Upcoming Fellowship Recipients
Spring 2026
Spring 2026 - group 2
Architecture
Constance Vale
Architect and Chair of Undergraduate Architecture, Washington University in St. Louis — United States
Constance Vale is the Chair of Undergraduate Architecture and Associate Professor at Washington University in St. Louis. She is a licensed architect and co-founder of AVV A, a collaborative practice that bridges research and built work. Vale’s creative work and scholarship explore intersections between architecture, art, theater, urbanism, and emerging technology. Her writing and design practice examine how artificial intelligence and digital tools are transforming architectural theory and methods of representation.
Historically, interior space and textiles have been marginalized within architectural discourse, often overlooked in favor of exterior form and structure. The historical association of interiors and textiles with “women’s work” has contributed to their relative neglect by architectural historians and preservationists. Constance's proposed project foregrounds interiors and textiles as vital components of architectural discourse. Using photographs and 3D scans of stone fortifications and intimate interior spaces, she will create diaphanous architectural interventions. During the day, sunlight will emphasize the facade, while at night, artificial light will reveal interior depths—producing an atmospheric inversion of visibility. The result will be a spectrum of spatial conditions: opaque and translucent, hard and soft, public and private.
Dance
Alex Rodabaugh
Choreographer, Dancer, and Performer — United States
Alex Rodabaugh is a choreographer, dancer, and performer from Lima, OH, based in NYC. Alex's work has been shown at River to River Festival, Dance & Process at the Kitchen, American Realness, Draftworks at Danspace, PRELUDE, and Movement Research at Judson Church. Alex performed n-1 as a 2024 Artist-in-Residence at Center for Performance Research. Alex has performed in works by Moriah Evans, Simone Forti, Tess Dworman, Miguel Gutierrez, Ishmael Houston-Jones, and Bailey Williams.
Break-Up Tunnel Vision Infinity, Nth Edition is a dance with four dancers originally from the Midwest, currently based in NYC, who have traveled with and performed in editions of the dance between Alex's hometown, Lima, OH, and NYC beginning in 2019. These dances are a search for meaning in a splintered American reality between a large city and a small town. After a failed hero’s journey of returning this dance to his hometown, Alex will work toward premiering the final edition in NYC.
Film/Video
Sabrina Dhawan
Screenwriter and Professor of Film, NYU Tisch — United Kingdom/India/United States
Sabrina Dhawan is the screenwriter of Monsoon Wedding, which won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and was nominated for a Golden Globe and BAFTA. Other work includes Cosmopolitan (PBS), Kaminey and Ishqiya and the Monsoon Wedding stage musical (Berkeley Rep). She has written for 20th Century Fox, HBO, Netflix, Disney, Fox Searchlight, ABC Family, Killer Films, UTV and Excel Entertainment for whom she’s developing Chardi Kala. She is a Professor at NYU’s Tisch School and has taught across the US, India, Uganda, Tanzania, Singapore, and Qatar.
Set in 1983 Delhi, India, Sabrina will be working on a screenplay with multiple narratives. The lives of ambitious, spineless bureaucrats, and their unraveling family lives; their domestic staff edging toward rebellion, and their convent-schooled teenagers confronting shame and sexual desire. All told in the backdrop of a socialist country that is on the cusp of sweeping liberalization and change – and the seismic aftermath of the assassination of a Prime Minister.
Humanities Scholarship
Caren Kaplan
(Visual Arts - Scholarship) Professor Emerita of American Studies, UC Davis — United States
Caren Kaplan is Professor Emerita of American Studies at UC Davis. Her research draws on transnational feminist theory, cultural geography, theories of art and perception, and military history to explore the ways in which undeclared as well as declared wars produce atmospheric politics. Recent publications include “Domesticity at War: Bringing the War Home in Martha Rosler’s House Beautiful Wartime Photomontages,” in Catalyst 9:1 (2023) and Aerial Aftermaths: Wartime from Above (Duke 2018).
