Humanities Center Student Research Partnerships Summer 2012
Adriana Estill (English) and Mariveliz Ortiz will examine advertisements and newspaper reviews and columns on Latina film stars Dolores del Río and Lupe Velez. They will be working to finish an article that examines the growing national power of films and movie studios to construct understandings of Latina beauty and looks into how different audiences navigated these images (1920-1935). Co-Sponsored with VIZ
Fred Hagstrom (Art) and Brooke Granowski will complete an artist’s book about the Bikini Island bomb test in 1946. As Fred and Brooke work together on this project, Brooke will be learning skills in silk screen printing, binding and all that it takes to put together a complex book project. Co-Sponsored with VIZ
Clara Hardy (Classics) will have two SRAs this summer: Mellisa Udhayananondh and Emma Brobeck. They will work together to complete an article that emerged not only out of Clara’s research interests, but also out of one of her courses. The article is tentatively titled, “”Pudor, Liberalitas and Amicitia: Blocking Forces and Economics in Terence’s Adelphoe.”
Michael McNally (Religion) and Henry Neuwirth will be updating and adding another case study to Michael’s website on Native American Religious Freedom and law issues, www.nativereligion.org that is under the aegis of the Pluralism Project at Harvard. The website features student authored, McNally-edited case studies of contested Native sacred spaces, religious freedom issues in prisons, schools, military, and other public institutions, and repatriation matters.
Nikki Melville (Music) will work with Nada Batu to conceptualize an interdisciplinary concert of piano music with student collaborators in dance, film, visual imagery, computer effects, poetry and art. The concert will be part of the Visuality Conference in Fall, 2012. Co-Sponsored with VIZ.
Victoria Morse (History) and Nicole Hamilton plan to collaborate on a research project that examines the construction of space in medieval Italian chronicles, maps, frescos and other graphic representations. They will spend this summer compiling a visual archive of maps and other representations of space, identifying chronicles and other textual sources, and doing test analyses of selected groups of sources.
Melinda Russell (Music) will work with Canaan West, investigating the local dimensions of the 1960s folk music revival chiefly through interviews with musicians, club owners and participants, and through examination of archival materials such as articles and advertisements. They will be working in archives held at the Star Tribune, Minnesota Daily, and Minnesota Historical Society.
Thabiti Willis (History) and Eli Adelman will work together on a project focused around Muslim reform movements in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century West Africa, with particular emphasis on the life, jihad, and legacy of the scholar Uthman dan Fodio. The work is part of Thabiti’s broader project that uses oral and written sources to study the spread of Islam during this era, especially the rise of warrior affiliation with Islam.