Skip to main content

Glasscock Faculty Research Fellowship Recipients 2020-2021

Five fellowships valued at $5,000 each were awarded for 2020-21. These fellowships are designed to address a need for funding for research that could not be accomplished otherwise in order to complete a book project, major article or series of articles, or other research project that makes an impact in the field. Money can be used for any travel, conference, archival/fieldwork, or other normally reimbursable expenses. Fellows participate in the Faculty Colloquium Series, which will function as a working group for these works-in-progress. Projects are chosen on the basis or their intellectual rigor, scholarly creativity, and potential to make a significant impact in the candidate’s career and field. Faculty in affiliated departments are eligible to apply.  

Academic Year 2020-2021

Christopher Bonner | Assistant Professor, International Studies

Christopher T. Bonner is Assistant Professor of French at Texas A&M University. He received his Ph.D. in French at New York University, and has taught at University of Connecticut-Storrs. His teaching and research are focused on Francophone postcolonial studies, literary and political theory, and French Caribbean literature and culture. His work has been published in Small AxeInternational Journal of Francophone Studies, and Research in African Literatures. His book project, Cold War Negritude, examines the ideological influence of the global Cold War upon the writing practices of French Caribbean authors in the 1950s.

 

Defne Över | Assistant Professor, Sociology

Defne Över is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Texas A&M University. Previously, she was an early career fellow at the Lichtenberg Kolleg, Göttingen Institute for Advanced Study, Göttingen University, Germany.  She received her Ph.D. in Sociology from Cornell University, USA, her M.A. from Humboldt University, Germany, and her B.A from Boğaziçi University, Turkey. Her work centers on the study of democracy and authoritarianism, institutional change, identity formation, and social movements. Currently, she works on her book on media transformation in Turkey under rising authoritarianism. Her studies on freedom of the press, national identities, social movements, and research methods have appeared in Media, Culture & Society; Current Sociology; Qualitative SociologyResearch in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change; Sage Research Method Cases; and in the edited volume of Authoritarianism and Resistance in Turkey: Conversations on Democratic and Social Challenges. 

 

Ashley Passmore | Assistant Professor, International Studies

Ashley Passmore is an Assistant Professor of German and International Studies at Texas A&M University. Her recent book project, "Jews and Space: Belonging Between Berlin and Tel Aviv " analyzes the cultural production of German and Israeli Jews of the "third generation" and their revaluation of diaspora and strategies of national adherence in a transnational context. Her article, "Transit and Transfer: Between Germany and Israel in the Granddaughters’ Generation,” was published in 2020 by Palgrave Handbook of Holocaust Literature and Culture, edited by Victoria Aarons and Phyllis Lassner. Her article, "Teaching the Arab Israeli Conflict as a Critical Thinking (Dis)course," was included in the volume, Teaching the Arab-Israeli Conflict (Wayne State, 2019), edited by Rachel Harris. Ashley’s current research looks at the discourse of intergenerational memory in German-speaking Jewish culture, in particular, the beliefs surrounding the heritability of cultural memories in the period immediately after the Holocaust.

 

Stephen Riegg | Assistant Professor, History

Stephen Badalyan Riegg, an Assistant Professor of History, specializes in Russian imperialism, the Caucasus, and ethnicity and nationalism in nineteenth-century Eurasia. His first book, Russia’s Entangled Embrace: The Tsarist Empire and the Armenians, 1801-1914 examined the evolution of Romanov policies toward the trans-imperial Armenian diaspora. His research has also appeared in the journals The Russian Review, Nationalities Papers, and Ab Imperio. His new book project, sponsored in part by the Glasscock Center, is Westerners in the Tsar’s East: European Lives in Imperial Russia’s Caucasus. This study explores how tsarist empire building in the Caucasus benefited from the presence of Western European communities in the Caucasus. Dr. Riegg argues that the Russian government, pursuing geopolitical, economic, and even sociocultural goals, tended to embrace Western émigrés in its southern domain. While its aims were distinct and fluid, depending on era, context, and ethnonational group, a consistent thread tied these encounters: Russia tolerated, and occasionally encouraged, settlers from Western Europe to establish roots in the empire’s vital territory.

 

Mikko Tuhkanen | Associate Professor, English

Mikko Tuhkanen is Professor of English at Texas A&M University, where he teaches African American and African-diasporic literatures, LGBTQ literatures, and literary theory. His most recent books include Leo Bersani: A Speculative Introduction (2020), The Essentialist Villain: On Leo Bersani (2018), and The Cambridge History of Gay and Lesbian Literature (2014), co-edited with E. L. McCallum. He has published essays in diacritics, differences, American Literature, Cultural Critique, Postmodern Culture, James Baldwin Review, and elsewhere.