Doctoral Students Selected for James J. Hudson Doctoral Fellowship

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Left to right: Elizabeth Kiszonas, Sara Nicholson, Paige Hermansen

Three University of Arkansas doctoral students have been selected for the 2015-16 James. J. Hudson Doctoral Fellowship in the Humanities: Elizabeth Kiszonas, Paige Hermansen and Sara Nicholson.

Kiszonas is a doctoral candidate in history. Her dissertation explores the transfer of a European mythic image of New World empire to the nineteenth-century American context. Through her research she is investigating the reception, re-interpretation and selective modification of George Berkeley's poem "Verses on the Prospects of Planting Arts and Learning in America." Kiszonas is a distinguished doctoral fellow and a recipient of several prizes at the U of A including the J. Hillman Yowell Award for Excellence in Teaching, the Willard Gatewood Graduate Fellowship and the Walter Lee Brown Scholarship. She will use the Hudson fellowship to support her dissertation research in the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution.

Hermansen, a doctoral candidate in English, is focusing her dissertation on the rhetorical strategies that for-profit colleges use in their advertisements and marketing materials to persuade students to enroll. She is investigating the role of persuasive language in the creation of two beliefs about education: first, that American higher education should primarily serve the economic function of preparing students for careers, and second, that privatization, competition and corporatization are necessary for educational institutions to thrive. The fellowship will enable her to travel to the physical campuses of for-profit colleges in Oklahoma, Tennessee and Missouri to conduct interviews with current students at those institutions.

Sara Nicholson, also a doctoral candidate in English, is focusing her dissertation research on the relationship between twentieth-century American avant-garde poetry and medievalism. Medievalism is a relatively new discipline that studies the reception, use and misuse of medieval texts in post-medieval times. She will use the fellowship funds to travel to the libraries at the University of California at Berkeley and the State University of New York at Buffalo to conduct her research.

The Hudson Fellowship is awarded to outstanding doctoral candidates who have completed their coursework and are working on dissertations in comparative literature, English, history or philosophy. The fellowship, which comes with a cash prize of $1,500, was established in 1986 in memory of James J. Hudson, a longtime professor of history and dean of the Graduate School at the U of A.