2024-2025 Faculty Fellows

Michael Jenkins
Criminal Justice
“The History and Effects of College-Education in the Pennsylvania State Police” 

Earlier this year, as a means of increasing the number of applicants needed to fill funded positions in the Pennsylvania State Police (PSP), Governor Shapiro encouraged the PSP to remove the requirement that applicants to the PSP hold an associate’s degree/60-college credits. The PSP reports that this change resulted in a 258% increase in applicants. In this project, I will study the development and effects of the 60-credit college requirement for the Pennsylvania State Police, with the goal of gaining a better understanding of the etiology and effects of the education requirement for PSP to inform future conversations about the requirement.

Matt Meyer
Philosophy
“Nietzsche’s Epistemology”

In this project, I plan to draft a short book on Nietzsche’s epistemology. The book will be published in what is known as the Cambridge Elements Series on the Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. Along with Kaitlyn Creasy, I am the co-editor of this series. The larger goal is to produce a series of books on Nietzsche’s philosophy that provides novice readers an introductory framework for approaching a given topic and seasoned scholars with fresh ideas and insights.

Ann Pang-White
Philosophy
“Reimagining Feminism, Confucian Role Ethics, and Virtue Ethics”

In my project, I will address the following question: How would feminist concerns fare in the debate between Confucian role ethics and virtue ethics? This question, I suggest, requires a three-pronged approach: First, what are feminist concerns? Second, is Confucian ethics best described as a role ethics or a virtue ethics? And, third, are feminist concerns compatible with Confucian ethics? I will sketch the contours of a non-dichotomous, relational, role-based virtue ethics that is illuminated by a Confucian feminist account as one possible answer to this query.

Yamile Silva
World Languages and Cultures
“Transatlantic Connections: Abigail Mejía’s Journalistic Work in the Spanish Newspapers”

In this project, I aim to enhance Abigail Mejia's legacy in Latin American and Spanish literary history by examining her journalistic work during her time in Spain. Thanks to her travel accounts, we know that Mejía wrote weekly entries related to the political conditions in the Dominican Republic during the U.S. occupation, on the sequels of the Great War in Spain and France, and on the exclusion of women writers and intellectuals from hegemonic literary circles (among other topics). She also established strong ties with female writers from Spain and Latin America during this time, and Mejía used fluid methods of circulation – letters, reviews, literary articles, and the like – to build a transatlantic feminist conversation. My proposed manuscript will examine the work that Mejía published during this time period and will demonstrate how her network and the transatlantic literary sororities worked by studying these methods of circulation.