Akash Patel
My research this summer analyzes the effects of the 2010 World Cup on xenophobia and interethnic violence in Cape Town. Working in conjunction with the NGO Projects Abroad Human Rights Office, I will document cases of xenophobic violence from January to August 2010, graphing how rates of violence fluctuate in response to the Cup. I will supplement this evidence with informal testimony from a range of communities within Cape Town to see how different people view this international event as affecting levels of xenophobia in the city. In totality, the […]
Emma Tome
Recent scholarship in social science is re-invigorating notions of ‘place’ as it relates to social process. My research asks: how do these notions help to explain or complicate the process of redevelopment at Alameda Point, on the site of the decommissioned naval air station? And how may a close study of one place illuminate the efficacy or inefficacy of these ways of thinking? Furthermore, how may we reconcile theoretical place and the ways place is explained though maps? To approach these questions, my research will involve a close study of […]
Matthew Milton Phillip Werner
Justine Suzanne Jones
Bradley Allen Hunt
‘Comedy’–as a genre, term, and concept–receives relatively little attention and academic exploration when juxtaposed with more ‘central’ fields of literary studies. Comedy is considered ‘low art’ by some, simply ‘illegitimate’ by others, and even believed to be derived from sin itself by a few literary critics. By examining the early travel writings and letters of Mark Twain, as well as the contemporary television program “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,” I attempt to determine from where the marginality of the American comedic voice originates, and what effect it has on […]
Michelangelo Trujillo
Within political theory there is a debate over the compatibility of science with politics. Hannah Arendt and Michel Foucault, amongst others, question the legitimacy of the social sciences in different ways, while, in contrast, those who support the role of science in politics argue that rational debate can be maximized through an of our capacity to hold language claims accountable to verifiable truth conditions. The purpose of my research is to ask if these views are incompatible by drawing on the work of George Lakoff and Mark Johnson and analyzing […]
Alexandra Laure Courtois de Vicose
My goal is to investigate how a pastors wife, my great-great-grandmother (1867-1947), found the financial and technical means to paint and the significance of her work in the greater scheme of late 19th century artistic tradition. I will begin by gathering biographical information from archives, religious institutions and surviving relatives to create a psychological and chronological framework. Then I will examine her work contextually, contemplating the conditional education of middle-class nineteenth-century women, other female artists of her generation, and the tradition of still-life painting. Marcelle Jullien managed to carve a […]
Joshua Jones Begley
James Plemon Coleman was the Mississippi Governor who, in 1957, assured his fellow citizens that a baby born in Mississippi today will never live long enough to see an integrated school. He vowed to resist the federal mandate handed down by Brown in 1954, and became the first head of the controversial State Sovereignty Commission. But due to his later ties with the Kennedy-Johnson Administration and an eventual reputation of being a racial moderate, many think segregationist is a title he did not earn. In order to better understand the […]
Beatrix Chung-Yiu Chan
While the application of humor to the Holocaust may seem difficult and even offensive, humor during the Holocaust was employed as a means of critique and rebellion, aiding in developing solidarity amongst prisoners and as a mechanism for coping with trauma. Though such rationales exist for the use of comedy during the Holocaust, there is no such theorization for post-Holocaust comedy written in response to the event. In looking at the British filmmaker Peter Greenaways post-witness portrayals of the Holocaust, specifically, his 1980 film The Falls and his latest novel […]