Samantha N. Sheppard, the Mary Armstrong Meduski ‘80 Assistant Professor of Cinema and Media Studies, has been chosen as a Career Enhancement Fellow for 2019-2020 by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation.
Her project as a six-month Woodrow Wilson Junior Faculty Career Enhancement Fellow will be finishing her monograph, “Sporting Blackness: Race, Embodiment, and Critical Muscle Memory on Screen,” in which she examines issues of race and representation in sports film. She will also begin work on her third book project, “Phantom Cinema: Black Feminist Film That Never Was.”
“I am excited about the opportunity to finish the final steps in the completion and publication of my book project,” Sheppard said. “ I am also looking forward to working closely with my fellowship mentor, Dr. Miriam J. Petty, to complete my research goals. Dr. Petty is an esteemed scholar of cinema and media studies, and I know that working closely will help me immensely.”
Sheppard is one of 32 fellows selected this year in a fellowship class that includes scholars and practitioners from a range of disciplines, including women’s and gender studies, Chicano and Latino Studies, foreign language and literature, history, African American and Africana studies, English, sociology, and media studies.
The Career Enhancement Fellowship has supported more than 370 junior faculty members since its creation at the Woodrow Wilson Foundation in 2001. The fellowship seeks to create career development opportunities for selected junior and adjunct faculty members with promising research projects.
“This is meaningful to me because it provides both financial, institutional, and personal support for junior faculty at a critical moment in our academic careers,” Sheppard said. “The program’s specific attention to assisting underrepresented junior faculty members is very inspiring, especially since my own professional commitment to underrepresented students is shaped by my fundamental belief in the power of education and the necessity for diversity in the academy.”
The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation was created in 1945 to identify and develop the nations academic leaders to face the most critical challenges.
