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Undergraduate Fellows
Priya Agarwal
Rajiv Bhagat
Li Chen
Janet Comenos
Sheira Feuerstein
Jordan Greenwald
Alice Hickey
Jason Nagata
Rachel Omansky
Alicia Puglionesi
David Reinecke
David Rimoch
Curtis Roche
Serena Stein
Melissa Teixeira
Samuel (Ari) Wisch
Undergraduate Humanities Forum Mellon Research Fellows, 2007–2008
Priya Agarwal
College '08, History, Economics
The Peshawar Incident and the Kanpur Riots: Two Textbook Cases
of Hindu-Muslim Unity
This history thesis will examine the 1931 Kanpur Riots as it is presented in primary source material and as part of a larger story of Hindu-Muslim relations featured in Indian high school textbooks. To date, no secondary narrative of the Kanpur Riots exists- only the official (British) Government and (Indian) Nationalist reports have attempted to reconstruct a chronology of the actual events and causes of the disturbance. Because of significant disagreement between the two accounts, a substantial portion of this paper will be devoted to constructing a secondary narrative while a subsequent analysis will explore the role of historical consciousness in creating such a narrative.
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Rajiv Bhagat
College '09, South Asia Studies, English
Origins of Hindu-Muslim Communal Antagonism and Harmony
in Gujarat, India
The 2002 riots in my family’s state of Gujarat were not the origins,
but merely the culminations of Hindu-Muslim Communalism that had plagued
both the state and the larger Indian subcontinent for several hundred
years, far before partition in 1947. The primary goal of my project is
to first isolate and uncover the origins of Hindu-Muslim community antagonism
and conversely the origins of Hindu-Muslim peaceful coexistence in the
history of Gujarat and the larger Indian subcontinent. I then plan to
adapt this historical research to fit into my peace education program
curriculum for Hindu and Muslim youth in the city of Rajkot in Gujarat,
to help improve current deteriorating relations between the two communities.
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Li Chen
College and Wharton '09, East Asian Studies, Finance
The Formation, Transformation and Impact of the Thought of “Inheritors of the Orthodox Civilization” in East Asia from the
Mid 1640’s to Late 1860’s
Ancient Chinese civilization had long been a cultural resource for her neighboring states. Nevertheless, in the year of 1644, China fell to the conquest of the Manchus. Nothing could be more shocking and overwhelming than this to those neighbors of China. They had been learning the Chinese ways for years. Many of their cultural traditions had originated from China. Now the gorgeous cultural origin was dead, was the Chinese way just simply archaic and thus no longer applicable, or had the Chinese themselves lost the original wisdom and splendor of their ancestors? If the second argument holds, who should be responsible and legitimate for inheriting the orthodox Chinese civilization? And what role did the thought of “Inheritors” play in the subsequent eras of those countries?
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Janet Comenos
College '08, English
The Origins of American Fascism, in Relation to John Crowe Ransom
and the KKK
Although Fascism is generally viewed as existing solely in Italy under Mussolini’s rule, its origins are somewhat unclear. It can be disputed that fascist thought began in the United States, under the umbrella of a literary group of conservative nationalists called the Southern Agrarians. In particular, John Crowe Ransom, most well-known for developing the New Criticism, retained familial and personal roots in fascist circles. Did Ransom and his colleagues encourage fascism in America and abroad? If so, how can his writings support the disturbing theory that fascism really began in America?
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Sheira Feuerstein
College '08, English
Suggestions for Shakespeare: The Audacious Alterations to 19th Century Shakespearean Promptbooks
Nineteenth century promptbooks of Hamlet reveal cuts, alterations and added stage directions that affect the play’s surface plot and core thematic implications, dramatically altering the quartos and first folio, undermining the play’s origins. In the last scene alone, Fortinbras’ takeover is completely ousted and stage directions grant Francisco a significant – albeit silent – role in Hamlet’s downfall. What can we make of these alterations? How and why did Hamlet and others of Shakespeare’s works evolve from their origins to their 19th century descendents? In performance, text can become a jumping point for the artistic interpretations that actors and directors innovate to satisfy audience expectations and desires. 19th Century criticism, promptbooks and playbills reveal a revamping of the canonized Bard that is still pattern in contemporary adaptations.
Jordan Greenwald
College '08, French, Comp Lit
“A Cult of the Self”: Dandyism and the Origins of Gay Identity
In the contemporary world, “sexual orientation” has become an axiomatic facet of one’s individual identity. If we agree with queer theory’s dating of the alleged origin of “sexual identity” as we know it at the end of the nineteenth century, what insight can we gain from an analysis of a concomitant cultural emergence, the practice of dandyism? With particular attention to Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890), along with the works of French writers such as Charles Baudelaire, I intend to examine the various relationships which bind together the aestheticized lifestyle of the dandy with the notion of “the” homosexual as a distinct type of individual. A study of this incipient moment of gay identity will, in all hope, provide us with new ways of understanding the imbrications of sexuality, selfhood, and material culture in our consumerist age.
