Gene Marie Tempest
My project examines the revolutionary role of the art students at the cole Nationale Suprieure des Beaux-Arts, France’s elite college of painting in Paris, and the historical significance of the posters they produced for the French student movement of May through June 1968. Of the 150,000 posters, I will primarily focus on those anti-fascist and anti-Nazi in scope, seeking to answer the question: What was the relationship between the soixante huitards (the sixty-eighters) and the memory of the collaboration years? Through oral history interviews I will engage the artists themselves […]
Rebecca Baran-Rees
My research project addresses the important questions of how new forms of governance are emerging in response to the growing challenges of urban management in many parts of the third world. Specifically, I will investigate the newest forms of solid waste management initiatives in Argentina put forth by the World Bank, the national and provincial governments of Argentina, local cooperatives and private agenciesand the extent to which these organizational forms can actualize participatory development goals. As hundreds of thousands of Argentinos have taken to picking and sorting trash as a […]
Jeff Patrick Manassero
The American Cultures requirement was ushered into UC Berkeley’s general curriculum during the late 1980’s, as universities across the nation followed suite. This project will study the development of multicultural requirements in the college curriculum, and specifically explore the origins of American Cultures on the Berkeley campus. In an attempt to portray American Cultures as an evolving curricular commitment, this project will focus on the historical narrative of the institutionalization and shifting of the AC requirement through changes in campus policy, administrative structuring of the program, and student, faculty, campus […]
Rhae Lynn Barnes
Blackface minstrel shows in the 19th century are well documented, but their parallel counter-part, amateur minstrelsy, is believed to be a peripheral phenomenon implemented by scattered radicals. Thousands of blackface plays were written and distributed in the 20th century with crucial contributions to both racial and gender construction that have not been cataloged or analyzed. I will track amateur minstrelsys print culture between 1890 and 1960, expanding its chronology, increase minstrel researchs geography to the American Midwest, further illuminate the cross-dressing gender conflict in minstrelsy, and provide a bibliographical analysis […]
Anca Giurgiulescu
Within the AIDS public health crisis currently affecting the African continent, Senegal stands apart from its African counterparts throught its succcess in controlling the HIV/AIDS epidemic. This relative success is attributed to the early and timely government response, as well as to the joint efforts of multiple actors of the Senegales society including community religious leaders. But what were the already existent political bases and networks that facilitated the implementation of a national response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic? This summer, I will work from Dakar with local and international actors […]
Branda Brehm
I am researching the relationship between Marcel Prousts la recherche du temps perdu and cinema in light of how each produces images. The prose of Marcel Proust is often termed cinematic, yet it is executed in a medium that is vastly different from film. What is it then about the image at this point in its history that allows for a comparison between this major work of literature and the fundamental techniques of the cinema? To answer this question I am researching the underlying philosophy of Prousts imagery of time […]
Tweed Arden Conrad
Asclepius, Apollo’s son, was an important healing deity in ancient Greece. Asclepian healing sanctuaries existed at Epidaurus, Kos, Pergamum, the Athenian Acropolis, and Corinth. The main vehicle for healing at these sanctuaries was dreaming, where one could converse and be healed directly by the god Asclepius himself. This summer I plan to explore the various methods of worship at different Greek sanctuaries, specifically focusing upon sanctuaries that employed different healing methods. Then, I will focus in on the sanctuaries that utilize dreaming as the primary healing method. The site that […]
Adrienne Johnson
Competitive eating is a vernacular form of cultural criticism masquerading as mass entertainment. My research into the significance of competitive eating in American culture will unveil collective but inarticulated perspectives on consumerism, gender roles and our economic climate. Competitive eating is at once a glorification of American excess and an indictment of it; a direct challenge to idealized human form and a confirmation of its strength. Historically, I believe competitive eating served to homogenize immigrant diet in 19th century America. By tracking the foodstuffs of competition, I hope to prove […]
Eyal Mazor
Although considerable scholarship has debunked neo-Malthusian myths of “overpopulation,” its specters and tropes continue to be invoked in environmentalist, anti-immigration, and ‘development’ discourses. However, little historical work has been done on the origins of these discourses. My project focuses on the genesis of a particular concept that raises specters of “overpopulation” — ‘human carrying capacity’– whose various conceptual, political, and historical blind spots I will seek to elucidate and contextualize, and whose textual origins in late colonial Zambia place it at the cusp of a scientific revival of neo-Malthusian thinking. […]