Three Carleton Professors Honored with Mellon New Directions Fellowships
Annette Igra, associate professor of history; Sigi Leonhard, professor of German; and Susan Singer, the Humphrey Doermann Professor of Liberal Learning, have been honored with Mellon New Directions Fellowships for the 2003-04 academic year.

Northfield, Minn. — Three Carleton College professors, Annette Igra, associate professor of history; Sigi Leonhard, professor of German; and Susan Singer, the Humphrey Doermann Professor of Liberal Learning, have been honored with Mellon New Directions Fellowships for the 2003-04 academic year. Each professor will receive one term of salary support and a $5,000 fund to support her project.
The Mellon New Directions Fellowship will allow Igra to research the history of paternity determination in the United States. Igra will research the contexts in which paternity became a contested issue as well as the methods historically used to determine paternity, making a significant contribution to the history of knowledge and to the understanding of how gendered familial relationships were defined over time. This research will also allow Igra to broach large issues such as the definition and maintenance of racial boundaries, class and property transmission and the gendered significance and vulnerability of reputation. Igra’s long-term goal is to produce a book on the history of paternity determination.
Leonhard will use her fellowship to support her work as a poet and author, revising her poetry manuscript, “In the Museum of Love and War,” for publication as well as creating new work. A native of Germany who has spent much of her life in France and the United States, Leonhard writes from the viewpoint of one who has been culturally displaced. Her newest writings stand at the interstices of several cultural contexts, delving into the intricately woven understanding of cultural identity. Viewing the hybrid nature of her life and writing as a challenge to be embraced, Leonhard will spend the next year readying her unique work for publication.
A plant developmental geneticist, Singer uses physiological, genetic and molecular approaches to investigate flowering in legumes, specifically the garden pea. The Mellon New Directions Fellowship will allow Singer to attend the Center for Plant Architecture Informatics course at the University of Queensland, where she will gain expertise in mathematical biology. This will allow her to integrate mathematical approaches into her continued modeling of the inflorescence architecture of the pea. In Australia, Singer will also be able to work with colleagues with expertise in L-systems, which are similar to fractals and will allow Singer to look for repeating patterns in pea development.
The Mellon New Directions Fellowships for Teacher-Scholars Program was established through a generous four-year grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to seven select liberal arts colleges (Carleton, Macalester, Swarthmore, Haverford, Bryn Mawr, Barnard, and Wellesley). The fellowship is designed to link faculty development to institutional innovation by providing opportunities for faculty to explore new directions in teaching, research, or other forms of engagement that are critical to the mission of their college. Every year, up to three Carleton faculty are awarded terms off to work on innovative, non-traditional projects related to pedagogy, curricular development, research or governance. These fellowships allow time for faculty to move in directions different from their previous research or teaching interests.