Brendan Hainline, a PhD candidate is Egyptology, received a Provost’s Dissertation Completion Fellowship. Brendan’s dissertation, titled “Linguistic Variation in the Pyramid Texts”, examines the diversity of language in the Old Kingdom corpus of mortuary literature known as the Pyramid Texts. By looking at the unusual language of these texts, a better understanding of the broader linguistic diversity of the Old Kingdom can be gained. This research will also provide insight into the origins of these foundational religious texts.
The Oppenheim Dissertation Completion Fellowship was awarded to Robert Marineau, a PhD candidate in Cuneiform Studies, specializing in Hittitology. In his dissertation, he is combining literary theory and analysis with close, philological reading of Hittite texts. His dissertation is aimed at discovering linguistic patterns in texts and considering whether aspects of these patterns may be characterized as “poetic.” Undergirding to his approach is the field of Stylistics, making special use of the theories of the linguist and literary theorist Roman Jakobson.
Kara Peruccio was awarded a Mellon Foundation-University of Chicago Dissertation Completion Fellowship. Kara is a PhD candidate in Islamic History and Civilization. Her dissertation, “Women on the Verge: Emotions, Authoritarianism, and the Novel in Italy and Turkey, 1922-1936,” explores the relationship between emotions and politics in Fascist Italy and Kemalist Turkey, specifically focusing on women-authored novels as archives of history. Using works by Sibilla Aleramo, Grazia Deledda, Suat Derviş, Halide Edip, Maria Messina, and Nezihe Muhiddin Kara argues that in authoritarian contexts, women writing about emotions and women's experiences functioned as political commentary and as critiques of authoritarianism in the interwar Mediterranean.