Category: Senior Fellows

  • Michigan Society of Fellows Begins the Year with a Detroit Retreat

    Michigan Society of Fellows Begins the Year with a Detroit Retreat

    The Michigan Society of Fellows opened the academic year with a day in Detroit devoted to scholarship, art, and fellowship.

    The retreat’s morning program at the University of Michigan Detroit Center featured presentations by five senior fellows of the Society. Their talks ranged across literature, history, sociology, physiology, engineering, and the experience of work:

    • Benjamin Paloff, “What Do You Actually Do?: A Lesson in Humanity from a Shanghai Crosswalk”
    • Bénédicte Boisseron, “Lost Roots”
    • Ormond MacDougald, “Ruminations of a Fat Physiologist”
    • Alford Young Jr., “Dignity at Work: African American Lower-Tier—but Essential—Workers During COVID”
    • Margaret Wooldridge, “Keeping the Lights On and Getting to Work: Challenges of Power and Propulsion”

    Together, the presentations demonstrated the breadth of inquiry represented in the Society and created opportunities for discussion across disciplines.

    Following the morning program, the group visited the recently renovated Michigan Central Station. Society members explored the historic building before continuing to the Detroit Institute of Arts.

    At the museum, curator Ben Coleman led a tour of Rivera Court and the American galleries. The group examined the rich details of Diego Rivera’s Detroit Industry Murals and considered the works in relation to Detroit’s artistic, industrial, and cultural history.

    The retreat concluded with dinner at the Scarab Club, one of Detroit’s oldest arts organizations. Founded in 1907 by artists and art patrons, the club has long served as a gathering place for the region’s creative community. Its current clubhouse opened in 1928 and includes a remarkable record of Detroit’s cultural life: signatures covering the ceiling beams of its second-floor lounge. Among them are the names of Diego Rivera, photographer Margaret Bourke-White, artist Leroy Foster, and writer John Dos Passos.

    From senior fellows’ presentations to visits to three distinctive Detroit institutions, the retreat gave Society members a day to exchange ideas, encounter the city’s history and culture, and build connections across cohorts and fields.

    A large group of Michigan Society of Fellows members posing for a photo on the steps in front of a brick building during their Detroit retreat.
    Society members ended the retreat with a dinner at the Scarab Club in Detroit, MI on Friday, September 18, 2026.
    A woman speaks into a microphone while holding papers at a podium during the Michigan Society of Fellows Detroit Retreat, with a “Fall Retreat” agenda slide displayed behind her.
    MSF Chair Scotti Parrish welcomes Society members and opens the Fall Retreat at the U-M Detroit Center.
    Al Young, Jr. presenting “Dignity at Work: African American Lower-Tier — but Essential — Workers during COVID”.
    A diverse group of people look upward while standing and sitting in front of a large mural at the Michigan Society of Fellows Detroit Retreat.
    Society members explore Diego Rivera’s murals with DIA curator Ben Coleman.
    Ormond MacDougald presenting “Ruminations of a Fat Physiologist”.
    Society members discuss Frederic Edwin Church’s Cotopaxi (1862) with DIA curator Ben Coleman.

  • Faculty Spotlight: Senior Fellow and Professor Embraces Disability Through Movement

    Faculty Spotlight: Senior Fellow and Professor Embraces Disability Through Movement

    The University Record spotlights wheelchair dancer, disability culture activist, and community performance artist Petra Kuppers, senior fellow (2021-24) and professor of English language and literature and of women’s and gender studies in LSA; professor of art in the Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design; and professor of theatre and drama, and of dance in the School of Music, Theatre & Dance. Learn more about Petra’s activism, methodology, and community events, like QueerCrip Pussy Poets’ Rest Stop and Turtle Disco, in the full feature.

  • Senior Fellow Dana Dolinoy Quoted in TIME Article on Camp Lejeune Victims Exposed to Toxic Water

    Senior Fellow Dana Dolinoy Quoted in TIME Article on Camp Lejeune Victims Exposed to Toxic Water

    A new PACT Act provides benefits to veterans exposed to toxicants in the line of duty, especially in Camp Lejeune, where the drinking water was contaminated by chemicals linked to cancers, birth defects, and other serious health problems. In modern Western life, exposure to toxicants is “common across the human life course,” says Dana Dolinoy, senior fellow (2022-26) and professor of environmental health sciences and nutritional sciences in the School of Public Health. “We can be exposed through the air we breathe, the water that we drink. Just going about our day-to-day lives, there are exposures that come through consumer products that we use,” from cosmetics to cookware. Read the TIME article.

  • The Great Mississippi Flood and the Media Storm

    The Great Mississippi Flood and the Media Storm

    Society of Fellows Chair, Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of English Language and Literature, and Professor of Program in the Environment Susan Scott Parrish sits down with the host of American History Storytellers (Wondery) to discuss how Americans experienced the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 through newspaper, radio, and pop culture coverage of the flood that swept away one town after another. Listen to their conversation and learn more about this slow-moving catastrophe.

  • Ivette Perfecto Elected to National Academy of Sciences

    Ivette Perfecto Elected to National Academy of Sciences

    Congratulations to senior fellow Ivette Perfecto on her election to the National Academy of Sciences, one of the highest distinctions for a scientist or engineer in the U.S. Read more at the University Record.

  • Heather Ann Thompson Awarded 2021 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship

    Heather Ann Thompson Awarded 2021 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship

    Congratulations to Heather Ann Thompson, senior fellow and professor of Afroamerican and African studies, history, and the Residential College on being among 184 writers, scholars, artists, and scientists awarded 2021 fellowships by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation!

  • Naomi André Named Inaugural Scholar in Residence at Seattle Opera

    Naomi André Named Inaugural Scholar in Residence at Seattle Opera

    Senior Fellow Naomi André (professor in the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies, the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies, and the Residential College) was named inaugural scholar in residence at the Seattle Opera.