Today I attended the 2010 Regional Mellon Conference at Hunter College along with the other QC fellows. We all had a chance to present research and received some valuable feedback about how to further develop our studies and some new possible directions we can take. Although we were all pretty nervous I think that in the end everyone pulled through and did amazing. To give a sense of what the QC Mellons are currently researching, I listed some of the presentation titles below:

Tiffany Arbelaez– “The Myth of hte Minoan Matriarchy”
Leeann Barrett– “Finding the New Eden in Gabriel Garcias Marquez”
Christine Barriento– “Christopher Columbus and the Indigenous”
Moyagaye Bedward– “The Book of Job and the Problem of Evil”
Ugo Eze– “Norman Miller’s Search for the ‘Negro’ Within”
Sharon Tran– “Monique Truong’s The Book of Salt: Unsanctioned (Hi)stories of Love Caught in the Circuits of Global Capitalism”

Overall I had a wonderful time at the conference and the staff at Hunter College did a really great job at hosting the event. The food prepared was delicious and it was very nice seeing some familiar faces from last year’s conference at Barnard, meeting some new Mellons from other universities and hearing about the kinds of research they are doing.

I think that these yearly academic conferences sponsored by the Mellon Foundation are really helpful, not only in providing fellows with professional experience, where they are given the opportunity to practice their presentation skills and how to speak in front a crowd (which are both very important parts of being a professor), but also with maintaining a strong sense of community between the Mellon fellows, faculty admistrators and advisors. Because the PhD process is an extremely long and difficult one, it is always good to know that you have people to turn to who can relate to some of the experiences you are going through and help you work thorugh them.