Humanities Programs Enriched by Foundation Awards
Sherine Hamdy, Assistant Professor of Anthropology
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation recently renewed its support for postdoctoral fellowships in the humanities at Brown with a grant of $1,246,000 over six years. This award builds upon two previous awards from the foundation during the campaign: a $3 million endowment gift in September 2008 to fund graduate fellowships in the humanities and enhance Brown’s humanities and humanistic offerings, and a $1.16 million grant in 2005 which launched the postdoctoral fellowships in the humanities.
These postdoctoral fellowships enable the Cogut Center for the Humanities to bring visiting faculty to campus to enrich the curriculum and provide students with new areas for study and research. The Mellon Fellows teach one class per semester for their home departments and participate in the Cogut Center’s weekly Fellows' Seminar series to discuss their research and that of the other Cogut Fellows.
The Mellon Fellows enrich the curricular offerings, enhance the research discussions, and energize the ranks of Brown’s humanities faculty. A Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow from 2006-08, Sherine Hamdy, for example, continues at Brown as an Assistant Professor of Anthropology. An Egyptian-American who grew up in various parts of the world, Professor Hamdy is fluent in Modern Standard Arabic, and Qur'anic and classic Arabic, as well as English, French and Spanish. Among her publications is Blinding Ignorance: Medical science, diseased eyes, and religious practice in Egypt, which appeared in Arab Studies Journal in 2005. Professor Hamdy is currently writing a book entitled "Our Bodies Belong to God: Islam and Bioethics in Egypt," based on this research, which is under contract with the University of California Press. In 2009 she was named the Kutayba Alghanim Assistant Professor of the Social Sciences.
More information about current and past Mellon postdoctoral fellows as well as other programs and initiatives of the Cogut Center for the Humanities are available at the Cogut Center website.
