|
 Home
|
|
|
|
The Harold N. Glassman Dissertation Awards
The Graduate School is pleased to request nominations for the 2008 Harold N. Glassman Dissertation Award in the Humanities, Social Sciences and Sciences.
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.
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”
2007 Harold N. Glassman Dissertation Award in the Humanities to Dr. George Vrtis
Under the mentorship of Professor John McNeill, Dr. Vrtis’ dissertation presents an interdisciplinary examination of the relationship between human society and the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains. The Front Range is found in Colorado, just west of Boulder and Denver. As the frontier between the High Plains and the Rocky Mountains, it has hosted a varied cast of flora, fauna and peoples.
Dr. Vrtis’s years of research drew on a range of academic disciplines, from geology and soil science through anthropology, and a wide and deep array of primary sources. The result is a smooth and compelling narrative of two hundred years of radical environmental and social change. His study demonstrates that humankind progressively extended its reach over Front Range ecosystems, reengineering and reseeding them in an ever more comprehensive and deliberate manner. By looking at environmental change through the lenses of both human culture and ecology, this study reveals the often complex and dialectical ways that human societies and environmental factors contributed to the overall strands of change. Dr. Vrtis’s sophisticated exploration and of relevant aspects of Native American history is also exemplary.
The departmental committee nominating Dr. Vrtis’ dissertation singled it out for its clear and graceful prose, the use of evidence from the natural and social sciences, and the new angle of vision it provided on an American saga. In the judgment his distinguished mentor this is the best montane environmental history yet written.
As a newly appointed Assistant Professor of Environmental Technologies and History at Carleton College, Dr. Vrtis is now drawing upon his learning and his communication skills to teach new generations of undergraduates.
(Excerpted from the presentation speech given by Timonthy A. Barbari, Associate Provost for Research and Dean of the Graduate School, at the 2007 Graduate Commencement ceremony on Friday, May 18, 2007.)
Dr. Godrej’s research, under the mentorship of Professor Bruce Douglass, attempts to develop a systematic approach for engaging in comparative political theory. The dissertation’s first purpose is to make a case for expanding the range of texts used by political theorists to include books emanating from societies other than the ones that constitute the Western canon. However, its contributions go beyond extending the archive upon which political philosophers draw. Dr. Godrej’s work also is designed to make a case for a particular way of handling such works, one that is sensitive to the particular interpretive challenges that such works pose.
Ultimately, she argues the benefits of using sources emanating from other cultures will come from a dialogue with those texts. Yet real dialogue can only occur, she says, if the “otherness” of the texts in question is respected. This means that the meanings of such texts as they are lived need to be understood before any other use is made of them. As a consequence political theorists need to become much more engaged with the kinds of questions more commonly asked by interpretive anthropologists and sociologists. The objects of analysis need to go beyond ideas themselves to embrace the experiential contexts in which the ideas become intelligible.
This work drew praise from the dissertation committee, not simply for the power of its conclusions but also for the disciplined scholarship and methodological rigor of its approach. As one member of her committee commented, “this is a remarkable dissertation displaying considerable insight, innovative verve and solid scholarship¼The scholarship is unimpeachable.”
Dr. Godrej is currently Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of California at Riverside. She has already published one article on Gandhi’s political ideas in the highly regarded journal, The Review of Politics.
(Excerpted from the presentation speech given by Timonthy A. Barbari, Associate Provost for Research and Dean of the Graduate School, at the 2007 Graduate Commencement ceremony on Friday, May 18, 2007.)
2007 Harold N. Glassman Dissertation Award in the Sciences to Dr. Christopher Drummond
As a a comprehensive study of the evolution of color display (flower color, shape, and number as well as floral color change) in California lupines, Dr, Drummond’s dissertation makes important contributions in the fields of evolutionary biology, population biology and phylogenetics. His research was distinctively original in both its intellectual scope and its methodological sophistication. Under the mentorship of Professor Matthew Hamilton, Dr Drummond was able to collect data capable of assessing a number of alternative hypotheses for changes in floral display over time, considering the impacts of natural selection, the characteristics of the plant mating system, the spatial distribution of genetic variation, and ancestor-descendant events.
This research required that Dr. Drummond master an exceptionally wide range of analytical, laboratory, computer simulation, and field techniques. He spent several flowering seasons exploring parts of rural California. At the same time, he mastered an impressive range of molecular genetic laboratory techniques. This excellent work produced a result that significantly contributes to our knowledge of how species accumulate genetic differences.
Dr. Drummond is currently a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Biological Sciences of the University of Idaho. One chapter of the dissertation has been published in Molecular Ecology, a top specialist journal in ecological and population genetics. A second chapter was submitted to Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution. And a third chapter has been published in Molecular Ecology Notes.
(Excerpted from the presentation speech given by Timonthy A. Barbari, Associate Provost for Research and Dean of the Graduate School, at the 2007 Graduate Commencement ceremony on Friday, May 18, 2007.)
|
|
