Joshua Belton and Agata Surma
Agata and Josh will be studying the ways two major agricultural interventions–colonial development and the Tono Irrigation Project–have changed livestocks role in several communities in Upper East Ghana. They will first visit the British National Archives in London to research the pre-colonial conditions in the area and assess how colonial development unfolded there. They will then fly to Accra, Ghana, where they will interview experts to learn about the area’s past and present. Afterwards, they will travel to Upper East Ghana to observe the area and conduct interviews, which will […]
Matthew Gracia
Matthew hopes to contribute to discussion within scholarship of the Ancient Near East on the study of the Mitanni state, a polity in Upper Mesopotamia that attained international power during the second millennium BCE. He proposes to elucidate one, fairly restricted aspect of the larger question regarding the Mitannian system of governance by comparing recently published information on palatial administrative architecture from a site in the Mitanni heartland, Tell Brak, with the much more extensively documented peripheral sites of Alalakh and Nuzi. Through this cross-comparative study of the three administrative […]
Hector Vivero
The 2000 presidential election ended seventy one years of Institutional Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario Instituiconal, PRI) government in Mexico. Faced with new political circumstances, the institutions created by the perfect dictatorship were forced to adapt to the Mexican Transition to Democracy. The purpose of this project is to investigate the responses of the National Teachers Union (Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educacion, SNTE), formerly one of the most important strongholds for PRI domination. Since the democratic transition involved a decentralization of responsibilities to state and local authorities now governed […]
Mai-Ling Garcia
The family is often considered a primary source of emotional support and an institutional constant amidst every day challenges. For military personnel, the circumstances of every day life are more unpredictable, more dangerous, and further complicated by the intensive debate surrounding military duties and functions. Military families are intimately intertwined with the institution, but are not bound to the military in the same fashion as its personnel. What is the role of families in the military? This summer, Mai-Ling will conduct ethnographic research at the Marine Corps Base in Twentynine […]
Michael Uy
The harmonic and practical foundations for the performance of Western Classical music were laid during the Baroque period (c.1600c.1750). However, little is known about how viola players improvised their parts when playing music written only for a trio, such as two violins and a cello. The main hypothesis is that these musicians were improvising harmonies derived from figures written by the composer above the bass line. Michael will first spend his summer in intensive training on the Baroque viola, in addition to mastering the rules and principles of figured bass. […]
Nika Cyrus
Folate deficiency still remains as the primary culprit for childhood mortality, and a major cause of atherosclerosis and cancer. Yet, we lack a precise method for determination of the long-term folate status of patients. The objective of Nikas project is to develop a more accurate method of quantifying long-term folate status through elucidation of Red Cell Folate kinetics. It is assumed that Red Cell folate (RCF) remains constant in the circulation; nevertheless, erythrocytes are capable of specific uptake of folate, suggesting that RCF is dynamic. Nika will perform experiments in […]
Sharon Tang-Quan
In 1995, 11 million British stayed home on six Sunday evenings to watch the BBC mini-series of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. In the last decade, over a dozen adaptations of Austen’s novels have become films, and four more are forthcoming in 2006. How do these adaptations communicate 19th-century ideas and themes in a form/media not yet imagined in Austen’s time? Austen is famous for her style and narrative authority; the transformation or even destruction of her narrative voice in the conversion of novel to film is thus of concern. […]
Edina Bohanec
Contemporary nonviolent movements of Muslim youth around the world are often neglected in the western media and deserve more scholarly attention. Emerging in the affluent urban centers of Egypt, Life Makers is an example of such a movement. The group was spearheaded nearly a decade ago by a charismatic and popular leader, Amr Khaled, through his television programs, lectures, tapes, and speeches. Edina will travel to Egypt this summer to look at Life Makers development from a group of youth following Khaleds teachings, to an international nongovernmental organization and now […]
Sarah Stone
My honors thesis in Rhetoric will explore the poetics of gender in the work of poet Elizabeth Bishop. While a number of critics began to address the effects of her gender on her poetry in the 1993 anthology Elizabeth Bishop: The Geography of Gender, scholarship on the subject has since waned. I will offer a reading of the techniques Bishop employs to communicate her vexed relationship to gender that is informed by the most recent scholarship on the relationship between gender and literary form, including the conceptualization of gender identity […]
Abby Stein
Shrouded in mystique and controversy, the U.S. development of belly dance remains tied to appropriation, orientalism and popular entertainment. Abby Stein’s written thesis will examine the dance phenomenon within the context of 20th and 21st century American culture and values. Through a survey of existing scholarship, interviews with influential belly dance artists, firsthand training experience, and analysis of video and live performance and instruction, Abby will analyze how Western thought has adopted and transformed this Middle Eastern tradition. She will attempt to explain the development of the dance forms many […]