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Professors awarded distinguished fellowshipsTwo faculty members of the University of Rhode Island's College of Arts and Sciences have won prestigious fellowships. History Assistant Professor Evelyn Sterne was awarded a fellowship from the Institute for the Advanced Study of Religion at Yale University, and Anthony Fargo, assistant professor of journalism, was named as a Freedom Forum Teaching Fellow. The fellowships will enhance the scholarship and teaching of the two professors. The first will help Sterne write a book about the role religion had in forming a national identity from 1840 to 1940. The other will help a Fargo enhance his teaching skills in writing and reporting. "We have a number of award-winning scholars and teachers in the humanities at the University of Rhode Island, and I am pleased to see these two promising young professors receive support and recognition through these prestigious fellowships. Our students will benefit considerably when these talented professors disseminate the results of their work in the courses they teach," said Dr. Winifred Brownell, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. Protestantism played a critical role in defining national identity during this country's early history and the religious right appears to have an influence on contemporary politics. During the 150-year or so gap between antebellum and present day, however, historians tend to relegate religion to the private or social sphere or dismiss it as a distraction to more political forms of activism. That all could change. Dr. Evelyn Sterne argues that during those 100 years of mass immigration, religion was central to the debate over national identity. Funded by a $34,000 highly competitive postdoctoral fellowship from the Institute for the Advanced Study of Religion at Yale University, Sterne will expand her dissertation on immigration, religion, class and politics in Providence, R.I. and show that Catholic politics in Providence intersected with a nationwide movement to reshape Americanism in a way that reflected Catholic values and priorities. This summer, Sterne will examine records of selected local parishes in Providence. She will also research records at the Catholic University archives in Washington, D.C. to place Providence in the context of the larger Catholic world. Sterne also received a Faculty Development Grant from the URI Council for Research to pay for the trip to the nation's capital. The URI historian will then devote the next year to reshaping her dissertation from a local study into a book with broad national implications. Anthony Fargo will get a chance to hone his skills when he attends the weeklong Freedom Forum Teaching Fellows Workshop for beginning journalism teachers at Indiana University. Fargo was one of 15 Fellows selected by the Freedom Forum. Fargo expects to earn his Ph.D. in mass communication from the University of Florida, Gainesville this August. The Freedom Forum has funded a summer workshop at Indiana University for beginning teachers of writing and reporting for the last two decades. The content of the workshop offers a solid foundation in the fundamentals of effective teaching as well as responding to the needs of new teachers. Fargo has just concluded his first year of teaching media writing, First Amendment issues, and literary journalism courses at URI. Fargo was a working journalist from 1980 to 1993. URI's Journalism Department has a rich heritage with the Freedom Forum, having hosted a Freedom Forum Visiting Professional in Residence during the 1998-99 academic year. By Jan Sawyer |
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