From the Office of Public Affairs | http://www.news.ku.edu
Headlines
KU announces new 2024-2025 Self Memorial Scholars
LAWRENCE – Twenty-two students have been selected to receive the University of Kansas Madison and Lila Self Memorial Scholarship, a merit-based, $10,000 award given to outstanding seniors from KU who will transition into their first year of a graduate program at the university in fall 2024. Recipients include students from Emporia, Hutchinson, Kansas City, Lawrence, Leavenworth, Olathe, Overland Park, Topeka and Wichita.
Contemplating eco-catastrophe through Spanish science fiction lens
LAWRENCE – The “deep, existential malaise” stemming from fear of impending ecological catastrophe has permeated science fiction around the globe, a University of Kansas professor writes in a new journal article. In his work Miguel Ángel Albújar-Escuredo compares the 2018 Spanish-language novel “Fafner,” by Daniel Perez Navarro, to a 2014 English-language novel with a similar theme, “Annihilation,” by Jeff Vandermeer.
Full stories below.
————————————————————————
Contact: Daniel Rivera, Self Graduate Fellowship, 785-864-7249, [email protected], @Selfgraduate
KU announces new 2024-2025 Self Memorial Scholars
LAWRENCE – Twenty-two students have been selected to receive the University of Kansas Madison and Lila Self Memorial Scholarship for the 2024-2025 academic year.
The Self Memorial Scholarship is a merit-based scholarship that is awarded to outstanding seniors from KU who will be transitioning into their first year of a master’s or doctoral degree program at KU in the fall 2024 semester. Students who were selected demonstrated achievement in leadership and scholarship, capable of envisioning and attaining goals that require energy and tenacity. The Self Memorial Scholarship provides each recipient with a $10,000 scholarship award, $1,000 professional development award, leadership and career development training, and an opportunity to be a part of an interdisciplinary cohort of graduate students. The leadership and career development training, the Scholar Development Program, complements the specialized education and training provided by the graduate programs.
Madison “Al” and Lila Self were deeply motivated by the idea that developing and investing in young leaders was vital for a successful future. The Selfs began their legacy of supporting graduate students in 1989 with the establishment of the Madison and Lila Self Graduate Fellowship. Since 1991, the Self Graduate Fellowship has supported over 200 doctoral students.
The Self Memorial Scholarship was launched and permanently endowed in 2014. The first Scholars were awarded in 2018. Since 2018, the scholarship has supported nearly 100 graduate students. The overall mission of Self Graduate Programs is to provide funding and development opportunities for exceptional graduate students who demonstrate the promise to make significant contributions to their field of study and society as a whole.
The 2024-25 Self Memorial Scholars:
Bhupen Adhikari of Kathmandu, Nepal: bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from KU; incoming master’s student in mechanical engineering.
Saoirse Boyd of Lake Villa, Illinois: bachelor’s degree in speech-language-hearing from KU; incoming master’s student in speech-language pathology.
Niels Braaten of Lawrence: bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering from KU; incoming master’s student in aerospace engineering.
Blake Bruno of Topeka: bachelor’s degree in accounting from KU; incoming master’s student in accounting.
Andrew Dodge of Wichita: bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering from KU; incoming master’s student in aerospace engineering,
Anna Ferkul of Shakopee, Minnesota: bachelor’s degree in microbiology from KU; incoming doctoral student in interdisciplinary program in biomedical sciences, KU Medical Center.
Alexis Greenberg of Overland Park: bachelor’s degree in digital marketing communications from KU; incoming master’s student in project management.
Ella Hinson of Olathe: bachelor’s degree in social work from KU; incoming master’s student in social work.
Lisa Hoang of Kansas City, Missouri: bachelor’s degree in social work from KU; incoming master’s student in social work.
Mylo Johanes of Jakarta, Indonesia: bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from KU; incoming doctoral student in mechanical engineering.
Cailin Kessen of Paw Paw, Michigan: bachelor’s degree in ecology & evolutionary biology from KU; incoming doctoral student in ecology & evolutionary biology.
