Hoo Yin (Horace) Lit
Gavin Alle Raders
Conflicts over the control of natural resources lie at the heart of wars, violence, and terrorism worldwide. Water is the most precious resource for over 800 million farmers in India who depend on the groundwater for their physical and cultural survival, and water has been held for millenia to be the common property of all beings, to be maintained and distributed democratically at the decentralized village level. Control over water was transferred to the state during British colonial rule, and today rain and groundwater is being privatized by multinational corporations […]
Marcelo Aranda
Personal violence was an endemic problem for Early Modern societies, since both elites and the upwardly mobile acted according to codes of honor rooted in the past. Two cultures, Early Modern Spain and Japan, handled this problem in outwardly similar manners. While governments imposed strict penalties on personal violence, martial artists in both societies created systems of combat that addressed not only the immediate physical concerns of their students, but also their spiritual and psychological needs. By analyzing and comparing 16th century Spanish and 17th century Japanese fencing manuals I […]
Stephanie Lo
This summer I will be investigating why Asian Americans engage in (inter)cultural viewing of Korean soap operas. I am interested in tying this question in with the Korean wave, that is, the general enthusiasm for Korean pop culture, but also to larger questions of pan-Asian identity, language and cultural proximity. To answer these questions, and hopefully more that I have not yet thought of, I will be viewing the most popular Korean soap operas and interviewing other viewers. I will also be engaging in Internet ethnographynetnography to further explore viewers […]
Graham Shapiro
Does there exist a relationship between the times of past earthquakes and the time until the next earthquake? Recent research suggests that there exists patterns in earthquake occurrence that exist between long sequences of earthquakes. Most current earthquake models assume earthquakes are either memoryless or only incorporate short-term memory. The purpose of this research is to develop a statistical earthquake model that incorporates time-dependence as well as long-term memory. Specifically to create a computer implemented time dependant statistical model of temporal sequences of earthquake features to estimate the effect of […]
Faith Gardner
This research explores three pulp novels by 20th century American writer James M. Cain and their subsequent film adaptations of the 1940&Mac226;s: The Postman Always Rings Twice, Mildred Pierce and Double Indemnity. These three movies are a few famous examples of film noir, an American cinematic style that reached its heyday in the 1940&Mac226;s. My research explores the text of these novels in comparison with their film translations, along with theoretical, historical and other secondary resources. I hope to better understand how instruments such as syntax, narrative structure and point […]
Karlyn DeSteno
All musical compositions borrow some material. It is not always easy for the law to draw the line between theft and inspiration. Recent changes in copyright law point to new systems of valuation of musical elements, both cultural and legal. This summer Ill be tracing these changes through a musical and legal analysis of music written for television and commercials, focusing on compositions which seek to copy elements of other, original works. Ill spend one month in Washington, D.C. using archives at the Library of Congress, and will also conduct […]
Jeremy Soh
In my ethnography I explore the question of justice and memory in the aftermath of mass atrocities in Cambodia. For Cambodians, who have had to engage in a daily process of reckoning with the memory of (social) death, re-making a world has necessarily involved a delicate reweaving of kinships torn asunder by the violent alterations of life. I wish to look more carefully at these everyday practices of living as practices of bearing witness. With the anticipated commencement of the Khmer Rouge Tribunals, I seek to interrogate the role of […]