Parker, who is double concentrating in Archaeology and Assyriology, is an independent studies co-coordinator at the CRC. He is one of 20 undergraduates nationally to receive the Beinecke Scholarship, awarded to undergraduates in their junior year to support graduate study at a university in the United States or abroad.Â
We asked Parker to tell us a bit about his graduate study interests. Read an excerpt below:
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When talking about this to a group of people who aren't familiar with the topic, I had to balance providing background information and how this possible research could fit into the gaps that exist in the field without drowning the application with a lot of field-specific terminology. In the application, I proposed two approaches to this topic that were together complimentary. Investigating what I want to investigate and shaping it in a way to make sure it's accessible expressed what I wanted to express without having to work about the implications of it and the nuances of it getting lost. For me, it was my first time writing this kind of research statement because it was a personal statement that describes your research and how your time at Brown has shaped that and what your future plans were. It was a lot of reflecting and thinking about what I want and having to really sit down and think about, what are the things I want to spend the time researching? How am I going to go about the next couple of years? I described it as exploring the conceptions of weather in Mesopotamia, drawing from literary studies, Ecocriticism, looking at weather through celestial divination and trying to see what we can draw from both. There's a gap that I found really interesting to explore because weather is a tangible experiment, but it's reflected in a wide variety of textual sources. For me, I found it was something I was really excited to explore more about.
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To learn more about this scholarship, contact Christopher Carr in the Fellowships Office in the College.Â
Congratulations, Parker!