National fellowships recognizing work of MSU doctoral students

July 27, 2016

Contact: Hannah Bateman

STARKVIILE, Miss.—Mississippi State graduate students from Louisiana, Michigan and Tennessee are spending the summer conducting dissertation research with fellowships awarded by prominent national organizations.

All pursuing history doctorates at the university, they include:

—Owen J. Hyman of Talisheek, Louisiana. Receiving the Forest History Society’s inaugural Walter S. Rosenberry Fellowship in Forest and Conservation History, he is investigating how ideas about the landscape help shape Southern race and labor concepts.

—Kelli B. Nelson of Johnson City, Tennessee. A fellow at the Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library in Newark, Delaware, she is investigating issues of death and dying to better understand the complexities of 19th century environmental thought. A major focus is the Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia, that is second only to Arlington National as the most-visited U.S. burial ground.

—Nicholas A. “Nick” Timmerman of Flint, Michigan. A 2016-17 Library Resident Research Fellow at the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, he is working to examine 19th and 20th century American perceptions of Native American mounds found throughout the South. His fellowship is supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation of New York.

In addition to their individual dissertation efforts, Nelson and Timmerman are involved in a collaborative digital project titled “A Shaky Truce: Civil Rights Struggles in Starkville, Mississippi, 1960-1980.” Earlier this year, the project was honored with the Mississippi Historical Society’s Oral History Award.

In 2015, Nelson and Hyman were chosen for other significant honors. Specifically:

—Nelson was a selection for a Mellon Fellowship awarded by the Virginia Historical Society.

—Hyman received the Reed Fink Award for Southern Labor History given by the Southern Labor Archives at Georgia State University. He also received the Halloran Prize in History of Corporate Responsibility presented by the Business History Conference and Center for Ethical Business Cultures at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota.

“The success of our students in winning prestigious awards are testaments to their creativity and the educations they have gained at Mississippi State,” said history department head Alan Marcus.

Also an MSU William L. Giles Distinguished Professor, Marcus said all three students are being prepared to “compete at the highest professional levels with historians throughout the world.”

The history department is among 14 major academic units in MSU’s College of Arts and Sciences. For more on the department, visit www.history.msstate.edu; the college, at www.cas.msstate.edu.

Information about the organizations awarding the fellowships is found at www.foresthistory.org, www.winterthur.org, www.amphilsoc.org and https://mellon.org.

MSU is Mississippi’s leading university, available online at www.msstate.edu.