Media contact: Noelle Lemoine, communications assistant; tele: (413) 597-4277; email: [email protected]
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., March 19, 2015—Williams College seniors Aseel Abulhab and Nathan Miller have been named Thomas J. Watson Fellows for 2015-16 and will each receive a $30,000 grant supporting a year of purposeful, independent study outside the United States.
Abulhab and Miller join 48 other students selected from nearly 700 candidates nationwide. This year’s class comes from eight countries and 19 states, and in the coming year they’ll traverse 78 countries exploring a wide range of topics.
Abulhab, a history major, grew up in Michigan, where she was first drawn to the grace of American Sign Language (ASL) in high school. After taking an ASL class, she discovered new ways to understand disability, and she began to question the way society treats the Deaf. At Williams, she founded Williams Signs, a club dedicated to understanding Deaf culture and the study of ASL. In the summer of 2014, she held an internship at the Muslim Public Affairs Council in Washington, D.C., and she studied in London during her junior year. Abulhab is interested in the international Deaf community and the types and quality of education available to Deaf children around the world.
Abulhab’s project, “Reconstructing Deafness: An Education in Silence,” will take her to Finland, Jordan, South Africa, and Costa Rica, where she will work to foster relationships with the hearing and Deaf communities and work with Deaf students. “I will listen to their stories of both struggle and triumph in their educational journeys,” Abulhab says. “I want to consider the effects of international human rights discourse on Deaf individuals, and to what extent this discourse affects their daily lives. I hope that by immersing myself in specialized schools for the Deaf, I will begin to chip away at the walls that our societies have built between the able-bodied and the disabled.”
Nathan Miller grew up in New York City, where he became interested in music production at age 12, turning household objects into 
recordable instruments. Using a personal computer and rudimentary equipment, he soon began producing his own compositions. At Williams, he is a computer science major who has studied music, poetry, and visual art. He spent the spring of his junior year in south India studying both the classical and folk music traditions of the region. While there, he took tens of hours of field recordings that he arranged into an album that he hoped would be both “sonically gripping and ethnographically relevant.”
Miller’s project, “Creative Spaces: Exploring Artistic Processes in Folk Music Culture,” will take him to Zimbabwe, Serbia, Indonesia, and Japan. “I want to explore the creative process as an act of problem solving and learn how artists in different musical traditions approach the problem of creating good art,” he says. “Music from different parts of the world varies greatly in structure, rhythm, harmony, and performance, but there is an equally profound difference in the artistic approaches that engender these variations. I am eager to explore the practices and philosophies of making music, how these ideals shape a musician’s identity, and the responsibility of these musicians to both preserve and appropriate tradition.”
The Thomas J. Watson Fellowship was established in 1968. It offers recent college graduates an opportunity to engage their deepest interests on a world scale before beginning their professional lives. Fellows conceive original projects and execute them outside of the U.S. for a full year. Recent Watson fellows include Eloise Andry ’14, Ali Mctar ’14, Abdullah Awad ’13, Emmanuel Whyte ’13, Lindsay Olsen ’12, and Emanuel Yekutiel ’11.
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Founded in 1793, Williams College is the second-oldest institution of higher learning in Massachusetts. The college’s 2,000 students are taught by a faculty noted for the quality of their teaching and research, and the achievement of academic goals includes active participation of students with faculty in their research. Students’ educational experience is enriched by the residential campus environment in Williamstown, Mass., which provides a host of opportunities for interaction with one another and with faculty beyond the classroom. Admission decisions on U.S. applicants are made regardless of a student’s financial ability, and the college provides grants and other assistance to meet the demonstrated needs of all who are admitted.
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Published March 19, 2015
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