|
 Home
|
|
|
|
The Harold N. Glassman Dissertation Awards
The Graduate School is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2009 Harold N. Glassman Dissertation Awards:
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.
Eligibility: Dissertations whose final, approved versions were submitted between July and May of the previous academic year will be considered. 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.
Award: 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: 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 completing the on-line application form, nominating departments also should upload the following as part of their nomination "packet:" a copy of the dissertation (if only availabe in hard copy, please submit one, full copy to Maria Snyder, ICC 302), 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 2009 competition will be due in late January, 2010.
Previous years' recipients include:
- 2008 Glassman Award in the Humanities: Sara Scalenghe (Ph.D. in History, 2007), "Being Different: Intersexuality, Blindness, Deafness, and Madness in Ottoman Syria” (abstract)
- 2008 Glassman Award in the Social Sciences: Linda M. Merola (Ph.D. in Government, 2007), “A Culture of Crisis: Information and the Scope of American Civil Liberties in an Era of Terrorist Threat” (abstract)
- 2008 Glassman Award in the Sciences: Jingsong Huang (Ph.D. in Chemistry, 2007), “Multicenter Covalent Pi-Pi Bonding Interaction and its Role in the Solid-State Properties of Phenalenyl-based Organic Radical Materials” (abstract)
- 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”
2009 Harold N. Glassman Dissertation Award in the Humanities to Dr. Meredith Oyen (Vita / Abstract)
Dr. Meredith Oyen is the 2009 recipient of the Harold N. Glassman Dissertation Award in the Humanities for her dissertation, “Allies, Enemies and Aliens: Migration and Diaspora in U.S.-Chinese-Relations, 1940-1965” under the Mentorship of Professor Nancy Bernkopf Tucker, Department of History.
Dr. Oyen’s dissertation makes important contributions to American diplomatic history, modern Chinese history and the history of Asian-American relations. Dr. Oyen shows that migration was an important factor in the formulation of the foreign policy goals of the United States, the Republic of China and, later, the People’s Republic of China during this period. Her work advances the powerful argument that immigration and diaspora issues were crucial to the unfolding Sino-American relationship and that in that relationship it was not only U.S. relations with China that mattered but also U.S. relations with the Chinese peoples. The dissertation will force historians to make the politics of the Chinese diaspora far more central to the understanding of Sino-American relations than it has been in the past.
This dissertation is also notable for the quality and diversity of its sources. Dr. Oyen’s work draws on archives in China, Taiwan and the United States. Some of these collections have never been opened to western scholars before. Many of the documents posed significant challenges, some written in the Chinese republican era mix of classical and modern writing and rendered with brush and ink. Understanding these documents required extensive language preparation and extraordinary industry and discipline.
Dr. Oyen is currently in China, where she teaches at the Johns Hopkins-Nanjing University Center.
This dissertation has already been recognized as distinguished by important peers, receiving the Bernath Dissertation Prize from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, the premier organization of diplomatic historians in the United States.
The Graduate School is very proud to add its recognition by awarding Dr. Meredith Oyen the Glassman Dissertation prize in the humanities.
(Excerpted from the presentation speech given by Timonthy A. Barbari, Associate Provost for Research and Dean of the Graduate School, at the 2009 Graduate Commencement ceremony on Friday, May 15, 2009)
(Vita / Abstract)
Dr. Kara Morgan-Short is the 2009 recipient of the Harold N. Glassman Dissertation Award in the Social Sciences for her dissertation, “A Neurolinguistic Investigation of Late Learned Second Language Knowledge: The Effects of Explicit and Implicit Conditions” under the collaborative mentorship of Professor Cristina Sanz , Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Michael Ullman, Department of Neuroscience and Karsten Steinhauer, McGill University.
Dr. Morgan-Short’s dissertation focuses on a number of central questions in second language acquisition: what computational and neural systems underlie the learning of a second language at various proficiency levels; whether later learners can achieve native-like proficiency and how the conditions to which second language learners are exposed affect their progress. In a globalized world where the learning of additional languages will be one of the foundations of personal growth and societal advancement, such questions are of enormous importance.
In addition to contributing significantly to our substantive knowledge of these issues, Dr. Morgan-Short’s work was distinctive for its methodological sophistication and its unique blending of approaches in behavioral research and cognitive neuroscience. By engaging important theoretical questions about language processing and applying techniques that involve both behavioral and neurocognitive measures, Dr. Morgan-Short’s work is already at the leading edge of 21st century human science. As one of her mentors comments, “her
creative insights, ability to integrate large amounts of information, analytical abilities, and extreme hard work and discipline will yield a stellar academic career.”
While at Georgetown, Dr. Morgan-Short was the recipient of research awards from both the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. She is currently Assistant Professor of Spanish Linguistics and Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Illinois-Chicago.
The Graduate School is very proud to award Dr. Kara Morgan-Short the Glassman Dissertation prize in the Social Sciences.
(Excerpted from the presentation speech given by Timonthy A. Barbari, Associate Provost for Research and Dean of the Graduate School, at the 2009 Graduate Commencement ceremony on Friday, May 15, 2009)
2009 Harold N. Glassman Dissertation Award in the Sciences to Dr. Leah Casabianca (Vita / Abstract)
Dr. Leah Casabianca is the 2009 recipient of the Harold N. Glassman Dissertation Award in the Sciences for her dissertation, “Understanding the Mechanism of Action of Antimalarial Drugs: Insights from Solution NMR,” under the mentorship of Professor Angel deDios, Department of Chemistry.
Malaria remains one of the most devastating global health issues today. The mechanism of action of commonly used antimalarial drugs such as chloroquine, quinine and amodiaquine is not completely understood. This gap in our knowledge limits the extent to which new and even more effective antimalarial drugs can be developed. Dr. Casabianca’s dissertation investigates the question of how quinoline antimalarial drugs function in order to clarify the chemical pathways involved and to further our knowledge of the dynamics of antimalarial treatments more generally. Perhaps the most important discovery made by Dr. Casabianca is that quinine and chloroquine kill the malaria parasite through different mechanisms. This will undoubtedly guide further drug discovery programs and it has already had tremendous impact on antimalarial research directions at Georgetown. Much of this important work has already been published in major scientific journals.
Dr. Casabianca is described by one of her faculty mentors as “an outstanding researcher with amazing chemical intuition, excellent practical skills and a truly advanced understanding of physical chemistry.” At Georgetown, Dr. Casabianca was the recipient of numerous honors including a Clare Booth Luce Fellowship and the Achievement Reward for College Scientists Fellowship. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Illinois - Chicago and has most recently been awarded the very prestigious Postdoctoral Research Leave Fellowship by the American Association of University Women.
The Graduate School is very proud to award Dr. Casabianca the Glassman Dissertation prize in the Sciences.
(Excerpted from the presentation speech given by Timonthy A. Barbari, Associate Provost for Research and Dean of the Graduate School, at the 2009 Graduate Commencement ceremony on Friday, May 15, 2009)
|
|
