DOYLE CALHOUN, 2020 JENSEN FELLOW
Doyle Calhoun, a doctoral candidate in French at Yale University, is the winner of the 2020 Walter J. Jensen Fellowship in recognition of his exceptional promise as a scholar and teacher of French language, literature, and culture. Established in 2001 by Professor Walter J. Jensen (ΦΒΚ, UCLA), the award provides this year’s winner with a stipend and round-trip travel to France for six months of continuous study.
Calhoun (ΦBK, Boston College) plans to use the Jensen Fellowship to continue research for his dissertation, “Suicide and Resistance in French and Francophone Literature.” The project draws on literature, film, archival materials, and oral histories that span France, Haiti, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Senegal, Algeria, and Morocco. Calhoun has conducted pre-dissertation research in Senegal, and now he will turn to extensive archival research in France at Paris Nanterre University and the École normale supérieure to focus on French and Francophone literatures and literary history, postcolonial theory, and Atlantic history. Calhoun’s research in France will be the foundation for future publications and for the development of syllabi for future seminars in French.
MADISON MAINWARING, 2020 SIBLEY FELLOW
Madison Mainwaring, who is also a doctoral candidate at Yale University, is the winner of the 2020 Mary Isabel Sibley Fellowship in French Studies. Established in 1934 by Isabelle Stone (ΦΒΚ, Wellesley College) in honor of her mother, this fellowship recognizes exceptional young scholars in the field of French or Greek language, literature, and culture.
With the Sibley Fellowship, Mainwaring will be awarded a stipend of $20,000 that she plans to use to complete research for her dissertation, “Reclaiming the Silences of Dance: Women and Ballet in Nineteenth-Century Paris.” Her objective is to study testimonies from female spectators and dancers at the Académie Royale, from ballet’s first wave of popularity in the 1820s to the end of the nineteenth century, in order to bring forward narratives focusing on how female dancers viewed and defined themselves in dance forms as well as reactions and viewpoints of female spectators. She also will explore the relationship between dance studies and socio-cultural history. Mainwaring plans to turn her years of research into a manuscript for an academic press in the future.