The Fabric of War. Fabric is an under-appreciated aspect of the material infrastructure of war. From commemorative lace panels to decorative banners to war balloons, bandages, blankets, uniforms, flags, and camouflage netting, the textile industry and home crafters have been deeply involved in military matters. During my residency I will work on the draft chapter on gauze to join other chapters on lace, netting, and collage for my book in progress, The Fabric of War: Crafting Wartime Domesticity.
Humanities Scholarship
Eric Smoodin
(Visual Arts - Scholarship) Professor Emeritus of American Studies, UC Davis — United States
Eric Smoodin is Professor Emeritus of American Studies at the University of California, Davis. His primary areas of research are American and French cinemas from 1895 to 1960, with an emphasis on film industries and audiences. He is the author of several books, including Paris in the Dark: Going to the Movies in the City of Light (Duke, 2020) and Regarding Frank Capra: Audience, Celebrity, and American Film Studies, 1930-1960 (Duke, 2004).
“Adrienne Górska and the Architecture of French Cinema”. Adrienne Górska was the most important cinema architect in Europe in the 1930s. She built the spectacular Normandie cinema on the Champs-Elysées, the Cinéac newsreel cinemas in Paris, as well as cinemas in Belgium, Poland, Tunisia, and elsewhere. Eric's book-length project examines the life and work of an architect who has been all but forgotten, but who introduced Europe to a modern, streamlined movie theatre experience, and who was considered a vital member of the French artistic community.
Literature
Selby Wynn Schwartz
Author — United States
Selby Wynn Schwartz is the author of three books, including After Sappho, which was longlisted for the Booker Prize and shortlisted for the Orwell Prize in Political Fiction, the James Tait Black Prize in Fiction, and the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction. In 2025, she received the Joseph Brodsky Rome Prize in Literature from the American Academy in Rome; she holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from UC Berkeley.
At Bogliasco, Selby Wynn will be writing about the 1946 strike of the jasmine-pickers of Milazzo: these women, who worked nights harvesting flowers in northeastern Sicily for a mere 25 lire a kilo, not only won their own rights but also inspired women workers in citrus groves and sardine factories across southern Italy. Re-imagining this little-known episode in labor history, she hopes, might help us to dream future feminist strikes for justice.
Music
Annini Tsioutis
Composer, Pianist, and Musicologist — Cyprus/France
Annini Tsioutis is a pianist, musicologist and music arranger whose academic and artistic endeavours focus on the exploration of 20th and 21st century music. Her multifaceted approach integrates performance practice, musicological research and original composition, demonstrating a comprehensive engagement with contemporary musical discourse. Annini has distinguished herself through numerous premieres of contemporary compositions for piano and an active collaboration with living composers. Her academic credentials include a doctorate in musicology from Sorbonne University.
At Bogliasco Annini will prepare a critical and performance edition of the 32 Piano Pieces by Greek composer N. Skalkottas. This project builds on her dissertation, which comprised a preliminary edition based on extensive archival research and a comparative analysis of the two surviving manuscripts of the work. The current project aims to refine and update this first edition to produce a final version suitable for commercial publication. This scholarly work will make it easier for pianists to engage with Skalkottas’s hitherto neglected work.
Theater
Kareem Fahmy
Playwright and Director — Canada/United States
Kareem Fahmy is a NYC-based playwright and director from Sherbrooke, QC. His plays A Distinct Society, American Fast and Dodi & Diana have been produced across the US. Other plays include Fountains of Youth, Pareidolia, The In-Between, and an adaptation of the novel The Yacoubian Building. Commissions: Audible, Artists Rep, Colt Coeur, Ensemble Studio Theatre, inaugural recipient of The Next Forever Commission from The Civilians/Princeton University. Fellowships: Yaddo, MacDowell, Sundance.
The new play Riparian States is inspired by the conflict between Egypt and Ethiopia over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. Following an international cast of scientists, politicians, and journalists navigating the dam’s future, the play explores the histories and cultures of two of Africa’s oldest societies, addressing climate, geopolitics, and water’s mystical role as a great interconnector. Some say “the next world war will be fought over water.” Riparian States shows how close this may be.