Abby Stein
Shrouded in mystique and controversy, the U.S. development of belly dance remains tied to appropriation, orientalism and popular entertainment. Abby Stein’s written thesis will examine the dance phenomenon within the context of 20th and 21st century American culture and values. Through a survey of existing scholarship, interviews with influential belly dance artists, firsthand training experience, and analysis of video and live performance and instruction, Abby will analyze how Western thought has adopted and transformed this Middle Eastern tradition. She will attempt to explain the development of the dance forms many […]
Sabrina Carletti
Sabrina Carletti’s project will inquire into Japanese postwar calligraphy within the Zen’ei bijutsu (avant-garde) movement while focusing on the calligraphy of Morita Shiry_ (1926-1999), who brought radical changes to calligraphy practice by leading the bokujin-kai, or the Human Ink Society. Sabrina intends to depart from the familiar influence model of Japanese and Western avant-gardes by arguing for a more complex understanding of Zen in Japanese modern calligraphy. Sabrina will travel to Japan to study works by Morita at the Museums of Modern Art, Tokyo and Kyoto, and to New York […]
Reem Jubran
The establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 enforced dislocation and fragmentation upon the Palestinian people. Nevertheless, while the old may have died, dense history and culture has been passed on to the youth by way of oral history. The Palestinian-Israeli conflict has dramatically transformed in the past 60 years, leaving the physically divided Palestinians today with an indefinable identity: do you consider yourself Arab, Arab-Israeli, Palestinian-Arab, or just Palestinian? Reem will create an artistically compiled short film that will capture a collection of voices and stories unique to […]
Anny Song
Anny will investigate Asian-Latin literary production in Argentina, focusing particularly on a vibrant literary community of Chinese and Japanese immigrants and descendants in contemporary Buenos Aires. In order to understand how these Asian-Latin writers represent their multiple identities in a homogeneous culture lacking a multicultural vocabulary, she will travel to Buenos Aires this summer to interview writers and editors and to examine published and unpublished works. In addition to conducting face-to-face interviews, she will be undertaking primary source research at cultural center archives in Buenos Aires that house contemporary materials, […]
Ariana-Bree Stamper-Gimbar
A double major in Linguistics and Native American Studies, Bree will study the social stratification of American Indian English, a single dialect of English that is shared by Native Americans of very different backgrounds across the United States and Canada. Indian English shows parallels to Ebonics, but has been poorly researched by comparison. Bree proposes to investigate the sociolinguistic variation of American Indian English among Wintun and Kumeyaay tribal members within the tribally owned casinos of Cache Creek, Sycuan and Viejas in California, in order to investigate how speech communities […]
Martín Olea
This project, which will be Martín’s senior honors thesis for Interdisciplinary Studies, will explore the process through which a small town, populated mostly by farmworkers, approved the construction of carceral facilities that are detrimental to a significant portion of its population. Prisons today are of significant importance to the communities of the California Central Valley, yet rigorous debate persists as to whether this is a positive trend. This research, which will draw from key informant interviews and archival research, will try to illustrate why it is important to comprehend the […]
Daniel Faltz
Between 1965 and 1979, action heroines appeared in over twelve different programs — five of these with both black and white heroines — a period of popularity not seen since. I am interested in the evolution of these early heroines, and their similarities and differences in character, story, and physical display of womens bodies. I suggest that these programs include complex and flawed but still important examples of female characters with strength, independence and agency. What does it mean that Batgirl and Wonder Woman pretend to be bookish women during […]
Nicholas Riggle
What is a concept? What philosophical and explanatory power should we expect from a theory of concepts? Logician, mathematician and philosopher Gottlob Frege tried to demonstrate the logicist thesis that all arithmetical theorems are purely logical consequences of the basic laws of logic and the logically defined axioms of arithmetic. During the evolution of his project, Frege developed his technical notion of a concepta notion seemingly very far removed from contemporary theories of concepts. Nicholas proposes to work out an account of the development of Freges theory paying close attention […]
Javier Aros
America 2020, a creative vision of the political and social realities of the United States in the year 2020, will be an artistic presentation of Javier Aros. Utilizing room sculpture, six large silkscreen poster prints and assorted smaller prints, two wall paintings, ceramic busts, original flags and interactive historical documents and presentations, Javier will carefully design and create a future museum dedicated to the revolutionary and evolutionary events of the teen years of the 21st century. By thoroughly investigating and evaluating revolutionary methodology and methods — from independence from non-renewable […]
Dennis Velasquez
Dennis research seeks to expand the exploration of transculturation through an in-depth analysis of three vastly unrelated literary works that nonetheless contend with English Linguistic Imperialism, and reveal strikingly comparable strategies that defy it. Focusing on canonical texts by eighteenth century Scottish, nineteenth century Pequot Native American, and twentieth century Chicano authors, he will conduct a comparative study of strategies of literary subversion of English Linguistic Imperialism across disparate time periods, ethnicities, and geographic locations. He plans to investigate the distinct internal discourses of The Expedition of Humphry Clinker, A […]