Distributed April 19, 2002
For Immediate Release

News Service Contact: Mary Jo Curtis



2002-03 awards

Two Brown faculty members receive Wriston Fellowships

Assistant Professor of Modern Culture and Media Wendy Hui Kyong Chun and Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature Elliott Colla have been awarded Wriston Fellowships, one of the highest awards Brown bestows upon its teaching faculty.


PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, assistant professor of modern culture and media, and Elliott Colla, assistant professor of comparative literature, have been awarded Henry Merritt Wriston Fellowships for the 2002-03 academic year.

The Wriston Fellowship is one of the highest awards Brown bestows upon its teaching faculty. Established in 1972 to encourage and reward excellence in teaching, the Wriston Fellowship is awarded annually to a junior member of the faculty to recognize significant accomplishments in teaching and to allow for scholarly research and the preparation of new contributions to the undergraduate curriculum. Candidates are nominated by faculty colleagues, and their credentials are reviewed by a committee of distinguished faculty members, which makes its final recommendations to the dean of the College.

Chun received her Ph.D. in English from Princeton University in 1999. In the last three years, she has contributed significantly to Brown’s modern culture and media curriculum, developing a range of courses in the area of digital media and earning praise from students for her excellent teaching methods. She advises and supervises the work of a large number of MCM concentrators, as well as graduate students and undergraduates from other departments on campus. Chun will use the Wriston Fellowship to develop an “Introduction to Digital Media” core lecture course and to complete her manuscript, Sexuality in the Age of Fiber Optics, and her co-edited collection, The Archaeology of Multi-Media.

Colla received his Ph.D. in comparative literature from the University of California–Berkeley in 2000. Since his arrival at Brown in the fall of 1999, he has prepared and taught seven new courses in addition to co-teaching an eighth course with a colleague. Colla has spent considerable energy serving his department, Brown University and the field of Arabic literature at large. The Wriston Fellowship will allow him time to complete a manuscript of his book, Conflicted Antiquities, which investigates the aestheticization of Pharaonic artifacts in Egypt and their colonial and anti-colonial refigurations in literary texts.

This year’s review committee included Sheila Bonde of the Department of History of Art and Architecture, Joseph Pucci of the Classics Department, and John Tomasi of the Department of Political Science.

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