Tara Mock, a Ph.D. candidate in African and African American Studies, was recently awarded the 2017 TIAA Ruth Simms Hamilton Graduate Merit Fellowship at MSU.
“Ruth Simms Hamilton’s scholarship challenged our understanding of the linkages between the past and contemporary experiences of African people globally,” Mock said. “My project builds on Dr. Hamilton’s legacy in its exploration of the continuities and expansions of African identity within the context of Afro-Chinese relations and how such expansions may be linked to earlier instances of identity formation. Receiving this award signifies that my research falls along the continuum of scholarship dedicated to documenting and interrogating the psycho-cultural transformations and negotiations of Black identity and it is both and honor and a privilege to continue Dr. Hamilton’s legacy as winner of the 2017-2018 TIAA Ruth Simms Hamilton Graduate Merit Fellowship at MSU.”
Mock plans to use the $36,200 award to continue the data collection necessary to complete her study on the continuities and expansions of community identity in Afro-Chinese relations.
“Like many students, I have spent much of my four years at MSU not only studying and teaching, but also working additional jobs to support my family and fund my research,” Mock said. “The fellowship comes at a pivotal juncture in my degree program wherein it is most important that I have the time and intellectual space to focus on analyzing and interpreting the data I have spent the last 10 months collecting. The Fellowship will enable me to dedicate myself solely to writing my dissertation over the next year and I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity.”
TIAA established The Ruth Simms Hamilton Graduate Merit Fellowship at MSU in 2005 to honor the memory and life’s work of Dr. Ruth Simms Hamilton, a former professor at MSU and a member of the TIAA Board of Trustees. All MSU doctoral students whose dissertation research is related to the African Diaspora are eligible to apply for this Fellowship. Such research is focused on any aspect of the communities of people descended from the voluntary, or forced historic, movement of African people to other parts of the world and who are usually connected back in some way to Africa.
“We celebrate and recognize Dr. Hamilton through this research fellowship and the important work it funds,” Ron Pressman, CEO of Institutional Financial Services at TIAA, said. “MSU students like Tara Mock honor Dr. Hamilton’s legacy while expanding our knowledge of the world.”
Dr. Hamilton’s 35-year career at MSU included appointments in the Department of Sociology, the African Studies Center, the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, and the Center for Advanced Study of International Development. She was an early pioneer of research concerning the African Diaspora.
Mock said her project explores cultural identity and community formation through the lens of Chinese nation branding in Africa. The Chinese State uses nation branding to deterritorialize and reshape cultural communities in Africa and she questions whether Africa’s incorporation into Chinese cosmology – through the use of rhetorical devices highlighting historical similarities between the two regions – encourages expansion of community identity beyond sanguine and geographical boundaries to include the “Global South.”
“I initially developed an interest in Afro-Chinese relations during my master's degree program in international relations at the Fletcher School at Tufts University,” Mock said. “At the time, there was still a great deal of speculation regarding China’s motives on the continent and how the relationship bode for American interests. I was particularly intrigued by how vastly different Western and Eastern views of the relationship were and little attention was given to African viewpoints. I entered the African American and African Studies Program at MSU with a clear desire to critically challenge the notion of African subjectivity in Afro-Chinese relations by privileging African perspectives and understandings of the relationship.”
Mock said that studying the African diaspora is important to the reclamation and affirmation of the African experience globally. Ruth Simms Hamilton pointed out in Routes of Passage that the study of the African diaspora reflects on the historical continuity of shared memories, cultural attributes, and the sense of common destiny existing between African people globally. In this vein, the discipline reconnects Africa to its diaspora and evinces how the historical experiences and cultural responses of African people in Bahia and New Orleans and Guangdong fit within a larger historical trajectory connecting African descended people everywhere.
“Locating fellowships specifically designed to support multi-disciplinary studies of transnational diasporic identity is a nearly impossible task,” Mock said. “Yet, this award is specifically designed to fill that void. My study requires a comparative analysis of the phenomena and data collection in three African nations – the Gambia, Kenya and South Africa – a costly endeavor. This fellowship funding will not only facilitate completion of the data collection necessary to complete the study, but also enable me to focus my efforts on analyzing the data and writing the dissertation with level of rigor that would best honor Dr. Hamilton and her accomplishments.”
TIAA has been working with MSU since 1958 in helping its employees and retirees create a secure retirement. TIAA started out nearly 100 years ago, to help ensure teachers could retire with dignity. Today, millions of people who work at not-for-profits, including academic, research, medical, government and cultural fields, rely on TIAA’s wide range of financial products and services to support and strengthen their financial well-being. TIAA is a Fortune 100 financial services organization with $907 billion in assets under management.
For more information about the TIAA Ruth Simms Hamilton Graduate Merit Fellowship at MSU, visit the MSU Graduate School website.
