The Harold N. Glassman Dissertation Awards

The Graduate School is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2008 Harold N. Glassman Dissertation Awards:

• Humanities:  Sara Scalenghe (History, 2007; mentor:  Dr. Judith Tucker)
• Social Sciences:  Linda M. Merola (Government, 2007; mentor:  Dr. Clyde Wilcox)
• Sciences:  Jingsong Huang (Chemistry, 2007; mentor:  Dr. Miklos Kertesz)

Previous years' recipients include:

• 2007 Glassman Award in the Humanities:  George Vrtis (Ph.D. in History, 2006), "The Front Range of the Rocky Mountains:  An Environmental History, 1700-1900."   (abstract)
  
• 2007 Glassman Award in the Social Sciences:  Farah Godrej (Ph.D. in Government, 2006), "Toward a Cosmopolitan Political Thought: Non-Western Texts and the Methodology of Comparative Political Theory.”  (abstract)
  
• 2007 Glassman Award in the Sciences:  Christopher Drummond (Ph.D. in Biology, 2006), "Phylogenetic Relationship, Mating Systems and Population Structure in Lupinus (Leguminosae)."  (abstract)
  
• 2006 Glassman Award in the Humanities:  Henriette de Bruyn Kops (Ph.D. in History, 2005), “Liquid Silver: The Wine and Brandy Trade Between Nantes and Rotterdam in the First Half of the Seventeenth Century”  (abstract)
  
  
• 2006 Glassman Award in the Social Sciences:  Matthew M. Taylor (Ph.D. in Government, 2004), “Activating Judges: Courts, Institutional Structure, and the Judicialization of Policy Reform in Brazil, 1988-2002”  (abstract)
  
  
• 2006 Glassman Award in the Sciences:  Jana Watson-Capps (Ph.D. in Biology, 2005), "Female mating behavior in the context of sexual coercion and female ranging behavior of bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops sp.) in Shark Bay, Western Australia"  (abstract)
  
• 2005 Glassman Award in the Sciences:  Amorsolo Suguitan, Jr. (Ph.D. in Biology, 2004), "Identification of factors that increase the risk of pre-term delivery in women infected with Plasmodium falciparum"
  
  
• 2004 Glassman Award in the Sciences:  Lyann Ursos (Ph.D. in Chemistry, 2003), "Acidification of the Digestive Vacuole of Plasmodium Falciparum Malarial Parasites Is Linked to Chloroquine Resistance"
  
  
• 2004 Glassman Award in the Humanities:  Jeffrey T. Zalar (Ph.D. in History, 2003), "Knowledge and Nationalism in Imperial Germany: A Cultural History of the Association of Saint Charles Borromeo, 1890-1914"
  
  
• 2003 Glassman Award in the Humanities:  Gillian McGillivray (Ph.D. in History, 2002), "Blazing Cane: Sugar Communities, Power, and Politics in Cuba, 1868-1948"
  
  
• 2002 Glassman Award in the Humanities:   Anne Thiel (Ph.D. in German, 2001), "Verhinderte Traditionen: Maerchen deutscher Autorinnen vor den Bruedern Grimm"
  
  
• 2002 Glassman Award in the Social Sciences:   Takae Tsujioka (Ph.D. in Linguistics, 2001), "The Syntax of Possession in Japanese"
  
  
• 2001 Glassman Award in the Sciences:   David Abdallah (Ph.D. in Chemistry, 2000), "Anisotropic Assemblies in Neat and Lyotropic Phases of Alkanes.  Alkanes with One Hetero- Atom, and Ammonium and Phosphonium Salts with One to Four Long N-Alkyl Chains"
  
  
• 2001 Glassman Award in the Social Sciences:  El Houcine Haichour (Ph.D. in Linguistics, 2000), "A Corpus Linguistics Analysis of English and Arabic Parallel Business Discourse Domains"
  
  
• 2000 Glassman Award in the Sciences:  Franz Geiger (Ph.D. in Chemistry, 1998), "Ice Surface Chemistry Relevant to Stratospheric Ozone Depletion"
  
  
• 1999 Glassman Award in the Humanities:  Steven E. Phillips (Ph.D. in History, 1998 ) “Between Assimilation and Independence: The Taiwanese Elite Under Nationalist Chinese Rule, 1945-1950”
  
  
• 1999 Glassman Award in the Social Sciences: Donna Van Cott (Ph.D. in Government, 1998), “Constitution-making and Democratic Transformation: The Bolivian and Colombian Constitutional Reforms”
  
  
• 1997 Glassman Award in the Social Sciences:  Haleh Vaziri (Ph.D. in Government, 1995), “The Islamic Republic and its Neighbors: Ideology and the National Interest in Iran’s Foreign Policy During the Khomeini Decade”
  
  
• 1997 Glassman Award in the Natural Sciences:  Miroslav Rapta (Ph.D. in Chemistry, 1996), “Synthesis, Characterization, and X-Ray Structure of Iron and Copper Complexes With Ligands Containing Hisitdine-And Tyrosine-Like Residues as Models for Active Sites of Mononuclear and Dinuclear Centers of Metalloproteins”
  
  
• 1997 Glassman Award in the Social Sciences:  Melanie Metzger (Ph.D. in Linguistics, 1995), “The Paradox of Neutrality: A Comparison of Interpreters’ Goals with the Reality of Interactive Discourse”

The Glassman Dissertation Award Competition

The Harold N. Glassman Dissertation Awards are intended to honor truly distinguished dissertations in the sciences, social sciences and humanities, with one award available in each of these three broad disciplinary areas.  Eligible dissertations are those whose final approved versions were submitted between July and May of the previous academic year.  Only one dissertation from each disciplinary area may be submitted for consideration to the Graduate School Executive Committee, which then makes the final decision; however, there is no expectation that each panel will submit a nomination each year.  The awards are given for truly distinguished scholarship only and should be seen as significant honors.  The tangible prize consists of an award certificate and a cash award.  More significant, though, is the respect given the dissertation by the dissertator's mentor, committee and the senior faculty who reviewed the dissertation.

