A new trio of graduate school funds whose purpose is to foster interdisciplinary scholarship have been awarded to support 15 projects this spring, and Dean Bobby Paul is delighted.

“People are having fun with the proposals,” Paul said. “Some of them are strengthening already existing strong units such as violence studies, and some of them are enabling us to start up something entirely new, such as talking about the Lusophone (Brazil) world.”

The three competitive awards include the Quadrangle Research Workshops for ongoing projects that last at least one semester and are eligible for renewed funding for up to two years; the Burke Nicholson Interdisciplinary Forums for symposiums that run one or two days, or perhaps a weekend; and the Emory University Conference Center Subvention Fund for grants to assist in holding events at that site.

The awardees were selected by a faculty committee and “represent an impressive cross- section of the faculty and the different interests in the graduate school,” according to Paul. He noted that the graduate schools of Harvard, Stanford and Chicago have similar funds to support faculty research and interaction.

“I’ve heard people say that any university who would do this for its faculty understands the importance of research at the graduate level. It’s a symbolic gesture that says to faculty the administration cares about you pursuing your research or pursuing interdisciplinary research.”

One of the Quadrangle Research Workshop fund’s recipients is Caglar Ozden, economics, who teamed up with Eric Reinhardt, political science, and Joy Mazumdar, economics, to request funding to support a weekly “International Economics and Politics Seminar.” The funding will provide stipends for graduate students and speaker honorium.

“These sessions that explore work being done where economics and political science intersect have been going on for three years now,” Ozden said, “But the funding will allow us to expand the number of outside speakers we’re able to bring in and provide a modest incentive for graduate students to present their work so they can obtain reaction before they reach the final stage of a project. Faculty, too, present their work in preliminary form.”

An informal project by another economist, Ujjayant Chakravorty, received Quadran-gle funding. “I had an informal group in the department that involved about six graduate students and myself who are interested in environmental economics and policy issues,” said Chakravorty. “We’ll use this funding to make that program more intensive and offer to pay for travel expenses for some outside speakers we’d like to bring to campus.

“We’re interested in the economics of climate change, the economics of energy and trade and the environment, both from the theoretical and policy perspectives. We just want to create discussions at Emory on environmental economics and policies.”

Other projects receiving funding include Stephen White and Elizabeth Pastan for a graduate student and faculty workshop to discuss current scholarship on the interdisciplinary study of medieval European culture and society; Frances Smith-Foster and Mark Sanders for graduate student stipends to participate in a workshop to present work in progress in African American studies; Lynn Wood Bertrand, Don Saliers, Eric Nelson and Dan Shaw to enhance professional training of graduate students in choral conducting and organ performance and the scholarship of sacred music; Gary Laderman, Arri Eisen, Carole Hogue and P.V. Rao for a faculty and graduate student workshop on “Against Death: Scientific and Religious Perspectives on Prolonging Life;” Art Linton and Beverly Schaffer, for graduate stipends to explore approaches to violence studies; and Angelika Bammer for “Reading Europe,” a graduate student workshop to explore Europe and its future through new literature, films and music.

Four projects received awards in the Burke Nicholson Interdisciplinary Forums category that will take the shape of one- or two-day symposiums. History Professor Jonathan Prude and other faculty involved in The Seminar in the Comparative History of Labor, Industrialization, Technology and Society will hold a conference on March 23 on “The Public Intellectual: Scholars and Politics in America.”

Ana Ganho and Jeffrey Lesser will put together a one-day symposium focusing on issues of identity, ethnicity, race and history in Brazil in “Centering the Periphery: Brazil and the Lusophone World” (date to be determined). Laderman and Eisen will host a one-day symposium on “Against Death: Scientific and Religious Perspectives on Prolonging Life.” Sidney Perkowitz and Juliette Apkarian are planning an artist’s public lecture and discussion for March or April to discuss “Science & Art: Shared Frontiers.”

Three projects received Emory Conference Center Subvention Awards to help with planning events at that site. Fereydoon Family, physics, will host “Nanobiology 2001,” on Oct. 25–28, 2001. It will be the first international conference on nanobiology to discuss the latest developments in the study of the physics of biological processes at the nanometer scale, which are molecular-sized machines. Betsey Patterson, Woodruff Libraries, will host the “Frye Leadership Institute,” June 3–15, to develop a new cadre of higher education leaders. Ken Stein, Institute for Jewish Studies will host a “Pre-Collegiate Teacher Workshop on the History, Culture and Politics of Modern Israel,” to provide 60 K–12 teachers from around the United States with scholarship on topics that relate to modern Israeli society, history, politics, literature and culture.