Alysoun Quinby
Alysoun will identify previously undescribed linguistic variation in Yurok, an endangered native language of northwestern California. There are two major Yurok dialect areas, and her aim is to map local variation within one of those: the area along the Klamath River from the coast upriver to Weitchpec, California. Alysoun will use archival and field research to gather linguistic, geographical and population data, which she will then synthesize to create a linguistic atlas. This work will make both an academic contribution (in the context of the Yurok Language Project, a full […]
Chau Thuy Huynh
Chau will be creating an art project that will encompass traditional Vietnamese culture through the mediums of drawing, sculpture, embroidery, and traditional American quilt-making. She will investigate the differences between Vietnamese and Chinese art and culture, while further examining Vietnamese mythologies to determine their true histories. Chau’s art project will include a 3 X 3 circular embroidery of the ancient Vietnamese drum as well as four 7X5 quilts that will illustrate Vietnamese history and culture using American stitching techniques and using as many different fabrics as possible. The foundation of […]
Spencer Orey
Spencer will travel to El Salvador this summer and conduct anthropological fieldwork focusing on the not-for-profit organization Pro-Búsqueda. Focusing primarily on reuniting children disappeared in the Salvadoran civil war with their biological families, workers at Pro-Búsqueda have not only helped to advocate processes of justice and repatriation but have also played an important role in lobbying for reparations legislation as well. Using ethnographic methods, Spencer will collect data through first-hand participant observation and interviews in order to examine the importance of finding and reuniting children in reconstructing civil society and […]
Zoë Pollak
Current Bio: Zoë is a PhD candidate in English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University (MSt in English from Oxford [2016]) writing a dissertation on small forms in 19th century poetry. Haas Scholars Project: More than once, Marilynne Robinson has invoked Henry Thoreau’s Walden (1854) as an influence on her novel Housekeeping (1980). Zoë’s project investigates the philosophical resonances between these two texts written in the tradition of American Romanticism. Rather than wed Walden to history and read Housekeeping as a modern-day (and specifically feminist) response, Zoë develops a […]
Laura Anne Brueckner
Combining rigorous academic inquiry with the living practice of theater arts, Laura will be researching commedia dell’arte , a style of masked improvisational comedy that flourished in Italy during the Renaissance. She will devote herself to historical research and practical training this summer and will develop, rehearse and produce a commedia dell’arte production during the academic year, using a cast and crew comprised of Berkeley students. Laura plans to revive this dramatic art form in a historically informed way for the benefit of the entire University community, staging her production, […]
Anthony Vasquez
During the summer Anthony will be excavating an archaeological site near the UC Berkeley campus that was designated as female student housing from the 1920s to mid 1940s. Using both material culture collected during excavation and archival documents, Anthony will do a comparative study between the lives of male and female UC Berkeley students of the time period. Sites associated with Zeta Psi, the first fraternity in California, have already been excavated, providing Anthony a wealth of information on all-male living situations. Finding archaeological data on all-female situations is not […]
Erika Kemp
A double major in Religious Studies and South Asian Studies, Erika will be researching the influence of British colonial discourse and Oriental scholarship on the adoption of the Bhagavad Gita, a Sanskrit Hindu text of the third and fourth centuries CE, as the “Hindu Bible” during the early twentieth century. She will spend the summer in India attending an advanced Sanskrit program in preparation for her analysis of major translations and interpretations of the Gita by Western scholars produced between 1890 and 1950. Her research will focus on the major […]
Jason Malinsky
An Individual Major in Environmental Policy and Investigative Reporting, Jason intends to conduct research on a July 8, 2002, pesticide-poisoning incident in Arvin, California. In the incident, over 250 people were allegedly poisoned by a known carcinogenic pesticide. Focusing on issues of accountability and government response, Jason will use Arvin as a case study to be compared with a 1999 poisoning incident involving over 400 people in Earlimart, California. To place these case studies within the bigger picture of Californias pesticide incidents, he intends to draw upon statewide databases that […]
Cherie Hill
Currently in modern dance there are few successful black female choreographers and Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, founder of the dance company Urban Bush Women, is one of them. In Zollar’s piece, Batty Moves, she combines theater and concert dance styles to create a work that invokes socio-political commentary on the stereotype that black women should have big butts, signifying hypersexuality. Cherie Hill’s project will include a content analysis of Batty Moves that will culminate into a choreographic production. In the analysis Cherie will be looking at how Zollar utilizes formal […]
Khatchadour Khatchadourian
Khatchadour will travel to Beirut, Lebanon this summer to study Armenian and Lebanese community formation. By conducting interviews and implementing professionally administered surveys, he hopes to gain a more insightful understanding of how each community views itself in relation to the other. Khatchadour will also meet with community leaders and politicians to assess the impact of communal relations on local politics. By analyzing the political, economic, and socio-cultural frameworks the Armenian community employs to express its uniqueness, Khatchadour hopes to comprehend assimilation and community development in the Lebanese context.