History graduate wins David John Ruggiero Dissertation Award

Jacqueline Grant, Ph.D. '12, of the Department of History, has won the 2012 David John Ruggiero Dissertation Award for her dissertation, Public Performance: Free People of Color Fashioning Identities in Mid-nineteenth Century Cuba, which explores how free people of color created identities and sustained community in an environment of repression.

The College of Arts and Sciences Center for the Humanities annually honors an outstanding doctoral dissertation in a University of Miami humanities department with the David John Ruggiero Dissertation Award, which carries a $500 prize. The award was established in 2009 with the generous support of history professor Guido Ruggiero in memory of his brother, David John Ruggiero.

Deeply researched in public and private archives and libraries, Grant’s dissertation impressively deploys several methodologies drawn from the different disciplines of history, performance, dance, and anthropology. The interdisciplinary appeal of the dissertation is wide and it will attract the attention of scholars in political science, sociology, anthropology, and literary and cultural studies.

Nick Wiltsher, of the Department of Philosophy, was awarded honorable mention for his dissertation, The Structure of Sensory Imagination, a nuanced and impressive discussion of a human capacity that underlies so much of what is studied in the Humanities, the capacity to imagine.

The College of Arts and Sciences Center for the Humanities at the University of Miami is dedicated to supporting humanities, arts, and interpretive social science research and teaching, as well as to presenting public programs to enrich Miami’s intellectual culture. For further information, please call 305-284-1580, or visit www.humanities.miami.edu.

—Kyle Siebrecht, associate director of the Center for the Humanities, contributed to this report.

July 11, 2012