Five Cornell doctoral candidates have been selected as Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellows for 2008, the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation has announced.

The fellows, their fields of study and dissertation topics are:

• Nosheen Ali, development sociology, "Dealing With Difference: The Cultural Politics of Sectarianism in the Northern Areas, Pakistan."
• Hans Martin Hägglund, comparative literature, "Chronolibidinal Reading: Proust and the Time of Desire."
• Jacob Klein, philosophy, "Nature and Reason in Stoic Ethics."
• Daniel Koltonski, philosophy, "Political Obligations in a Democracy."
• Masaki Matsubara, Asian religions, "Remembering Hakuin: Memory, Identity and Invention in Contemporary Japanese Zen."

The 2008 Newcombe fellowship provides $23,000 for 12 months of work on a dissertation in the humanities or social sciences that addresses questions of religious or ethical value. The 29 fellows selected for 2008, from 20 institutions nationwide, represent 10 fields of study in all, including anthropology, history, music and art.

Since its inception in 1981, the Newcombe fellowship has supported more than 1,000 doctoral candidates, many of them now on the faculty at colleges and universities throughout the United States and abroad. For more information, visit http://www.woodrow.org/newcombe.