Fellowships from the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton will enable two University of Pennsylvania professors to pursue their research full time this year. David Grazian, associate professor of sociology, and Vanessa Ogle, assistant professor of history, have been named 2013-14 Fellows.                 

Each year, the School of Social Science invites about 20 visiting scholars from various disciplines to examine historical and contemporary problems. Scholars are drawn from diverse fields including anthropology, economics, history, law, philosophy, political science, psychology and literary criticism. The School’s chosen theme for the year will be The Environmental Turn and the Human Sciences.

During the sabbatical year of residence, Grazian will be completing a book manuscript on metropolitan zoos as repositories of culture as well as nature. The book is tentatively titled Where the Wild Things Aren't: City Zoos and the Culture of Nature.

Grazian is the author of three books: Blue Chicago: The Search for Authenticity in Urban Blues Clubs, On the Make: The Hustle of Urban Nightlife and Mix It Up: Popular Culture, Mass Media, and Society. He teaches courses on popular culture, mass media and the arts; cities and urban sociology; social interaction and public behavior; and ethnographic methods. 

Ogle will be working on her first book, a global history of time reform during the late 19th century entitled Contesting Time: The Global Struggle for Uniformity and Its Unintended Consequences.

Ogle, who teaches and writes about international history, has future projects in the works about the history of Tangier from the 1880s to the 1960s and a biography of Elisabeth Achelis, who toured the world to promote a standardized, neutral world calendar in the interwar years and after World War II.