4 Humanities graduate students receive Fulbright-Hays fellowships

North face of Kaplan Hall at UCLA

Sean Brenner/UCLA Humanities

Exterior of Kaplan Hall

Vania Sciolini | November 27, 2023

Four Humanities graduate students are among the 12 UCLA scholars overall who have received Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad fellowships for 2023. UCLA received more Fulbright-Hays awards than any other university.

Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education, the Fulbright-Hays program allows awardees to study aspects of a society or societies, including their culture, economy, history and international relations. The fellowship is designed to contribute to developing and improving the study of modern foreign languages and area studies in the U.S.

UCLA’s 2023 fellows come from diverse disciplines, and they will conduct their research in Brazil, Chile, England, Japan, Mexico, Nigeria, South Korea, Sweden, Taiwan, Trinidad and Tobago, and Tunisia.

The Fulbright-Hays research abroad program at UCLA is administered by the Division of Graduate Education; more information is available at the UCLA Fulbright Fellowships website.

The 2023 awardees from the UCLA Humanities Division are:

Victoria Davis, Asian languages and cultures, who will study in Japan. Davis’ research examines michiyuki travel passages in early modern and Meiji era (1603–1912) theater and literature. Davis is interested in how geography imagined on the stage engaged with maps, travel guides, poetic topoi, and other ways of knowing space and place, particularly in relation to the city of Osaka.

Ava Katarina Tabatabai Hess, art history, who will study in Tunisia. Hess’ project focuses on vernacular art from Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco during the 19th and 20th centuries. It examines figurative Islamic images that proliferated within printmaking and under-glass painting traditions and their relationship to the region’s shifting social and political landscape from precolonial, colonial and post-independence periods.

Thomas Newhall, Asian languages and cultures, who will study in Taiwan and Japan. Newhall will focus on cataloging and studying the contents of a recently discovered temple archive related to monastic rules in Japan, and similar materials found in libraries and temples in Taiwan.

Deborah Price, Asian languages and cultures, who will study in Japan.

UCLA’s other honorees are:

  • Thomas Bassett, urban planning (studying in Brazil).
  • Jeanette Charles, history (Trinidad and Tobago, and Nigeria).
  • Samuel Feldblum, geography (Chile).
  • Lily Hindy, history (England and Sweden).
  • Matthew Hing, anthropology (Mexico).
  • Yejoo Kim, anthropology (South Korea).
  • Lavanya Nott, geography (India).
  • Edward Painter, geography (Taiwan).

Read more about all of UCLA’s 2023 Fulbright-Hays fellows on UCLA Newsroom.