Graduate Theme Fellowship

The THEME

The Robert Penn Warren Center’s theme for AY 2024-25 is Emerging Technologies and the Human Experience.

Emerging Technologies and the Human Experience will explore technological innovation and its impacts on human flourishing and futures across time. From the printing press to the internet, electricity to quantum mechanics, steam engines to AI: What can humanistic inquiry tell us about the meanings and legacies of these and other technologies? What do emerging technologies reveal about who we are – and what and who we value (and don’t)?

The RPW Center for the Humanities welcomes humanities-oriented proposals from students working across all fields, time periods, and technologies.

2024-2025 Fellows

Sarah Hagaman (English)
Sung Jun Han (Philosophy)
Emily McCabe (Mechanical Engineering)
Katrina Rbeiz (Clinical Science)
Hannah Ziegler (Teaching & Learning)

Learn more about the fellows.

Past Themes

2023-2024 The Place of Memory
2022-2023 Mending and Transforming
2021-2022 Environments
2020-2021 Imagining Cities
2019-2020 Borders and Belonging

Explore fellows from previous years.

The Program

The Graduate Theme Fellowship brings together a small cohort of students from across Vanderbilt to explore the Robert Penn Warren Center’s annual theme. Through shared readings and works-in-progress, Graduate Theme Fellows enhance their own scholarship while exploring the interdisciplinary connections among fellow colleagues’ projects. Graduate Theme Fellows meet biweekly with the RPW Associate Director Matt DiCintio.

At the end of the appointment, Fellows are expected to have completed an academic research project (such as an article or dissertation chapter or law-review note), a creative/artistic project, or a scholarly public engagement project. The fellowship concludes with public presentations of the projects completed during the academic year.

Fellows receive a $2000 stipend in two even payments, fall and spring.

Eligibility

Graduate students from all Vanderbilt schools are invited to apply with projects in the humanities or humanistic social sciences.
Students must have completed at least one year of their program and be working on a well-defined project in their program.
The Graduate Theme Fellowship is residential. All Fellows are expected to participate fully, in person, in the collaborative work and scheduled meetings of the group.

Inquiries

Please contact Matt DiCintio, Associate Director, Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities.