Undergraduate Research & Scholarships

Barira Rashid

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Since the fall of ex-president Hosni Mubarak, street art has become the most widespread form of political expression in Egypt since the Egyptian Revolution began on January 25th, 2011. As a means to proclaim the goals of the revolution and mock the military regime in power, Barira will further explore how political graffiti and street art have come to signify a powerful form of expression of social justice in the ongoing movement. Barira will travel to Cairo to document political graffiti and street art through photography and video, interview underground […]

Chang Cai

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While there has been great scholarly interest in international tribunals such as the Nuremberg and Tokyo, little research has been done on Allied national efforts to prosecute the Japanese in the post-WWII era. Over 700 Chinese nationalist trials were conducted between 1946 and 1949 against the Japanese at twelve different locations in China. This is a wonderful example of domestic applications of an emerging body of international law. While an analysis of the trial judgments is an important part of the project, Chang will also closely examine the Chinese nationalist […]

Alana Mailes

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Current Bio: Alana has been in graduate school for musicology and sings semi-professionally. Haas Scholars Project: Alanas project focuses on the 1664 English translation of Giulio Caccini’s preface to Le nuove musiche (1601), one of the best-known texts about ornamentation of vocal music during the Baroque period. She will investigate the unknown identity of the translator, assess whether the translation of Caccini’s words may have affected the translation of musical practices from Italy to England, and trace the texts possible influence on seventeenth-century English composers such as Henry Purcell. She […]

Zachary O’Hagan

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Most languages spoken today are of roughly direct descent from other, perhaps extinct, languages. Latin is the famous progenitor of the Romance languages. However, the pre-history of some languages is not one of direct descent, but rather of contact, or mixture. Omagua is a highly endangered, pre-Columbian contact language of Peruvian Amazonia, with only two remaining speakers. Building off of previous work, Zachary will conduct eight weeks of fieldwork in Peru. With more comprehensive linguistic data, he will employ standard historical-linguistic methods to determine the languages involved in the genesis […]

Jessica Lopez

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In an anthropolitical and linguistic analysis that values human agency, individual thought, and community discourse, Jessicas work explores the embodied experience of Latino parents who attend court-mandated parenting classes in East Los Angeles. Current research on minority populations shows that Latino parents continue to view state intervention as judgmental, manipulative, and oppressive. Jessica will use transcribed speech from discussion circles and testimonios of the Latino parents involved in parenting to define, nuance, and problematize currently accepted parenting ideologies. This project aims to provide a more nuanced understanding of the dynamics […]

Stefanie Matabang

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This project sets out to examine the acquisition of the Arthurian literary cycle by the canon of Filipino literature. Focusing on the only two Filipino translated Arthurian texts, Tablante de Ricamonte and Percibal, Stefanie will be doing analytical and comparative work on the texts and the Spanish counterparts from which they are derived. Traveling to Chicago and the Philippines, she will gain access to these 19th century, medieval-influenced manuscripts and in the Philippines, have the opportunity to consult with the mother of Filipino folklore, scholar Damiana L. Eugenio. Her ultimate […]

Salvador Gutierrez Peraza

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In 2010, the Arizona legislature banned the teaching of Ethnic Studies in public schools (K-12) via House Bill 2281. The bill specifically targeted Tucson Unified School District’s Mexican-American Studies program. According to the proponents of this bill, the MAS program was dangerous because it promoted ethnic, racial, and class divisions among students. Salvador will spend the summer in Arizona investigating the historical and political factors that led to the drafting and adoption of HB 2281. Salvador’s project will directly engage with the growing historical and political literature documenting the struggle […]

Sonia Gomez

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Immediately following the end of World War II, the United States stationed nearly 450,000 troops in Japan. The U.S. occupation of Japan led to intimate relationships between American Servicemen and Japanese women, resulting in a large number of marriages. Between 1947 and 1975, an estimated 45,000 Japanese women immigrated to the United States as wives of U.S. Servicemen. Most scholarship on the subject focuses on the relationships between Japanese war brides and White American GIs. However, a significant number of these Japanese women came to the United States with their […]

Armen Davoudian

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The Waste Land is a metapoem that doubts whether it is a poem: a paradoxical achievement of expression through expressing an inability to express. This antithetical way of writing poetry makes new relations among different tropes possible. For instance, iron–which normally either precludes or retrospectively denies pathos–can become elegy as Eliot complains that he cannot sing, thereby singing. Armen senses a similar concern in Eliot’s other poetry, and he wonders, for example, whether the many paradoxes in Four Quartets can be explained in terms of this argument. He also wants […]

Margaux Fitoussi

Revolutionary Cuba provided international support and financial assistance to the liberation movements throughout southern African. Cuba’s foreign policy of international revolution and its liberation discourse crossed boundaries erected by the apartheid state and influenced the South African emancipation movement. Despite a strong public rapport between Cuba and anti-Apartheid leaders, the majority of research on Cubas foreign policy towards Africa has excluded South Africa. Drawing on archival research conducted at the University of Cape Town and South African national archives, Margaux hopes to contribute to the analysis of Cuba’s symbolic significance […]