Graduate News

Graduate student Sean Gilleran awarded Bennett History Graduate Fellowship

 

Sean Gilleran, a history master’s degree candidate, was awarded the Edward and Margery Bennett History Graduate Fellowship. He will use the funding to travel this summer to Washington, D.C., where he will explore the Seth MacFarlane Collection of the Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan Archive at the Library of Congress.S

Sagan, a noted popular scientist, worked to diffuse Cold War tension by emphasizing a common sense of humanity through science. His papers, Gilleran argues, will lead to a better understanding of how Sagan conceived his work in terms of his private self and how his science intertwined with his politics and his ideas about foreign policy.

Sagan is also the subject of Gilleran’s thesis, the timely completion of which, Gilleran hopes, will be facilitated by this research.