Nomination process:  Nomination process:  effective this year, nominations should be submitted by the Department Chair via the Graduate School's proposal routing system available at the following:  https://www9.georgetown.edu/grad/gsas_www/gu_awards/  
In addition to the on-line application, nominations should include a copy of the dissertation (if available electronically; submitted in hard copy to Maria Snyder, ICC 302, if not), a dissertation abstract, and letters from the mentor and readers that sketch the dissertation's contribution and the level of scholarship that it reflects. The contents of this letter should reflect previous consultation with members of the dissertation committee.  For those dissertations which straddle two or more fields, the letter should designate within which subfield--humanities, social sciences, or sciences--the dissertation ought to be considered. The nominations for each area are then reviewed by panels consisting of representatives from the departments/programs within the respective areas.

Nominations for the 2008 competition are due by Wednesday, January 30, 2008.

Dr. Sara Scalenghe is the 2008 recipient of the Harold N. Glassman Dissertation Award in Humanities for her dissertation, “Being Different: Intersexuality, Blindness, Deafness, and Madness in Ottoman Syria.”  Dr. Judith Tucker of the History Department served as mentor.

Previous studies of the history of deafness, blindness, muteness, intersexuality, and madness have focused on Europe and North America, and the stigmas and limitations associated with the “disabilities” of these populations. Dr. Scalenghe’s dissertation research expanded the study of these “others” to another time and place, namely Ottoman Syria. She has written a cultural and social history of the body, gender, and disability by investigating the perceptions and conditions of marginal communities - the transsexual, the blind, the deaf, and the mentally ill - in Ottoman Arab society. Her research took her to Damascus, Beirut, Cairo and Istanbul. With her mastery of Arabic, Turkish, Persian, French, and several other languages, she studied an exceptionally wide array of complex sources, from Islamic legal texts and biographical dictionaries to dream interpretation manuals and poetry. She discovered that in Ottoman Syria “difference” was perceived more inclusively, and that society did not stigmatize and isolate groups that were mentally and physically different.

Dr. Scalenghe’s extensive research, incorporation of infrequently used critical sources, pathbreaking findings, and humane sensibilities have already earned her recognition for her work in the form of prizes in the fields of Middle East Studies and Disability Studies.  She has contributed to academia by teaching courses at Georgetown University and now holds an appointment as Assistant Professor of History at Indiana University. In addition, she has six publications in academic journals and encyclopedias. The Graduate School celebrates the signal contribution her dissertation makes to the fields of history and disability studies by awarding Dr. Sara Scalenghe the Glassman dissertation award in the humanities.

Dr. Merola examined the ways in which threatening information alters social conceptions of and attitudes towards tolerance and civil liberties. In particular, she studied society in the United States, and how the public media discussed threats and subsequently questioned individual rights. She further investigated how legal elites, especially judges, echoed shifting public approaches towards civil liberties in their writing and decision-making. Dr. Merola moved beyond mere speculation and meticulously employed survey experiments and computerized linguistic analyses of judicial decisions to study a substantial collection of print and broadcast media. Her methods were systematic and groundbreaking, particularly in the field of law. The evidence both quantitatively and qualitatively supported her argument that neither common man nor the legal elite are immune to the effects of threatening information on conceptions of civil liberty.

Dr. Clyde Wilcox praised Dr. Merola’s groundbreaking and fastidious empirical work. The American Bar Association established a fellowship to instruct other students of law to adopt similar research techniques. Dr. Merola arranged two original seminars while at Georgetown University, and is currently an assistant professor at George Mason University. The Graduate School applauds her remarkable achievements in the area of academia, social science, and law by awarding Dr. Linda Merola the Glassman dissertation award in the social sciences.

Dr. Jingsong Huang is the 2008 recipient of the Harold N. Glassman Dissertation Award in the Sciences for his dissertation, “Multicenter Covalent Pi-Pi Bonding Interaction and its Role in the Solid-State Properties of Phenalenyl-based Organic Radical Materials.”

The development and creation of new materials with unusual properties is at the forefront of much research in the chemical and physical sciences world wide. A team led by Dr. Robert C. Haddon recently discovered new phenalenyl-based organic radical materials. Dr. Huang’s dissertation examined magnetism, structure, electrical conductivity, and other electronic properties of those materials by applying modern computational chemistry tools drawing on a combination of molecular and solid state orbital theory and the Hubbard dimer model. His mentor, Dr. Miklos Kertesz, stated that Dr. Huang’s research provided crucial insight into the function and optimization of the new organic compounds and their insulating counterparts aiding the design of better new materials. Dr. Huang extended these studies into an important category of molecular transformations known as Cope rearrangement. This discovery represented a new class of reactions, and Dr. Huang was invited to present his results at the National Meetings of the American Chemical Society.

Dr. Huang has made fundamental contributions to material chemistry that will assist leading experimental and theoretical materials chemists in expanding their research. He already has nine publications, four of which appear in The Journal of the American Chemical Society, the premier and highly-selective American chemistry journal. For his many achievements and essential contributions, the Graduate School proudly awards Dr. Jingsong Huang the Glassman dissertation award in the sciences.