In Their Words: Danielle Crawford

June 07, 2017

Name: Danielle Crawford 

Department: Literature

What award/scholarship did you receive? The Hammett Fellowship

What year are you (1st year, 3rd year)? 4th year, Ph.D. student

College: Graduate Division

Where do you call home? I was born and raised in the Santa Cruz area.

With all of the choices for college, what made UC Santa Cruz stand out? I was attracted to UC Santa Cruz and its Literature Department because of the opportunities it provided for interdisciplinary research. My dissertation is not a traditional literary study, and doing my graduate work at UC Santa Cruz allows me to pursue a project that pushes disciplinary boundaries.

What is your field of focus? My field of focus is literature and particularly the environmental humanities. More specifically, my research focuses on extreme storm systems and U.S. military operations in the 20th and 21st century Pacific.

What do you hope to do once you graduate from UC Santa Cruz? I would like to be a professor once I graduate from UC Santa Cruz. However, I am also open to careers in the public sector.

What is one memorable moment that stands out for you as a student here? One memorable moment for me as a student here was the first time I taught my own course as a Graduate Student Instructor. I taught a course in summer 2016 titled “Typhoons, Hurricanes, and Tsunamis: Global Disaster Narratives.” It was an incredibly rewarding pedagogical experience for me, and it also helped to strengthen my own research on disasters.

How will this scholarship impact your academic life/research? This scholarship will impact my academic life/research by providing me with a summer stipend that will allow me to focus on the writing of my dissertation. The fellowship will allow me to make significant progress on my dissertation manuscript and will also provide the funds needed to do any additional archival work. 

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