VLC :: Fellowship Program

2006-2007 VLC Fellows with students in anthropology

Every year, the Vera List Center appoints a fellow or fellows from a pool of outstanding artists, curators, critics, and scholars who become an important part of the center’s intellectual foundation, contributing to its public programs while enjoying support in their projects from the VLC and The New School faculty. Special consideration is given to applicants whose work relates to the center’s annual theme.

The fellowship is part-time and nonresidential, and it carries a modest stipend. Fellows are appointed in the early summer for a term that extends from October 1 through June 30, during which they have access to a wide range of activities and resources throughout the university.

A selection committee drawn from The New School, former fellows and the Vera List Center Advisory Committee evaluates applications according to various criteria, such as the academic and/or artistic record of the applicant and the relevance of the proposed project to the mission and annual theme of the Vera List Center.

2009–10 Vera List Center Fellows

Lin + Lam

Since 2001, Lin + Lam have produced interdisciplinary projects that examine the ramifications of the past for the current socio-political moment. Attentive to materiality, site, and the specificities of different medium, their collaboration integrates their individual strengths and backgrounds. Trained in architecture, H. Lan Thao Lam uses photography, sculpture, and installation to address social memories of time, place and politics. Informed by critical cinema, Lana Lin has been interested in translation and the processes of identification. Their work has been exhibited at international venues including the New Museum, The Kitchen, the Queens Museum and LMAK Projects in New York, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, Arko Arts Center (Korean Arts Council,) Seoul, Korea, the Arte Nuevo InteractivA’07 Biennial, Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, Merida, Mexico, and the 3rd Guangzhou Triennial, Guangzhou, China.

Lam received her MFA from CalArts and has been Assistant Professor at Middle State Tennessee University and Goddard College, MFA program. Lin received her MFA from Bard College and has been Assistant Professor at Massachusetts College of Art and the City College of New York. They have been honored with awards from the US Fulbright Foundation, the Jerome Foundation, New York Foundation for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, Canada Council for the Arts, and the Princess Grace Foundation, among others.

Robert Sember

Robert Sember is a member of the international sound art collective, Ultra-red, which collaborates with constituencies involved in migrant rights, fair housing and anti-racist struggles, and efforts to combat the AIDS crisis. Recent projects include: SCHOOL OF ECHOES, a multi-year exploration of militant sound investigations initiated during a three month residency at Raven Row, London, in early 2009; SILENT | LISTEN, an investigation of the conditions of the AIDS crisis in the U.S. and Canada presented in partnership with, among others, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Andy Warhol Museum, and the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; WE COME FROM YOUR FUTURE, an investigation of anti-racism movements in the United Kingdom, presented at Tate Britain, London; and, RE: ASSEMBLY, a long-term project on migration and citizenship commissioned by the Serpentine Gallery, London.

As a researcher in the Department of Sociomedical Sciences at the Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University from 1998-2006, Robert focused on sexual rights, treatment access, community mobilization, and cultural production in response to the AIDS epidemic. He has taught in the Medical Anthropology Program in the Department of Sociomedical Sciences, the Department of World Arts and Cultures at the University of California in Los Angeles, the Center for HIV/AIDS Networking at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, and the Summer Institute on Sexuality, Culture and Society at the University of Amsterdam’s Graduate School of Social Sciences.

Recent publications include: Rhine, D.T. and Sember, R. (writing for Ultra-red) (2009) Ten Preliminary Theses on Militant Sound Investigation. New York: Printed Matter; Padilla, M., Hirsch, J.S., Munoz-Laboy, M., Sember, R. and Parker, R.G. (eds) (2008) Love and Globalization: Transformations of Intimacy in the Contemporary World. New York: Vanderbilt University Press; Parker, R.G., Petchesky, R. and Sember, R. (eds) (2008) SexPolitics: Reports from the Frontlines. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Sexuality Policy Watch; and, Sember, R. (2009) “Sexuality Research in South Africa: The Policy Context.” Vasu Reddy and Theo Sandfort, eds. From Social Silence to Social Science: Same-Sex Sexuality, HIV & AIDS and Gender in South Africa. Pretoria: HSRC Press.