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Undergraduate Humanities Forum
Research Fellows,
Daniel A. Fein, College '10; Music, Anthropology, Psychology
Loyalty vs. Morality: Exploring Impartial Judgments in the Moral Domain
A puzzling feature of human nature is third party moral condemnation – people care about interactions in which they have no personal stake and they desire that others be punished for their role in these interactions. Only a small handful of studies have looked at moralistic punishment in situations in which the perpetrator is a member of the judge’s in-group. Measurements of punishment in these situations can be seen as an index of impartiality, or the degree to which judges adhere to moral principles regardless of the social category of those involved in the act. I will explore the scope, consequences, and portrayal of acts of loyalty and impartiality throughout history and art, and will examine their potential adaptive values.
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Meredith R. Aska McBride, College '10; Music
Lies My Grandma Told Me: Reinventing Yiddishkeit
Through Hip Hop
In the past 15 years, Jewish hip hop artists making hip hop about the Jewish experience in the United States have become increasingly common within both the Jewish and mainstream musical communities. Several movements attempting to reclaim Yiddish identity have flourished within the Ashkenazi Jewish community over the past 40 years, and each has its characteristic style of Afrodiasporic-influenced music. My project will investigate why hip hop is the genre of choice for young Jews exploring their ethnoreligious identity and how notions of authenticity, cultural memory, imagination and nostalgia; anxieties about masculinity; and Jewish performances of nonwhite racial identity operate within this music. I will be looking at several case studies (Matisyahu, the MC SoCalled, and the label J-Dub) within the context of a larger discussion about the implications of the visions of the contemporary Jewish-American experience put forth by these artists within their work.
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Joshua B. Bennett, College '10; Africana Studies, English
Disfruta
My research project is interested in the presence of the disabled character as metaphor within post-Emancipation era African American literature, art and music. Through the use of postmodern literary theory, I offer radical re-readings of the meaning and broader symbolic significance of the disabled body in these various forms of cultural production. My goal is to challenge traditional, ableist readings of these characters that not only buy into problematic notions of human subjectivity, but that also limit our potential as readers to gain a deeper understanding of these texts as a whole.
Eric Augenbraun, College '10; History, Africana Studies
Tuskegee in Philadelphia: The Ideological and Institutional Foundations of Leon Sullivan's Opportunities Industrialization Centers
In January of 1964, Rev. Leon Howard Sullivan, minister at the historic Zion Baptist Church and well-known civil rights advocate, hosted the grand opening of his startup job training and adult education center (not unlike Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee Institute of 50 years earlier) in an abandoned North Philadelphia police station. Touted by some as the first black-run program of its kind, the Opportunities Industrialization Center (OIC) was born amidst the raging Civil Rights struggle and at the dawn of both the Black Power era and President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty. The OIC was Sullivan’s own answer to the pressing questions of urban poverty and unemployment. With federal and foundation funding, OIC within its first ten years grew into a national operation with branches in cities across the country. How was OIC's relationship to its earliest and most significant sources of funding influenced by common conceptions about the roots of post-war urban poverty, and how did OIC reshape those views? In what ways was OIC an expression of the politics of corporate Black Power to which Sullivan was an early adherent, and where did Sullivan and his political thought stand in relation to the emergent Black Power era?
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Daria Barannik, College '10; International Relations
In Search of "the Russian Path": Russian Attitudes toward the West in an Era of Global Economic Crisis
Today’s economic crisis has exposed the fragility of the Russian economy and will cause living standards to plummet, eliminating most of the benefits Russians view as by-products of the efforts of a paternalistic state. What effects will this have on the relations of ordinary citizens to the West and to the Kremlin? Will the burgeoning middle class, significantly threatened by the downturn, exhibit economic initiative and a new desire for increased interconnectedness with the West? Or, discontent with globalization, will it recoil from modernization and continue its tradition of reliance on a strong state to guide the economy? A discontent with cosmopolitanism and a desire to preserve a unique Russian identity may signal the onset of new tensions along ethnic, economic, and political boundaries – tensions that will divide individuals despite the global trend toward interconnectedness. Will the “end of capitalism” further erode weak ideological, economic. and social connections between Russians and the Western world?
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Brandon J. Bloch, College '11; History, Math
Local Conflict, Global Intervention: The Origins of United Nations Peacekeeping
United Nations peacekeeping operations are one the organization’s most recognizable achievements toward its primary purpose, “the maintenance of international peace and security.” But after sixty years we often lose sight of the fundamental questions raised by the very notion of peacekeeping. Does the international community have a role to play in local conflicts? If so, on what grounds are the rules and parameters for such operations to be set? What is the ultimate purpose of a peacekeeping mission: only to stop the immediate fighting, or to serve as an instrument in stabilizing the long-term situation? And how can states justify endangering their own citizens in faraway conflicts? My project will focus on the initial negotiations that created two of the earliest peacekeeping missions—the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization in 1948 and the United Nations Emergency Force in 1956. By evaluating the ideological and geopolitical underpinnings of these early cases, I hope to understand how U.N. diplomats arrived at a concept which, though seemingly unlikely, has become an important instrument of the international security system.
