Jessica Lopez
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
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
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
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
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 […]
Kabrina Kau
Kabrina will undertake a field-study of the indigenous people of Taiwan, who were colonized by Han immigrants from mainland China in the late-seventeenth century, focusing specifically on their attitudes toward education. Using surveys and interviews with several targeted youth and adult populations in the city of Taitung, she will attempt to ascertain the factors that have impeded this minority group from using education as a means of improving their socio-economic status. She intends her research to provide information that will aid in the development of a new aboriginal education assistance […]
Kate Hunter-McPeake
Kate’s project will explore the origins of the ancient Persian civilization with a focus on its dramatic transition from tribal society to dominant empire during the seventh and sixth centuries BCE. In order to better understand the influence of the declining Mesopotamian and Elamite civilizations on the emerging Persian empire, she will travel to the Iran National Museum in Tehran and renowned archaeological sites including Persepolis and Susa in order to examine archaeological and art historical evidence from the period. Kate will also engage in intensive study of the Persian […]
China Star
My research examines the changes in the prevalence of unmarried mothers in Ireland nearly a 20% between 1988 and 1999, the church and community response towards these women, and alternative interpretations of the lifestyles and demographics of single mothers. In recent years the response towards single parents has moved from one of social exclusion, condemnation towards one of outward acceptance and coping, a shift clearly influenced by the increasing prevalence of unmarried mothers and on account of moral condemnation of the alternatives of social exclusion of the mother and her […]
Debra Jeanne Kraus
Debra’s life experience as a caregiver to her husband throughout his terminal illness has inspired her to create an art exhibit that narrates his lifetime as a man and soldier groomed by the social effects and fears of the Cold War. Her work will investigate agent orange exposure of American soldiers who fought in Vietnam. Fiat Lux, will be grounded in the social understanding of artwork from the 1960s, moving forward in time to explore some of our current veteran health issues. Six multi-media sculptures, four paintings, and a video […]