PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — The dean of the College recently announced that four sophomores have been selected for Mellon Mays Fellowships. The Mellon Mays Fellowship Program aims to increase the number of individuals from underrepresented minority groups in faculty positions at colleges and universities.

Raillan Brooks is a sociology and modern culture and media dual concentrator who hopes to pursue a Ph.D. in sociology or media studies. Brooks plans to study media consumption as a social process, focusing in particular on the rise of information and communications technologies in the Middle East and their roles in shifting views on gender and sexuality.

Ana-Irma Patete is concentrating in Latin American and Caribbean studies and ethnic studies and hopes to pursue a Ph.D. in literature. She plans to research the possible aesthetic kinships between Latin American and Latino/a literature.

Le Tran is concentrating in sociology, education, and ethnic studies and hopes to pursue a Ph.D. in sociology. Le”s Mellon project will involve taking a multimethod, interdisciplinary approach to queer experiences for Southeast Asian people in the United States and in areas abroad, specifically Vietnam. He will spend this summer and next fall semester doing fieldwork in Vietnam to build on his theoretical framework and ethnographic methodology.

Kyle Wynter-Stoner is a comparative literature concentrator who plans to pursue a graduate degree in either religious studies or history. Wynter-Stoner’s research will examine the mythological and oral elements of modern West African literature.

Each Mellon Mays fellow is required to conduct an individual research project under the guidance of a faculty mentor beginning in the summer after the sophomore year. Research continues through the junior and senior years and must include the summer prior to the last year of undergraduate study. Such research helps prepare Mellon Fellows for graduate study in their chosen discipline. Fellows who remain in good standing with the program receive a stipend for each of the two summers of their fellowship and for each semester of their junior and senior years.

Fellows gather in an informal setting at least once a month as a group to discuss their progress and their experiences. Fellows also travel to scholarly meetings to present their research projects, to visit research libraries, or to attend meetings relevant to their research. If a Mellon Undergraduate Fellow enrolls as a full-time student in an eligible Ph.D. program within three years of graduating from Brown, the Fellow may have up to $10,000 of his or her undergraduate student loans repaid by the Mellon Foundation.