Ernest Honya
Susu is a traditional microfinance scheme in Ghana that has been ignored by commercial banks and microfinance institutions in the country. Ernest’s research asks why Ghana does not have an institutionally acceptable microfinance model that is specifically designed to fit the socio-economic and cultural needs of Ghanaians. His project will first investigate the susu model to find out what makes it institutionally unacceptable. Second, Ernest will survey the socio-economic and cultural dimensions of Wale and Ewe communities in northern and southern Ghana respectively. Ernest’s goal is to propose a new […]
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 […]
Alice Yeh
Foreign language education in a study-abroad setting is taken for granted as a means of acquiring fluency and cultural competency. But for a language without a living space, as Latin arguably is, what is it like to be physically situated in a concrete, historical locale without a native community of speakers? Based in an immersion program in Rome, Alice’s research will focus on the relationship between techniques of instruction and students acquisition and transformation of Latin. She will investigate the boundary between a more immersive approach and the method of […]
Morty Diamond
Morty’s research begins by asking how access to public health care has changed social conditions for the transgender community in San Francisco within the last 10 years. He will explore how current medical and mental health access challenges affect the physical, social and mental gender transition of transgender individuals. Beyond the importance of this research study as means of understanding the historical transgender community in San Francisco, the goal of this study is to record cultural and social differences within a nontraditionally gendered minority group. Morty will research policy changes, […]
Irene Steves
Stomatopods, also known as mantis shrimp, are some of the coolest marine crustaceans. They are powerful predators (for their size, at least) and are concentrated in tropical waters all over the world. The stomatopod rostrum, a segment of exoskeleton near the eyes, ranges from a simple triangular shape to something that looks more like a crown or the curved top of a palace. This summer, Irene will be looking into the evolutionary motivations of stomatopod rostrum variation. She plans to determine the function of the rostrum and the reasons for […]
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 […]
Kimberly Salyers
Extensive work has been done on the civic centers of Classic Maya culture. However, archaeological study of Maya commoners has been scarce until recent years. Kimberly’s research will focus on the artifacts uncovered in an excavated household at Chinikih, Mexico. Through a catchment analysis using GIS mapping, she will assess the economic resource basis for settlement. A catchment is the zone from which residents of a place drew their resources. This research will allow Kimberly to consider Chinikih within a larger context: she will look at the relation of commoner […]
Nicholas Calderon
Nicholas Calderon’s project, Campesinos Voice the Discourse of Fair Trade, will take place in the Altiplano region of Bolivia, where he will investigate the degree to which Fairtrades purported benefits are met. He will examine the extent of grower knowledge regarding Fairtrade entitlements, and their use of the Fairtrade social premium. His methods will combine an examination of discourses about the benefits of Fairtrade, digitally interactive participant observation, and interviews conducted with small-scale growers (those producing less than 2 hectares). The significance of this research is to enlarge the consumers […]
Danica Rodarmel
Current Bio: Previously an Equal Justice Works fellow at Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights working on bail reform and bail bonds issues. In Jan. 2020, Danica became the Policy Director of State Legislative Affairs at the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office. Haas Scholars Project: Among Dreams illuminates the collective, un-fixed identities of incarcerated individuals in the Bay Area by interweaving dream narratives and personal histories. The project will culminate in two publications: one book devoted to the inmates work and another devoted to Danica’s experiences with familial incarceration and prison […]
Godwin (Ife) Aka
Haas Scholar Program: The struggle of the Niger Delta people has been widely documented. The years of oil spills, unequal distribution of oil wealth, and marginalization of the people of this region both by the Nigerian state and the multinational oil companies, is known very well to those interested in this area. Because of the documentation of these conditions, academics who study this region often attribute the uprising that have emerged in the Niger Delta to some form of deprivation without studying these movements. My research explores why the Ogoni […]