Barricelli Memorial Grant for Graduate Research
Established in 1997 to honor Dr. Jean-Pierre Barricelli, the grant encourages highly motivated students to pursue comparative studies in literature and another discipline. Awardees receive research support for one quarter and the honor of delivering the Annual Barricelli Public Lecture in the Department of Comparative Literature and Languages.
Historically, the selection committee has favored applications from students engaged in comparative studies between literature and the arts. However, it also welcomes applications from students doing interdisciplinary work with literature and the law, science, and other disciplines.
How to Apply
Conditions of Eligibility
- Good academic standing in any UCR Ph.D. program
- Demonstrated intellectual ability and achievement in graduate coursework
- ABD status and completed Ph.D. qualifying exams
Application Materials
- A letter of application no longer than three pages (c. 1250-1500 words) describing the dissertation research project and its relevance to the Barricelli Memorial Award. The letter should include a discussion of the stage of writing and the program for completion of the dissertation.
- A current CV
- Please note that the Barricelli Committee no longer solicits letters of recommendation as part of the application process. Please do not include any with submitted materials.
Application Deadline
- The annual call for applications varies, usually with a deadline in late fall or early winter. If no deadline is listed below, please contact Griselda Rodriguez for additional information.
- Past deadlines have been in early April, with awardees announced in early May.
- This year’s application deadline is Monday, May 13 2024.
- Please submit all materials to clgradadvisor@ucr.edu.
Awardees
2017
Kai Hang Cheang, Department of English
- “Gendered Detours: Mobility and the Body in Japanese American Women’s Road Narratives of the Long Sixties”
Brittany R. Roberts, Department of Comparative Literature and Languages
- “Ecological Intimacies in the Anthropocene: Horror, Ethics, and the Shadow of Non-Human Difference”
2016
Lorenzo Servitje, Department of English
- “Medicine is War: The Marital Metaphor in Victorian Literature and Culture”
2015
Melanie Masterton Sherazi, Department of English
- “The Ecstatic Times of William Demby’s Postwar Writing”
2014
Whitney Mannies, Department of Political Science
- “Writing with Feeling: Form the Female Citoyenne“
2013
Mark Young, Department of English
- “Sonic Retro-futures: Musical Nostalgia as Revolution in Post-1960s American Literature and Technoculture”
2012
Giulia Hoffmann, Department of English
- “Spiritual Networks: Female Mediumship in the Nineteenth Century”
2011
Flannery Wilson, Department of Comparative Literature and Languages
- “Echoing Across the Mediterranean and the Pacific: Cinematic Resonance and Cross-Cultural Adaptation in Contemporary European and East Asian Cinema”
2010
Jane Correia, Department of Comparative Literature and Languages
- “The Architecture of Homelessness: Space, Marginality, and Exile in Modern French and Japanese Literature”
2009
Michael Mathieowetz, Department of Anthropology
- “The Diurnal Path of the Sun: Ideology, Political Authority, and Interregional Interaction in Ancient Northwest Mexico and the American Southwest”
2008
Robert Sanchez, Department of Philosophy
- “Saying vs. Showing: Traces of Socrates in Wittgenstein’s Early Logic”
2007
Gustavo Llarull, Department of Philosophy
- “Narrative Self-Conception, Ethics, and Literature”
2006
Jie Jane Li, Department of Comparative Literature and Languages
- “Romance as a Gendered Genre: East and West”
2005
Mark Frederick, Department of Comparative Literature and Languages
- “Trauma Erupts: Aesthetic Innovation in Writing and Visualizing the Unspeakable”
2004
Sabine Thuerwaechter, Department of Comparative Literature and Foreign Languages
- “A Tale of Two Nations” Friedrich Schiller’s ‘The Robbers’ and Its Reshaping in Roland Emmerich’s ‘The Patriot’”
2003
Jay Conway, Department of Philosophy
- “Philosophic Questions, Literary Machines: Gilles Deleuze’s Metatheory”
2002
Pamela Kulkin, Department of Comparative Literature and Languages
- “The Poetics of Time in the 24-Hour Text”
2001
Ruiqi Ma, Department of Comparative Literature and Languages
- “An Examination of the Feminized Image of China and the Chinese People in Select Western Literature and Films During the 20th Century”
1999
Pekka Kuusisto, Department of Comparative Literature and Languages
- “Reading the Wheel of Genre: Encyclopedic Topologies in Literature from Dante through Modern Science Fiction”
Jean-Pierre Barricelli
Dr. Jean-Pierre Barricelli was an energetic and vocal advocate of a broadly humanistic education at Riverside for 34 years until his death in 1997. His scholarly achievements include 17 books and over 100 articles, including important studies on Leopardi, Dante, and the interrelationship of literature with music, drama, and law. He was active and instrumental in a number of professional societies, including the Association of Literary Scholars, the Pacific Ancient and Modern Literature Association (of which he was served as president), the Modem Language Association, and the American Comparative Literature Association. He lectured widely each year with a vigorous travel schedule in the U.S. and around the globe.
Professor Barricelli took his Bachelors, Masters and Ph.D. degrees in Comparative Literature and Romance Languages all at Harvard (where he fenced, and was co-captain of the varsity baseball team). He taught at Western Reserve, Harvard, and Brandeis Universities, and was a visiting professor at New York University, UC San Diego, and at universities in Norway. His academic honors include Fulbright awards (Paris in 1950 and Bergen, Norway in 1962), a Rockefeller Foundation Grant, and the UCR Distinguished Teaching Award in 1970.
At UCR in 1976 he was a founder of the Department of Comparative Literature and Foreign Languages, and was twice Chair. Also in 1976 he was a founder of the annual Eaton Conference in Science Fiction. He devised a popular undergraduate Humanities course at UCR in “The Quest for Values” which epitomized his unique ability to synthesize the literature, visual arts, and music of Africa, Asia and Europe.
In our increasingly specialized and science-oriented world, Dr. Barricelli was devoted to communicating the values inherent in the arts and humanities, to advocating academic breadth, and to encouraging comparative projects. His devotion in a sense anticipated the growing realization that we can learn much from the creative enterprises of world civilizations. He himself lived that creed beyond the academy by composing music, conducting orchestras, writing music reviews for 34 years for the Riverside Press-Enterprise newspaper, acting, creative writing, and painting.
His strong and eloquent advocacy of the arts and humanities are very sorely missed by students and colleagues at UCR and elsewhere in the academic community. His immense breadth and scope of learning have left a legacy from which we all continue to learn.
Grant Committee
- Prof. Michelle Bloom (Chair)
Department of Comparative Literature and Languages, UC Riverside - Prof. Franca Barricelli
Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs and Department of History, Fitchburg State University - Prof. Carlos Cortés
Emeritus, History Department, UC Riverside - Prof. Fuson Wang
Department of English, UC Riverside - Prof. Kyle Khellaf
Department of Comparative Literature and Languages, UC Riverside
Graduate Funding Opportunities
Head to the Graduate Division website for additional information on graduate student financial aid and fellowship opportunities.