Blog
Office of Postdoctoral Affairs Newsletter Features Helen Makhdoumian
Mar. 7, 2024—This post by Helen Makhdoumian (CHPP Fellow) is from the Office of Postdoctoral Affairs March 6, 2024 newsletter Walk by the Robert Penn Warren Humanities Center (RPW) on a sunny afternoon, and you’ll likely see a group of people eating at one of the tables outside and having a lively conversation. Odds are good it’ll...
Legal Career Boosted by Humanities Studies
Feb. 15, 2024—Matt Brolund is a 2023-24 Humanities in the Real World Fellow. This year’s undergraduate cohort are blogging their interviews with professionals who majored in the humanities. To Davis Shugrue, a lawyer trained in the humanities, debate is about far more than arguing for the sake of it. From his undergraduate studies to his current position...
The Human Aspect of the Humanities
Feb. 9, 2024—Armani Dill is a 2023-24 Humanities in the Real World Fellow. This year’s undergraduate cohort are blogging their interviews with professionals who majored in the humanities. As one of the first students to graduate from Vanderbilt with the interdisciplinary major of Law, History, and Society, Zachary Buchta is no stranger to uncertainty and unconventional paths...
Plastic and Rust: Memory Through the Lens of Early Videotape Psychotherapy Archives
Feb. 1, 2024—Carmine Grimaldi is a 2023-24 RPW Faculty Theme Fellow. This year’s cohort explores the theme of “The Place of Memory.” The Introduction of Videotape My research focuses on the early social history of videotape, when the electronic image crept into and profoundly reshaped the institutions and daily experiences of postwar America. In contrast to film,...
Indigenous Removals and Their Legacies: A Reading Guide to Start Campus Conversations
Jan. 18, 2024—Helen Makhdoumian is a Collaborative Humanities Postdoctoral Program Fellow with the Department of English. Last semester at Vanderbilt, I attended talks for “Cherokee and Chickasaw Students at Vanderbilt, 1885-1899,” a library exhibit organized by Professor Daniel Sharfstein, and the panel “The Land We Occupy: Vanderbilt Past and Present,” organized by the RPW Center’s Spatial Histories...
“I was born to be a wanderer”
Jan. 11, 2024—Aashi Gurijala is a 2023-24 Humanities in the Real World Fellow. This year’s undergraduate cohort are blogging their interviews with professionals who majored in the humanities. “I was born to be a wanderer,” Cat said boldly. As a humanities major, it’s hard to ignore the power of words and their ability to change us. What...
Urban Borderlands
Nov. 10, 2023—Anna Tybinko is a Collaborative Humanities Postdoctoral Program Fellow with the Department of Spanish & Portuguese. Slicing through the hillsides of North Africa there are two enormous, steel mesh barriers that divide the autonomous Spanish cities of Ceuta and Melilla (often referred to as enclaves) from Moroccan territory. These double-facing fences, or vallas, are nearly...
My Journey as a Literary Scholar: From Theory to Archives
Oct. 23, 2023—André Ramos-Chacón is a Mending and Transforming Fellow from the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. For five years, as an undergraduate student of literature in Peru, I was formed to understand, appropriate, and apply theory for my study of books. Though, arguably, I was being formed at the margins of the academic establishment —in a...
Adapting Galeano’s “Magical Marxism”
Oct. 17, 2023—Jefferson Cowie, 2023-24 RPW Center Faculty Fellow. This year’s group is exploring the theme of “The Place of Memory.” “Memory of Fire” Who is responsible for this forgetfulness? "It's not a person. It's a system of power that is always deciding in the name of humanity who deserves to be remembered and who deserves to...
What Makes a Successful City?
Oct. 12, 2023—Peter Chesney is a Collaborative Humanities Postdoctoral Program Fellow with the Department of History of Art & Architecture. The Successful City Vanderbilt University hosted a symposium, “Universities, Cities, and Communities,” on September 21-22, 2023, to examine the question, “What makes a successful city?” A successful city is defined by the resilience of its long-standing...