Meet the Mellons
Three postdoc fellows who have spent the academic year teaching and performing research at Tulane thanks to the Mellon Foundation will be honored at a reception on Tuesday (April 20).
Mellon fellows, from left, Thomas Adams, Marguerite Nguyen and Michael Wiedorn have been teaching and doing research at Tulane this academic year. (Photo by Guillermo Cabrera-Rojo)
At the event, scheduled for 4:30 p.m. in the 1834 Club of the Lavin-Bernick Center, Thomas Adams, Marguerite Nguyen and Michael Wiedorn will discuss their research and teaching experiences during their time at Tulane.
The three fellows came to Tulane in the fall both to teach and conduct New Orleansâ“based research projects. Their work is made possible by a $1.05 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation that ultimately will fund nine fellowships in the humanities.
Adams is teaching in the history department, while Nguyen is in the English department and Wiedorn is in French and Italian.
The trio is making "a big contribution to the intellectual life of the campus," said Richard Velkley, the Celia Scott Weatherhead Professor of Philosophy, who chairs the Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship Committee.
Wiedorn teaches Introduction to Literary Analysis, a survey of French literature. He was attracted to Tulane by its strong French and Italian department and to New Orleans for its French connection.
"For someone who studies the Francophone [French-speaking outside of France] world, New Orleans is an ideal location," Wiedorn says.
Adams, a Tulane alumnus, researches the history of political economy and capitalism. He is working on two book-length projects, one on the service economy in the United States and another looking at the commodity of oil.
Nguyen's expertise is in Asian American literature, Vietnamese diasporic literature and translation, and she has been interested in the city's Vietnamese American communities.
The reception is sponsored by the School of Liberal Arts as well as the Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship Committee.