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Sophie Cavoulacos, College '10; History, Art History
American Cultural Diplomacy in Western Europe in the Early Cold War
I am looking at Cold War cultural diplomacy, the use of arts and culture in American Cold War strategies. I am focusing on the Congress for Cultural Freedom, which was a network of Western European intellectuals and publications established in 1950. In 1964, it was exposed that the CIA had been backing the entire operation, channeling funds through charitable foundations.In looking at the CCF and the CIA scandal that led to its demise in 1967, I am hoping to especially look at the interaction between politics and intellectuals in the Western European chapters and journals of the CCF, but also in the post-war political landscape of the United States.
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Stephanie B. Engelhard, College '10; History, German
The Devil Lives in East Germany: The June 17, 1953 Uprising, Walter Ulbricht, the German Democratic Republic, and the Soviet Union
The June 17, 1953 Uprising was a date that fundamentally altered the experience of East Germans living in the German Democratic Republic. The Uprising was the first of its kind in the Eastern Bloc and represented a crisis of legitimacy within both the East German government and also within the Kremlin itself. The Uprising also exposed the Socialist Unity Party's (SED) lack of popular support. June 17, then, was much more than a workers' uprising; it was a failed revolution. At the same time that June 17 became a symbol in West Germany for their East German counterparts' desire for freedom, it also became a tool for the then-current General Secretary of the SED, Walter Ulbricht, not only to solidify his weakening power over the GDR, but also to transform the GDR into the East German state of popular memory, that of a totalitarian regime built on violent oppression and fear. In addition to studying Ulbricht's manipulation of the events surrounding June 17, this study will also focus on the reactions to June 17 in Moscow and how the new Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and Walter Ulbricht agreed and disagreed over the course socialism should take in East Germany.
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Julia R. Enyart, College '10; International Relations, French
Baguettes and Baklava: The Algerian Frenchman and the Role of Transnationalism
In June of 2000, the President of Algeria, Abdelaziz Bouteflika,
implored France to call the Algerian War of Independence by name. In
response, President Chirac refused, acknowledging the war as a mere‘rebellion’ of Algerian nationalists against French Algeria. Indeed,
this North African country gained independence more than four decades
ago, and yet a tainted colonial bond still remains. Despite this
strain on Franco-Algerian relations, the Algerian population in France
continued to grow, reaching as many as 1.5 million men, women, and
children, by the mid-1990s. How does transnationalism, as developed
and practiced by Algerians in France, behave with the French
nation-state and the Era of Internationalism unfolding in Europe? Does
transnationalism truly destroy the nation-state framework? Does a
universalist ideology of citizenship travel with an immigrant wherever
they go? Or does transnationalism stem from too little- or too much-
democratization?
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Jonathan M. Howard, College '10; African Studies, English
The Atlantic Unimaginary: Sitting at the Dock of the Bay
National Anthems are for citizens. What song is there for men with no country? Otis Redding roamed 2,000 miles to make the dock his home. There he sang a song that might qualify, claiming no flag except the sails of the ships rolling in and away again. The sea overlooked by Otis’s dock is marked space of liminality. It is here that all of man’s constructions, having been so thoroughly naturalized, come to a startling and abrupt end. Here, man is faced with the world, so unlike that which he imagines for himself, for there is not a single flag, constitution, or anthem. Man’s encounter with this oceanic space is generally of two sorts. Those who knit the flag peer into the sea just enough to see their civilization reflected in it. Those who picked the cotton for its fabric conceive a different, more rigorous use of the sea. It was while sitting on the dock of the Chesapeake Bay and gazing at “those beautiful vessels, robed in purest white,” that Douglas concluded his “sufferings on this plantation seem now like a dream rather than a stern reality.” Thus, Douglas and Otis turn to the sea as those in Plato’s cave turn from the imaginary to the real—to flow past and un-imagine the boundaries that preclude them from complete access to humanity. My project, then, will examine the re-visitation, re-imagination, and re-appropriation of the ship and the space of the Atlantic more broadly as vehicles for identity construction in African Diasporic cultural production.
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Ryan A. Leonard, College '10; East Asian Languages & Civilizations
Investigating China's Medical Machine: Professional Interactions in the Guangzhou Institute of Respiratory Diseases
China's current bifurcated medical system is the product of a risky government-mandated experiment, which continues to place practitioners of Western biomedicine and traditional Chinese medicine side by side. Following the economic reforms that began in 1978, a free market model replaced China's socialized medical system and subsequently led to widespread health inequity. In January 2008, Beijing announced an ambitious but ill-defined plan to bring universal health care coverage and universal access to primary care to China's 1.33 billion citizens. In a country with such a textured, dynamic medical tradition, what lies ahead for urban health professionals (China's medical elite) and what do they think about the Chinese government's latest attempt at medical reform? This study is based on three months of field research at the Guangzhou Institute of Respiratory Diseases, a tertiary medical institute that was at the forefront of the SARS epidemic in 2003.
