Dresher Center Spring 2025 Fellows

For the spring semester, three fellows will join us in the Dresher Center.

Lindsay DiCuirci, Associate Professor in English, will work on an interdisciplinary study of the relationship between spiritualism, print culture and attempts at radical social reform between 1840 and 1870. DiCuirci is interested in moments of cooperation between spiritualists and reformist groups, but as my use of “phantasms” conveys, the dream of harmonia was often disrupted by entrenched biases that even a movement committed to egalitarianism could not shed.

Meredith Oyen, Associate Professor in History, is studying the history of U.S. and China diplomatic relations. The current relationship is presently very tense due to changing leadership in both nations, alongside the pandemic, a trade war, and the perennial issue of Taiwan. Her book project offers a new narrative that highlights person-to-person contact as much as high level diplomacy, centering primary sources to give insight into both countries’ perspectives.

Kristin Kelly, a Ph.D. candidate in Language, Literacy, and Culture, is conducting a research project that aims to understand how Black women educators and Black girls collaborate, drawing on their spirituality and imagination to inform the ways they understand and navigate oppressive and harmful systems. Kelly also aims to uncover how Black women mentors help Black girls reimagine education and their futures, especially in classrooms that often do not represent their experiences but center on Eurocentric ways of teaching and exhibit gender inequality.