Rachel Gottfried-Clancy
On November 18, 2011 federal law #12,528 created the National Truth Commission (Commiso Nacional da Verdade, CNV) in Brazil. The truth commission was created to examine the events carried out by the government, Foras Armadas, during the countrys military dictatorship and produce an official, truthful account of the period. The hope was that by embarking on a collective search for truth, the Brazilian population would work towards national reconciliation, and in the process strengthen their democracy. However, one year after the commission began, criticisms flood the process: many argue that […]
Melissa Florence Baird
Melissa’s interdisciplinary inquiry into the destruction of pre-historic rock art sites in California promises to shed new light on a relatively new but important field of archeological preservation. Through a combination of library research and field work in Mexico and the United States, Melissa will attempt to account for the neglect of these visual images left by ancient hunter-gatherer societies and to argue for the importance of their conservation and preservation. In addition to launching her Anthropology Senior Honors Thesis this summer, Melissa will be acquiring skills in a variety […]
Marie Thuillier
In July 2008, the French government finally listed Cauchois, the Norman dialect spoken in Seine Maritime, as an official language of France. Until then, the very existence of a Norman language, and hence of Cauchois had been denied. Similarly, many speakers of the dialect have often and inaccurately defined the language as either “dead” or as a non-standard version of French. In recent years, however, diverse social groups have actively reclaimed and promoted Cauchois. Marie’s research will investigate the discourses and strategies used by different groups to either reject or […]
Amarina Kealoha
Amarina will travel this summer to New York City, the cultural birthplace of hip-hop, to investigate this contemporary musical and cultural phenomenon, focusing on the films and videos made about the genre. Her stay will involve an intensive schedule of research, interviews and live events, as well as video documentation, which will form the preliminary visual and theoretical groundwork for her final creative endeavor. The purpose of her immersion in hip-hop culture is an inquiry into the ways in which hip-hop functions as a mode of resistance. During the 2001-2002 […]
Dafna Kory
Dafna, an Interdisciplinary: Globalization and Development major, will create a body of 50 documentary photographs depicting the impact of tourism and preservation efforts on the town of Bodhgaya, India. Bodhgaya, located in Indias most impoverished state of Bihar, is home to the Mahabodhi Temple, the most recent addition to UNESCOs World Heritage List. The preservation standards decreed by UNESCO require the creation of a buffer zone around the Mahabodhi Temple, which is likely to translate into the displacement of locals who live and work around the site. Contestations over the […]
Alex Omar Bratkievich
There are strong indications that the factors influencing the alternation between existential (“There’s a book on the table”) and canonical (“A book is on the table”) constructions might be the same cross-linguistically; for example, existentials across languages exhibit the definiteness effect: indefinite Noun Phrases are preferred in pivot (post-verbal) position. Mikkelsen (2002) proposes that the effect is a consequence of constraints governing the subject position. Since the definiteness effect can be overridden, she suggests an analysis within the Optimality Theory framework to model constraint interaction relative to a hierarchy of […]
Sabina Juneja Garcia
Sabina will travel to Los Angeles to examine historical evidence of the communication between the citizen and the politician to control the shape of the physical landscape of Chavez Ravine. Chavez Ravine was once a thriving Mexican-American community removed for construction of a massive public-housing site yet today Chavez Ravine is home to Dodger Stadium. Using the papers of prominent politicians, Mayor Norris Poulson and City Councilman Edward Roybal, she will examine the campaign rhetoric employed by these candidates who were at odds on the issue of public-housing and the […]
Sara Sol Linck-Frenz
Collapsing the Frame delves into the space between two categories contemporary and commercial dance to ask how the moving body functions as a site both for composing and deconstructing normative conceptions of embodiment, physicality, identity, and sociality. By researching the particular case of commercially produced choreographies, the project not only problematizes the categorical divide between high culture and popular/commercial culture, but intends to ask how dance productions that cross this boundary function as corporeal and public experimentations with collective identities. Through a comparative analysis of three sites of dance practice […]
Scott Leon Washington
Scott’s project examines the crystallization of the “one-drop rule” in the United States between 1890 and 1936: a relatively unique principle of racial classification which defines as “black” anyone with even the slightest trace of black or African ancestry. Over the summer Scott will be visiting the Schomburg Center for Research in Harlem, and, in order to investigate the internal workings of the United States Census Bureau, he will be conducting research at the National Archives in Washington, DC. In addition to explaining some of the more distinctive features of […]
Valerie Nguyen
Through an attempt to gain a sense of the significance of Plato’s extensive discussions concerning the nature of language, this study undertakes to understand how the dialectical representation of rhetoric and the regulation of sophistic epistemologies specifically play into securing the institutionalization of philosophy. Foregrounding the particular role of the sophist Gorgias, both as a recurrent figure in the Platonic dialogues and as a thinker in his own right, in establishing the disciplinary identity of philosophy, Valerie will set out to show how understanding Gorgias’ Encomium of Helen as the […]