2020 Student Research Fellow Announced

SC Humanities is pleased to announce the 2020 Student Research Fellow: Abrahm Thrasher of Lander University. Student Research Fellowships are awarded annually on a competitive basis to undergraduate students in their sophomore or junior years attending an accredited university or college in South Carolina to explore research and scholarship in the humanities. The 2020 fellow will conduct humanities research and present his findings in a public program at a South Carolina venue.

Abrahm Thrasher

Abrahm Thrasher is a Junior Mass Communications major at Lander University. He specializes in Queer Theory and radio broadcast and has worked in radio for three years. He is passionate about the power of representation through language.

Abrahm Thrasher will investigate the topic of “Translation Bias: How Western Assumptions Remove Women’s Agency and Queer Identity in Myth” under the guidance of scholar Dr. Sean Barnette. Thrasher will conduct an in-depth study of the possible widespread issue of translation bias and its real world impacts. He will focus on The Epic of Gilgamesh and the Mesopotamian mythos associated with it.

SC Humanities Board of Directors made the decision to begin offering Student Research Fellowships again in 2013 after receiving feedback from deans and professors who attended the Humanities in Higher Education Summits in 2009 and 2011. These academic humanists indicated that there were not many research opportunities available for students majoring in humanities disciplines and that such an opportunity would be encouraging in departments that are often losing funding and majors.

Executive Director Randy Akers said: “I believe it is important to support the work of future scholars and professionals in the humanities and to further stress the viability of the humanities in an increasingly technological age.”

SC Humanities looks forward to supporting Abrahm Thrasher in his interesting research plans. For more information about the Student Research Fellowships, including guidelines and application, please visit the website: https://schumanities.org/grants/studentfellowships/ or contact T.J. Wallace at 803-771-2477 or tjwallace@schumanities.org.

The mission of SC Humanities is to enrich the cultural and intellectual lives of all South Carolinians. Established in 1973, this 501(c) 3 organization is governed by a volunteer 21-member Board of Directors comprised of community leaders from throughout the state.  It presents and/or supports literary initiatives, lectures, exhibits, festivals, publications, oral history projects, videos and other humanities-based experiences that directly or indirectly reach more than 250,000 citizens annually.

Image: Nederlands: Representation of Gilgamesh, the king-hero from the city of Uruk, battling the ‘bull of heavens’; terracotta relief kept at the Royal Museums of Art and History, Brussels