Untitled - Jefferson Scholars Foundation

FELLOWS IN RESIDENCE 2012-13
ANNE MARIE GUARNERA (2010)
JOHN A. BLACKBURN FELLOW
Department of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese
Bryn Mawr College (B.A.)
Charlottesville, Virginia
At the beginning of this school year, Anne was appointed to
serve as a preceptor in the Department of Spanish, Italian and
Portuguese. In this leadership position she works to oversee and
coordinate the work of all Spanish Teaching Assistants teaching
the department’s Intermediate Spanish classes. She will continue
to serve as a preceptor in the 2012-2013 school year as well. Anne
presented a portion of her M.A. thesis at this year’s Jefferson
Fellows Symposium in February. She passed all eight of her M.A.
comprehensive exams in March and finished her thesis, entitled
“La mexicanidad reciclada de Pedro Ángel Palou,” in April. Her
thesis examines Palou’s postmodern treatment of Mexican national
identity as it emerges in his most recent trilogy of historical
novels. Anne was awarded a Summer Language Institute Fellowship
by the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, which she will
combine with a grant from Middlebury College in order to attend
the Middlebury Language Summer Institute in Portuguese this
summer. She is excited to expand her research to contemporary
Brazilian poetry and fiction.
CHRISTOPHER MICHAEL IRWIN (2010)
OLIVE B. AND FRANKLIN C. MAC KRELL FELLOW
Department of Astronomy
University of Pittsburgh (B.S.)
Irwin, Pennsylvania
This January Chris successfully passed his second qualifying exam
and was admitted to PhD candidacy in the Astronomy Department.
He has continued his research of supernovae--the extreme
deaths of massive stars--which combines theoretical work with
analysis of data from the Chandra X-Ray Observatory. This year
Chris co-authored two supernova papers in the Astrophysical
Journal Letters: “X-Rays from Supernova Shocks in Dense Mass
Loss” and “Strong Evolution of X-Ray Absorption in the Type IIn
Supernova SN 2010jl.” A third paper on another X-ray bright
supernova, SN 2006jd, was recently submitted to the Astrophysical
Journal as well. In addition, Chris has worked with Jefferson
Scholar Eda Herzog-Vitto on a Fellow-Scholar research project,
studying how pulsars interact with their surroundings. As part of
his fall coursework, Chris had the opportunity to visit several major
observatories in Arizona and New Mexico, including the Large
Binocular Telescope, the Very Large Array, and Apache Point
Observatory, where he received training on the 3.5-meter telescope. He also served as a TA for an astronomy lab course
that introduces students to small telescopes and the night sky. This summer Chris will teach an introductory course
about stars and galaxies, and plans to study gamma-ray bursts--the most luminous events in the universe--and their
connection to the brightest known supernovae.
2012 FELLOWS SUPPLEMENT
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