BMCC Professor Sharon Avni Receives Mellon/ACLS Fellowship

BMCC’s professors have a passion for research, exploring pedagogical approaches to enhance the learning experience of students, and sharing their academic expertise across many platforms.

Most recently, Sharon Avni, professor of Academic Literacy and Linguistics, was awarded a Mellon/ACLS Community College Faculty Fellowship for her project, “Hebraists by Choice: American Jews and the Mobilization of Modern Hebrew.”  The fellowship includes a stipend of up to $40,000 to advance her project.

“Broadly speaking, (my project) seeks to explore what it means for a group of individuals to be passionate about a language that has little functional value in their daily lives, and that very few others speak, understand, or see as their ‘own’?,” Avni said. “The study takes on this question through the stories of individuals who actively seek to learn, use, and promote modern Hebrew as a critical component of their personal and collective identity as American Jews in the 21^st century.

The data, which will be collected between 2020 and 2022, in Avni’s study will include biographical interviews, participant observation of Hebrew-speaking gatherings and festivities, and textual analysis of print and online publications. Telling the story of how contemporary American Jews navigate Hebrew in a non-Hebrew world, Avni says her study contributes to the study of language and ethno-religion relations by exploring the mobilization of language in its functional, ideological, symbolic, and moral dimensions as a source of self-expression and identity.

This is the first time Avni has been presented with the Mellon/ACLS Award. Avni said she learned about the award opportunity through BMCC’s Office of Sponsored Programs.

This is only the second year that this fellowship has been available. During the inaugural year, the Mellon/ACLS program officers held an information session for CUNY community college faculty, where Avni learned about the program’s intention to support humanities and social science faculty members who teach at two-year institutions.

“I applied the first year, but my proposal was not funded,” Avni said. “However, I did receive constructive feedback from the Mellon/ACLS reviewers, and along with other feedback from colleagues at BMCC and at other institutions, I spent last summer revising it and then resubmitted for the second year’s competition. The application process was a learning experience, and though not getting funded the first time was a big disappointment, spending the time to revise it and thinking about how my topic speaks to broader audiences in the social sciences ultimately made it stronger. “

When she received the news about her award, Avni said she was “ecstatic and in disbelief.”

“With everything going on with the COVID-19 pandemic, I think I either lost track of time or forgot that I was supposed to hear from Mellon/ACLS in April,” Avni said. “I received the acceptance by email on a particularly troubling day when the news was reporting about the dire situation in New Jersey, where I live and am self-isolating with my family. It was an otherworldly feeling. I felt incredibly grateful that Mellon/ACLS was giving me the opportunity to pursue this research idea that I have been thinking about and tinkering with for many years.”

In receiving the Mellon/ACLS Fellowship Awards, Avni says she continues to be encouraged by her fellow BMCC colleagues.

“I am inspired by many of my colleagues at BMCC who apply for all sorts of grants and fellowship and I benefit from their hard-earned wisdom,” Avni said. “My advise to faculty members who are seeking funding opportunities for their research would be to take a shot at whatever opportunities present themselves, and to get a lot of feedback from friends and colleagues before submitting.”