revolution, Taiwan. Lin reaches back into the interwar period and identifies the specter of Chinese famine as one of the first significant development problems of the twentieth century, and shows the odd assortment of figures—missionaries, civil engineers, plant breeders—who arrived to solve it. Lin then considers Taiwan as not just a recipient but also a broadcaster of development, and explores how U.S. strategies were selectively adapted, modified, and recombined by Taiwanese intellectuals and then exported throughout Asia, Latin America, and Africa in the 1960s. This is history full of surprises, with much to teach the field.2015 Carly Goodman, Temple University Carly Goodman is staking out new territory with this innovative dissertation; chronologically, she is writing a contemporary history that examines the U.S. Diversity Visa Lottery from 1990 to present. Her project also brings together public diplomacy, immigration, globalization, and the history of U.S. foreign relations. Her dissertation will reveal the unintended consequences of U.S. policy – both in how it how it changed perceptions of the United States in sub-Saharan Africa and its role in keeping the “American dream” remains alive for many Africans. Her work also contributes to a growing literature on the influence of nonstate actors on U.S. foreign relations, examining the understudied contributions of African-based travel agents and Internet café workers to shaping U.S. immigration policy.Eric Rutkow, Yale University In the past years, SHAFR members have produced a number of high-quality works on the infrastructure of U.S. power. Eric Rutkow promises to continue that trend with his fascinating study of the Pan-American Highway, the largest international development project that the United States undertook in the interwar period. The project is self-evidently important, with much to contribute to the field. But the committee was also struck by the conceptual clarity and writerly grace of Rutkow’s presentation. We thus look forward not only to what will surely be a significant dissertation but, beyond that, to what we anticipate will be a successful and enjoyable book.2014 Kyle Burke, Northwestern Universty Kyle Burke's dissertation explores the connection between politically conservative and wealthy individuals, right-wing organizations, and anti-communist guerrillas in the Third World during the 1970s and 1980s. Picking up on a theme usually associated with John Foster Dulles, at least rhetorically, Burke examines the effort to roll back communist gains through paramilitary warfare in Southern Africa, Latin America, and Asia. Burke connects these activities to to the rise of private companies involved in the business of conducting wars. Inventive, engaging, and highly relevant to current issues in American foreign policy, Burke's dissertation promises to make critical connections between retired military and intelligence officers with international groups and paramilitary forces in countries ranging from Nicaragua, Guatemala, and El Salvador to Angola as well as Laos and Cambodia.Julia Mansfield, Stanford University Yellow fever in the Early Republic is not the sort of topic that one might immediately classify under foreign relations, but Julia Mansfield ably demonstrates its relevance. Like the best emerging studies of the United States and the world, Mansfield’s dissertation promises to take an episode familiar within the national history of the United States and reveal its international characteristics. In this case, the contagion touched on the key issue of foreign commerce and served as an occasion for U.S. leaders to reflect on the relationship between their country and the external world. The committee was struck by the clarity and confidence of Mansfield’s presentation as well as by the novelty and significance of her topic. This is a dissertation with much to contribute to the field. 2013 2012 2011 2010 2009 2008 |