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Bob Ma, Wharton '10; Marketing
Slum Tourism: A Trip into the Controversy
Slum tourism is a young industry founded just over a decade ago, but
it has since become one of the most controversial. It involves
Westerners paying money to see the filth of urban slums, and the
sordid condition of some of the world's poorest. Is this moral? Do
Western tourists self-enhance by seeing the condition of the poor? Are
there selfish reasons behind why so many Westerners pay thousands of
dollars every year to tour or volunteer in developing countries? And
more importantly, how do the slum dwellers feel about being a "zoo
animal"? Understanding the slum tourism industry provides us insight
into the psychological connection between the West and developing
countries.
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Daniella N. Mak, College '10; History (Diplomatic), African Studies
Reconstructing "Home" and "Identity:" Refugees, Asylum Workers, and Migrant Workers in Angola
I am interested in comparing the reintegration process of (1) Angolans who have repatriated from the neighboring states of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Namibia, South Africa, and Botswana, and (2) of Congolese who have come to Angola. I wish to explore the psychosocial shifts in “home,” “identity,” and “citizenship” for refugees, asylum workers, and migrant workers from post-1975, when 27 years of civil war ended, to the present. This question is personal not only from encounters with Congolese migrants in Angola summer 2008, but also because of its links to identity and relocation that are deeply tied to my own family history and troubles with cultural identity. In opening this dialogue, I hope to promote conflict resolution for civil war refugees, asylum workers, and migrant workers to work towards social cohesion and democratization in the post-civil war period.
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Emily E. Mullin, College '11; English, Theatre
Classicism as a National Identity:? The Past and Present in Modern
Greek Theatre
Can we see a portrait of Modern Greece in the way they present their classical heritage? This study examines Greece’s connection to its past by looking at modern reproductions of classical Greek plays. Greece holds the memories of one of the greatest civilizations in western history, and the foundations of our western theatre. Today, it has a place in the European Union, but now that place is being called into question by the rising sense of nationalism that has pervaded the country since the economic crisis. In the light of the European Union, and the globalization of identities, how does Greece’s connection to its past influence its nationalism? Has classical history remained a part of the Greek national identity?
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Mario J. Peia, College '10; Philosophy, Politics & Economics, Psychology
Peer-to-Peer Communities of Virtual Connection: New Paradigm for Intellectual Property
A notable vehicle of social interaction today takes the form of file
sharing. While analysis of file sharing tends to focus on intellectual
property concerns and economic rights, my purpose is to consider the
underlying community that has emerged through this vehicle.
Communities traditionally develop around religion, nationality, and so
on; file sharing “communities” develop around interests. Simple web
searches reveal a plethora of information, including blogs, discussion
forums and personal postings about interests. Such community
connectivity, however, has collided head-on with traditional
assumptions about intellectual property. The goal of this project is
to use the digital communities as input in developing a new paradigm
for intellectual property, one that will build upon and leverage
community connections instead of trying to destroy them.
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Benjamin F. Van Buren, College '12
The Cognition Behind Appreciation
I'm planning on looking at psychological theories that have been used to explain
human aesthetics. I am most interested in the application of cognitive
psychology to understanding the place of art in the human mind. That
being said, I'll be reading a lot of authors who draw from
evolutionary psychology, neuroscience, and behavioral psychology. The
project is meant to investigate two questions: First, to what extent
is art a cultural construction, and to what extent is it innate?
Second, can one study a person's aesthetics (inherently subjective
phenomena) empirically, or is this field totally reject scientific
theories?
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Aro Velmet, College '10; History
40 Years is Enough: The Development of May 68 Mythology in France
“Beneath the pavement, the beach!” encapsulates the popular understanding of the French May riots of 1968. The students came, they saw, they conquered, had lots of sex in the meanwhile and were finally put back in their place by the swift hand of the Gaullist government – or so the story goes. This study looks at commemorations of the largest general strike in French history to understand how a significant socio-political rebellion was transformed into a memory of a joyous month-long party on the streets of Paris. Focusing on the 10-year anniversaries of 68, this study looks at mass media representations of May and argues that subsequent political changes and elite interests were key in shaping the collective memory of May.
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Jessica Yu, College '10; English
Threading the Dinges: Samuel Beckett's Literature of Inexistence
Perhaps no other body of literature is less affirmative than Samuel Beckett's. The seven novels and shorter prose written over his lifetime construct an image of an existence that, in the words of critic Georg Lukas, is the "most fundamental pathological debasement of man.” In Beckett’s trilogy – Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnameable – three brands of nihilism fold under the spiritual and intellectual autobiography of a single man. In each, there is a movement towards absence, a radicalism that precludes guidelines. This project seeks to investigate the threads of ‘subtraction’ and ‘inexistence’ in Beckett’s fiction, examining within the incontinent flux that is his language: what precisely does means to live in a void; why is birth the first death; and where is the novelistic climax if the beginning never came?
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