Platzman Memorial Fellowships
The Robert L. Platzman Memorial Fellowships, established by bequest of George W. Platzman (1920-2008), Professor Emeritus in Geophysical Sciences at the University, are named in memory of George’s brother Robert Platzman (1918-1973), who was Professor of Chemistry and Physics and worked at the Metallurgical Laboratory at the University of Chicago in the 1940s.
The program provides up to $3,500 for visiting researchers working on projects that require on-site consultation of University of Chicago Library collections, primarily archives, manuscripts or printed materials in the Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center. The funds can be used for travel, living and research expenses. Support for beginning scholars is a priority of the program, as are projects that cannot be conducted without onsite access to the original materials and where University of Chicago collections are central to the research. Special consideration will be given to applications in the fields of late 19th or early 20th-century physics or physical chemistry, or 19th-century classical opera.
The announcement of availability of each year's Platzman Fellowships is made in November, with a deadline for submission in February. Platzman Fellowship funds may be used for visits to the University of Chicago Library during June-September of the award year.
Robert L. Platzman Memorial Fellowships have been awarded to almost 200 visiting scholars since the program began in 2006. For further information on fellows and projects from previous years, please consult the listing of Platzman Memorial Fellowship recipients, 2006-2022.
2023 Platzman Fellowship Recipients
The University of Chicago Library is pleased to announce the recipients of Robert L. Platzman Memorial Fellowships for 2023. A list of the 2023 Fellows appears below along with their academic affiliations and research topics.
Tucker Adkins
Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow, Calvin University
New Birth, New World: space, sound, and the body in the early Protestant awakenings
James Cousins
Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs, Kentucky Wesleyan College
Biography of William Rainey Harper
Leo Garofalo
Associate Professor, Connecticut College
Colonial Cuzco and links between enslavement and specific libraries, books, stories, and published images
Jamie Leach
Doctoral candidate, Carnegie Mellon University
Social science research and the trainable mind
Paula López Caballero
Professor, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
Experts of the everyday life: an interconnected history of anthropological and indigenist fieldwork in North America (Mexico and the United States, 1940-1960)
Ezer R. May May
Doctoral candidate, Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social
The encounters of American missionaries, Mayan converts and Mexican ministers. The missionization in Twentieth Century Mexico
Nicolas Michel
Postdoctoral researcher, Bergische Universität Wuppertal
Axioms of collaboration: The Chicago geometry seminar and the collective making of American mathematics (1900-1920)
Boyd Ruamcharoen
Doctoral candidate, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The decomposing message: media technologies, the United States, and postcolonial tropics, 1941-1985
Nari Shelekpayev
Assistant Professor, Yale University
Identity, race, and empire: Soviet literature for children and young adults, 1920-1970
Jack Swab
Doctoral candidate, University of Kentucky
Intertwined histories? Urban geography and urban sociology at the University of Chicago
Despina Vertzagia
Doctoral candidate, Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences
Leo Strauss: The return to the classical tradition and the theory-praxis problem. The critique of modern political thought and social science, and the Socratic treatment of liberalism