Cornell junior Alicia K. Anderson, from Cobleskill, N.Y., a College Scholar in the College of Arts and Sciences, has been named one of 20 Beinecke Brothers Scholarship winners nationwide for 2001.
Beinecke scholars receive $2,000 upon completion of their undergraduate studies and $16,000 for each of two years in the graduate school of their choice.
Ninety undergraduate institutions participate in the Beinecke Brothers Memorial Scholarship Program, and each is eligible to nominate one student per year. However, when a student from an institution is awarded a Beinecke Scholarship, that institution is not invited to nominate a student in the following two years.
Since 1990 Cornell students have won Beinecke Scholarships every year the university has been eligible to compete.
As a College Scholar, Anderson is designing her own program in English, art history, visual studies and American studies. "Asking how texts and images construct and convey meaning, I am particularly interested in the historical and theoretical underpinnings of literary and visual culture, especially that of 19th- and early 20th-century America," she said. "Theories of representation and realism, photography and film, and gender and culture particularly hold my interest."
This semester she is pursuing some independent research in visual studies under the guidance of Timothy Murray, Cornell professor of English and director of Graduate Studies in Film and Video. In addition to her studies, she also is an intern at Cornell's Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art in the Department of Prints, Drawings and Photographs, as well as a member of the Cornell Wind Symphony and Symphonic Band, in which she plays the French horn.
Describing her winning of the scholarship as "exciting," Anderson said: "The Beinecke Scholarship holds the door open to a wide range of opportunities for intellectual exploration. To enhance my ideas and discover new ones, to challenge and pursue the academic questions Cornell has stirred within me -- I really can't wait.
"Even better, however," she said, "is that the Beinecke Scholarship makes not only my graduate aspirations a financial reality but also those of my twin sister, Erica, who is also a College Scholar. Although there could be only one winner from Cornell, in my eyes there were two."
Anderson said she would like to thank Carol Kaske, professor of English, for her initial nomination and letter of recommendation; Mary Woods, associate professor of architecture and faculty fellow in the Society for Humanities, and Jacqueline Goldsby, assistant professor of American studies, for their letters of support; and Debra Fried, associate professor of English, for her advising in the College Scholar Program.
"I am forever grateful to Professor Goldsby -- whom I was fortunate enough to meet in a writing seminar my freshman year -- for her endless support and encouragement," Anderson said. "Her inspiration gave me the confidence to take my writing, my ideas and myself seriously."
A Cornell campus committee reviews applications and each year selects one student as Cornell's representative to the Beinecke Brothers Scholarship competition. The 2001 Cornell endorsement committee consists of Vice President Susan Murphy; Terence Irwin, S.L. Sage Professor of Philosophy and Humane Letters; R. Laurence Moore, Newman Professor of American Studies; Winthrop Wetherbee, Avalon Foundation Professor of English and Medieval Studies; and Fellowship Coordinator Beth Fiori.
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