Graduate School News and Events
Philadelphia Alumni Support Graduate Research
The Yale Club of Philadelphia is the first of Yale’s many alumni clubs and associations to provide fellowship support specifically for graduate education.
Members of the Club established a summer research fellowship at the suggestion of Charlotte Phelps (Ph.D. 1961, Economics), who wanted to expand the Yale tradition of helping graduate students.
“I suggested our Club create this Fellowship because I was a two-time beneficiary of Yale mentoring myself,” says Phelps, professor emerita of economics at Temple University. “James Tobin, a Nobel laureate, was my dissertation advisor, and Edward Zigler, one of the founders of Head Start, mentored my research when I was a Visiting Fellow at Yale in 1998–99.”
“Our first graduate fellow did research in Philadelphia in the summer of 2005, and we have had a fellow every summer since then,” says Deena Jo Schneider (B.A. 1971), current president of the Club. “The award is intended to underwrite the research efforts of a graduate student who has completed his or her courses and is working on a dissertation. The Club decided to limit the fellowship to a student in the humanities or social sciences because there are fewer sources of financial aid in those fields than in the sciences. By giving preference to a student who has a connection with the Philadelphia area, the Club further honors our city’s scholarly heritage.”
During the winter following the fellowship summer, each recipient has been invited to make a presentation to Club members, “so that they may share in the fruits of the research they helped to underwrite,” says Schneider. “I have attended several of these presentations and can testify that they have been intellectually stimulating and our fellows well worth supporting.”
The 2009 research fellowship winner is Julia Guarneri (History), who will study the culture and community that formed in turn-of-the-century Philadelphia newspapers. She will conduct her research at the Philadelphia Free Library and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Glenda Gilmore is her advisor.
The 2008 recipient was Patrick Redding (English), who spent last August as a visiting researcher at the Rosenbach Museum and Library in Philadelphia.
“The aim of my visit was to read the unpublished letters and reading diaries of the poet Marianne Moore, who forms a chapter of my dissertation, ‘Modernism and the Idea of Democratic Poetry,’” he says. “In this chapter, I situate Moore’s early poetry in the context of the reforming spirit of the Progressive Era.”
Patrick spoke about his research to alumni in February. His talk, arranged by Catherine LaFarge (Ph.D. 1966, French), was held at the home of past Yale Club President Ralph Hirshorn (B.A. 1960). LaFarge, current chair of the selection committee for the award, is professor emerita of French and former dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Bryn Mawr.
“Patrick charmed everyone,” Phelps recalls. “He invited interaction with the audience from the beginning, asking whether any of us were familiar with Moore’s poetry. I was not familiar with her poetry, but knew something about her lifestyle, because I have seen the replica of her room at the Rosenbach Museum. Patrick did research on marginalia in her manuscripts at the Rosenbach. He talked for about 45 minutes, and there was an easy back and forth between him and the audience.
“Ralph [Hirshorn] is a past president of the Club. He has an infectious laugh, and it is always fun at his house. The Hirschorns have a little theatre in their home. That is where Patrick made his presentation. Natalie and Ralph greeted everyone at the door; welcomed them with wine, cheese, other hors d’oeuvres, and a blazing fire in the fireplace. After the talk people flowed into the kitchen and dining room for a light supper and more easy conversation…. I drove Patrick back to center city and enjoyed getting to know him better.”
Patrick reports that his talk began by acknowledging “the somewhat negative reputation of modernist poetry—that it is known for being difficult, obscure, and elitist. I gave some examples from the poetry of T. S. Eliot that bear out this description. In the second half of my presentation, I turned to the poetry of Moore, whose style is different from Eliot’s, yet equally difficult. By reading these poems in view of her biography—including Moore’s early interests in socialism, female suffrage, and popular education—I suggested that Moore’s stylistic difficulty should not overshadow her fundamentally democratic sensibility. Moore’s poems constitute a new way of thinking about what it means for modern art to be democratic.” Patrick’s advisors at Yale are Langdon Hammer and David Bromwich, and he anticipates submitting his dissertation next fall.
Doctoral students who have passed their qualifying examinations and successfully defended their prospectus are eligible to apply for this competitive grant. Preference is given to students who have connections with the Philadelphia area, either through the research they intend to conduct, the undergraduate institution they attended, or their permanent address.
Expanding the Philadelphia model to other cities would benefit both students and alumni. “I think other Yale Alumni Clubs should be encouraged not only to establish such graduate fellowships, but also ask the recipients to give a presentation of their work. It is uplifting and keeps the Yale family aware of the research going on at the university and the excellence of the graduate student body,” says LaFarge.
She adds, “While a dean [of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Bryn Mawr College] I was well aware of the lack of summer funding for graduate students in the humanities and the social sciences. So I was particularly pleased when Charlotte Phelps called me to tell me of her initiative and ask for my help.”
“The Graduate School would gladly assist other Yale Clubs in establishing and administering similar programs in their regions,” says Edward Barnaby, assistant dean. “Yale graduate students would benefit immensely from a network of funding that provides access to metropolitan research centers across the United States, as well as the opportunity to share their first-rate scholarship with the alumni community. The research is often of strong local interest to the Club’s membership, and this program has the potential to draw greater participation from alumni of the Graduate School in Yale Club activities and initiatives.”
Previous fellowship recipients were Claire Nee Nelson (Political Science), Benjamin Looker (American Studies), and Seth Monahan (ph.d. 2008, Music). Seth is the first scholar supported by the Yale Club of Philadelphia to complete his degree, and he is now assistant professor of music theory at the Eastman School of Music. A native of Philadelphia, Seth earned a B.A. at the University of the Arts, and an M.A. in Music at Temple University, both in Philadelphia. “We helped a local boy make good,” Phelps notes with satisfaction.
Julia Guarnieri
and Patrick Redding