Ava Lemon of Topeka: bachelor’s degree in accounting and finance from KU; incoming master’s student in accounting.
Faith Lopez of Leavenworth: bachelor’s degree in social work from KU; incoming master’s student in social work.
Aisha Malik of Itasca, Illinois: bachelor’s degree in speech-language-hearing from KU; incoming master’s student in speech-language pathology.
Josh Navarro of Hutchinson: bachelor’s degrees in political science and public administration from KU; incoming master’s student in public affairs & administration.
Nicholas Niemann of Castle Pines, Colorado: bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from KU; incoming master’s student in business administration.
Gabriela Ruiz of Overland Park: bachelor’s degrees in English, humanities and economics from KU; incoming master’s student in economics.
Cherin Russell of Lawrence: bachelor’s degree in English from KU; incoming master’s student in English.
Clarice Sabolay of Belleville, Illinois: bachelor’s degree in chemical & petroleum engineering from KU; incoming doctoral student in chemical & petroleum engineering.
Benjamin Shaw of Overland Park: bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from KU; incoming master’s student in business administration.
Aaron Thomas of Emporia: bachelor’s degree in public administration from KU; incoming master’s student in public affairs & administration.
Elise Wehrmann of St. Peters, Missouri: bachelor’s degree in exercise science, minor in business from KU; incoming doctoral student in physical therapy, KU Medical Center.
-30-
————————————————————————
The official university account for X (formerly Twitter) is @UnivOfKansas.
Follow @KUnews for KU News Service stories, discoveries and experts.
————————————————————————
Contact: Rick Hellman, KU News Service, 785-864-8852, [email protected], @RickHellman
Contemplating eco-catastrophe through Spanish science fiction lens
LAWRENCE – The “deep, existential malaise” stemming from fear of impending ecological catastrophe has permeated science fiction around the globe, a University of Kansas professor writes in a new scholarly journal article.
An article in the literary journal Alambique, by Miguel Ángel Albújar-Escuredo, assistant teaching professor in KU’s Department of Spanish & Portuguese, compares the 2018 Spanish-language novel “Fafner,” by Daniel Perez Navarro, to a 2014 English-language novel with a similar theme, “Annihilation,” by Jeff Vandermeer.
Both works, Albújar-Escuredo writes, “propose a different relationship between human beings and the ecosystem in which we live.” He writes that such futurist concepts as “post-human” and “coexistence” with the nonhuman are “byproducts of this new mindset on what it means to be human in a world in perpetual crisis.”
“Fafner” follows the titular “feral” hunter-gatherer through a post-apocalyptic landscape until he encounters and is transformed by a “New Nature.”
The protagonists of Vandermeer’s “Annihilation” are a team of four women exploring strange phenomena associated with “Area X.”
Albújar-Escuredo writes that whereas Vandermeer’s “open purpose is proselytizing his new iteration of ecocriticism” and that his novel “provide(s) humans with some hope of surviving,” Perez Navarro’s novel, “in the end … reveals itself as an example of nihilistic and pessimistic cosmic horror.”
Albújar-Escuredo sees “profound ideological differences between both novels. ‘Annihilation’ rejects human supremacism, and ‘Fafner’ accepts it as the lesser evil until a greater one comes.”
Both, however, are bleak, the KU researcher concludes, and “offer very somber outcomes to the reader.”
Albújar-Escuredo, who joined the KU faculty in 2019, said he likes using science fiction to teach foreign language students and finds that they respond well to it.
“It can get very political,” he said. “It can lead to huge debate about moral and ethical issues. I think that’s also one of the missions of a public university — to try to make your students reflect and think about things that maybe they are not forced to consider in their daily lives.”
-30-
————————————————————————
KU News Service
1450 Jayhawk Blvd.
Lawrence KS 66045
Phone: 785-864-3256
Fax: 785-864-3339
http://www.news.ku.edu
Erinn Barcomb-Peterson, director of news and media relations, [email protected]
Today’s News is a free service from the Office of Public Affairs
