The 2013-2014 fellows:

Richard Williams
Writer and independent scholar

Residency: February 11-25

A cultural historian with a background in Classics and Art History, Williams has held teaching and research posts at universities including Newcastle and Glasgow, and has published on Greek drama and French revolutionary art. He has also co-curated exhibitions in both of these fields.

Michelle Robinson
Assistant Professor of American Studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Residency: March 6 -March 19

Michelle Robinson's essays have appeared in Studies in the Novel, Modern Drama, Children's Literature Association Quarterly and elsewhere.

Robert W. Miller
Assistant Instructor and Ph.D. candidate in modern European history at University of Kansas

Residency: February 24 - March 21, 2014

Robert Miller's dissertation topic is "Constructing a Spatial Imaginary: The Formation and Re-presentation of Monte Carlo as a Vacation-Leisure Paradise, 1854-1970." His research interests include histories of travel, tourism, culture, and consumption.

Lee Scrivner
U.S. State Department sponsored University Lecturer, Colombia

Residency: December 3-17, 2013 and March 16-29, 2014

Lee Scrivner is currently touring universities in Columbia, sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, as a lecturer in American literature and culture. He was also a Fulbright Lecturer in the Humanities at Bosphorus University in Istanbul from 2010-2012; a sessional lecturer at the University of London from 2007-2008; and an adjunct professor at UNLV from 2001-2005. His first book, "Becoming Insomniac: How Sleeplessness Alarmed Modernity forthcoming from Palgrave Macmillan" explores an over a century old notion that a technological environment causes insomnia.

Matias Karekallas
Ph.D. Student, Department of Social Research, University of Helsinki
Project Researcher, The Finnish Foundation for Gaming Research

Residency: March 19 - April 8

Matias Karekallas has a background in cultural geography where he earned his Master's degree. His dissertation approaches gambling from a cultural perspective and examines the (mental) images and places attached to gambling. In addition to gambling, his primary research interests include various phenomena related to popular music and sports.

Stefan Al
Associate Professor of Urban Design at University of Pennsylvania

Residency: May 5-18

Stefan Al is a Dutch architect and urban designer. Al has worked on renowned architectural projects such as the 2,000-ft high Canton Tower in Guangzhou, the preservation of world heritage in Latin America at the World Heritage Center of UNESCO, and an 11,000-acre new eco-friendly city in India. His writing has been published in the Handbook of Architectural Theory, the Berkeley Planning Journal, Urban China, and other publications. He has edited the books "Factory Towns of South China" and Urban Villages of South China" (forthcoming), and is currently writing a book on Las Vegas called "The Strip."

Colloquium Series Schedule

• February 25 - Richard Williams - "Erle Stanley Gardner in Las Vegas"
• March 18 - Michelle Robinson - "Billy Graham Comes to Las Vegas: Faith at Work on the Strip"
• March 21 - Robert Miller - "Paradise of Spectacle: Imagining and Re-presenting Casino Resorts as Spaces of Luxury and Leisure in the Twentieth Century"
• March 27 - Lee Scrivner - "Las Vegas, an Atemporal History"
• April 4 - Matias Karekallas - "The Ambivalent Images of Las Vegas in Popular Music"
• May 15 - Stefan Al - "Casino Architecture Wars: A History of How Las Vegas Developers Compete with Architectural Design."

About the Eadington Fellows Program

Awarded since 2007 and renamed in honor of William R. Eadington in 2013, the Eadington Fellowships are intended to foster scholarship focused on gambling issues and to encourage the use of the rare and unique collections at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

About the UNLV Center for Gaming Research

UNLV's Center for Gaming Research has been awarding gaming fellowships since 2007 as part of its mission to promote the scholarly investigation of gambling. The Center for Gaming Research is a world-class hub for the scholarly analysis of gambling and gaming issues. Located within Special Collections at UNLV's state-of-the-art Lied Library, its main resource is the Gaming Collection. Many unique primary resources can be found only within the Collection.

The center is committed to providing support for scholarly inquiry into all aspects of gaming. Students, faculty and community members interested in academically-oriented gaming research are welcome to use the collection. Through its website, the center offers several unique research tools and guides to gaming research.