Humanities Summer Fellows, 2014 (Some are fellows, and some are not.)

There was a good deal of commotion in the front hall of Colson today, and the Tenants came down to breakfast to discover a veritable sea of suitcases and steamer trunks and realized that we were witnessing the annual departure of the three Humanities Summer Fellows. These are doctoral students who, thanks to generous support by the Office of Graduate Education, receive funding to spend the summer in internships, expanding their skill sets and/or exploring possible career opportunities beyond the standard academic options.   

One of this year's interns is Kwabena Opoku-Agyemang, who will spend the summer working at the Ministry of Education in Ghana. An older Tenant (well, me), who is getting a bit hard of hearing, initially thought that Kwabena would actually be the Minister of Education, but the remaining Tenants think that it will take at least until June for him to be promoted.

As to the remaining interns, here is the official description of their appointment:

"This summer, two interns will be assisting [Professor] Julia Daniel with archival research for her book Building Nature: City Planning, Landscape Architecture, and Modern American Poetry. The interns will be working with unique archival materials, such as schematics and planting maps for public parks in Chicago, Hartford, and Paterson NJ from the 30s and 40s, advertisements and legislation for Mount Rainier National Park, as well as hundreds of photographs that document the changing physical and social landscapes of these spaces." 

Less formally speaking, the Tenants suspect that some of the details of the project are still being sorted out since they noted that Intern Number 1, otherwise known as Allyson DeMaagd, was wearing climbing gear and carrying surveying equipment while Intern Number 2, more commonly referred to as Kayla Kreuger-McKinney, was in an Edwardian traveling outfit and earnestly consulting Baedeker's 1909 guide to The United States, with excursions to Mexico, Cuba, Porto Rico, and Alaska, looking for good restaurants in Chicago.   

Needless to say, the Tenants envy all three of them what look to be exciting and productive summers.



Mt. Rainier, prior to being either surveyed or contemplated aesthetically.