ANN ARBOR—The Michigan Society of Fellows at the University of Michigan has selected four new Fellows to serve three-year appointments as postdoctoral scholars and assistant professors.

Fellows are chosen for their independent scholarship and interdisciplinary intellectual interests. During their tenure at the U-M they will teach selected courses in their affiliated departments and continue their scholarly research.

The new Fellows, their affiliated departments and research interest are:

James Aikman, Department of Composition, School of Music. His postdoctoral work will be to continue working on compositions which incorporate aspects of recent technological progress in electronic and computer music. Aikman also will compose a concerto for the solo flutist of the Philadelphia Orchestra utilizing a multidimensional approach to the music for Native American flute.

Alaina Lemon, Department of Anthropology. Her research areas are Russian and Romani (Gypsy) Diasporas, post-Socialist and post-Soviet States. Her theoretical interests are racial, ethnic and national ideologies; performance; language and sociolinguistics. Lemon’s research project while affiliated with the Society of Fellows will be “The Currency of Race in Russia.”

Mark Siddal, Department of Biology and the Museum of Zoology. He is currently an adjunct faculty member of the Virginia Institute of Marine Sciences at the College of William and Mary. His research will be on macroevolutionary and cell- biology studies of myxozoans in light of cnidarian origins.

Michael Szalay, Department of English, expects his Ph.D. in English and American literature from Johns Hopkins University. His dissertation examines art and the welfare state in the 1930s and 1940s in the context of economic and cultural efforts to provide “social security.” He will examine modernism and the welfare state of the Great Society and after.

Unique to public universities, the Michigan Society of Fellows was founded in 1970 with grants from the Ford Foundation and Horace H. and Mary Rackham Funds. The society provides financial and intellectual support to individuals selected for outstanding achievement, professional promise, and interdisciplinary interests. Competition for the fellowships is open to eligible candidates in the physical and life sciences, engineering, social sciences and education, the humanities and the arts.

Department of AnthropologyDepartment of BiologyDepartment of English