Graduate Student Achievements

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CU Boulder 2025 Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Innovation Fellows

The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) is pleased to announce the 2025 Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Innovation Fellows, made possible by the generous support of the Mellon Foundation. 

The program supports 45 doctoral students in the humanities and social sciences as they pursue innovative approaches to dissertation research, including new methodologies, formats, and collaborations with community partners beyond the academy. ACLS launched the Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Innovation Fellowship Program in 2023 to advance change in humanistic scholarship by recognizing emerging scholars who take risks in the modes, methods, and subjects of their research.

 

Patrick Das, Doctoral Student, Department of Linguistics, University of Colorado Boulder

https://www.acls.org/fellow-grantees/patrick-das/

Abstract:

Tikhir, an endangered and politically marginalized Tibeto-Burman language spoken along the Indo-Myanmar border in Eastern Nagaland, is shaped by constant interaction with larger, neighboring indigenous languages Sangtam, Yimchingru and Khiamniungan. As Tikhir speakers navigate this multilingual environment, their language has undergone shifts influenced by both local interactions and broader, sociopolitical forces. This study examines how geography and multilingual networks influence these changes, using spatial analysis to track patterns of language use and shift. By mapping these dynamics, the research provides new insights into language change in small, endangered languages from less-understood parts of the world, thereby augmenting target documentation and preservation efforts.

 

Julia Shizuyo Popham, Doctoral Student, Department of Ethnic Studies, University of Colorado Boulder

https://www.acls.org/fellow-grantees/julia-shizuyo-popham/

Abstract:

“Uneasy Intimacies” interprets Japanese migrant Fukunosuke Kusumi’s collection of visual art as a touchstone by which to theorize aesthetic ambiguity and seeing irei within contexts of racial disposability in the American West. By tracing Kusumi’s art through prewar exclusion in Washington (1908-1913), interim detainment in California (1942), indefinite incarceration in Colorado (1942- 1945), and afterlives of loss and healing (1945-), the dissertation examines how seemingly innocuous aesthetics reveal marginalized histories, in which dispossessed subjects construct agency and even freedom via the very systems built to keep them down. Drawing from Asian American and Black feminist visual culture, this project explicates Kusumi’s artworks not as fungible illustrations but as lifeworlds that dream beyond nationalistic platitudes like “never again” and “wartime mistake” and, in turn, teach us to see otherwise.

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