Alice Hickey
College '08, Diplomatic History
William A. Rich and the American Field Service: An Inquiry into the Social Consciousness of the World War II Generation
The broad focus of my research is the role of the American Field Service (AFS), a volunteer ambulance driver’s organization during World War Two. I am exploring the role of volunteers in war through the experience of one group of the AFS, “D” platoon. My grandfather, William A. Rich, served with the AFS in “D” platoon from its creation September 1942 until it disbanded in December 1945. The platoon was attached to British armies in North Africa, the Middle East, Italy, Holland, Germany, and finally India. While overseas, he wrote over 600 letters, half to his immediate family, and half to his girlfriend of the time. The breadth of his experiences and the fact that he was a volunteer for the entirety of the war are of special interest.
Jason Nagata
College '07, Health & Societies, Biological Basis of Behavior
Beliefs, Practices, and Sanitation of Food and Health in
Santiago Atilan, Guatemala
This study aims at illuminating how the Tz’tujil Maya of Santiago Atitlán, Guatemala, associate food with health. Understanding the underlying beliefs that inform practices related to food preparation can lead to a fuller comprehension of the culture of the Tz’tujil Maya. Specific aims include infant malnutrition causes, breastfeeding beliefs and practices, drinking water, and Coca-Colonization, the phenomenon where nutrient-poor processed foods and drinks such as Coca Cola are introduced into people’s diets, leading to new health problems in the region. This study will investigate the Tz’tujil Mayan views of food and health through participant observation from March 2-11 and 50 semi-structured interviews in June through July, 2007.
Rachel Omansky
College '08, European History
The Sixteenth Century Origins of Scottish National Identity: Kirk, Queen, Feud and Factionalism and the 1565 Chaseabout Raid
The mid-sixteenth century witnessed religious and political upheaval across much of Western Europe, particularly in the British Isles. In 1565, a good portion of the Scottish nobility rebelled against their sovereign, Mary Queen of Scots. The roles played and decisions made by the nobles and other prominent figures on both sides of this conflict, known as the Chaseabout Raid, provide important insights concerning the converging issues of feuding, factionalism, religion and dynastic and land claims in Scotland. Using this incident, I will offer new conclusions regarding the origins of the Scottish kirk and national identity, the rise of the modern notions of loyalty and allegiance, and the construction of the modern
Scottish state.
Alicia Puglionesi
College '09, English, Cognitive Science
“Incidents in the life”: Crises of selfhood in 19th century autobiography
The very act of writing entails a question: “Who am I, the writer?” Following on its tail are a slew of other conundrums –“What made me who I am?” “How do I want to represent myself?” and, of great interest to philosophers and self-help gurus alike, “Can I change?” The annals of Western thought are rife with debate over the issues of selfhood and self-development, but we can often gain a more revealing perspective from firsthand (or purportedly firsthand) accounts. This project will explore the status of the self-concept in 19th century autobiography and memoir: how did authors answer the question of their own intellectual origins, and how did their answers reflect the same insecurities that pervade modern attempts to constitute a unique “self”?
David Reinecke
College '09, Science, Technology, and Society
George Clinton, Kraftwerk, and a Sequencer to keep them company: The Origins of Techno and House
When asked to narrativize the origins of techno, genre pioneer Derrick May remarked, “It’s like George Clinton and Kraftwerk are stuck in an elevator with only a sequencer to keep them company.” What May is suggesting is that techno is the result of a technical mediation between American funk music (George Clinton’s P-Funk) and German synthesized pop (Kraftwerk) by a sequencer, a music technology used primarily to trigger musical events at a fixed rate. Using May’s quote as a point of departure, this study explores the technical, conceptual, and social practices that both genres, funk and early synthesized pop, employed to produce music and their historical synthesis as the foundations for the new genres of techno and house music in the 1980’s.
David Rimoch
College '08, Intellectual History
The Affair or the State: Intellectuals, the Press, and the Dreyfus Affair
The Dreyfus Affair was a catalyst for the political differences that dominated 19th century Europe. For the Dreyfusards the State had to stand as the enforcer of individual rights. Its legitimacy came from a humanitarian tradition dating back to the Declaration of the Rights of Man. The anti-Dreyfusard camp, on the other hand, found its outmost sense of legitimacy in the notion of general interests far and above the individual’s plight for particulars. In this vision the State embodied a higher will concerned with maintaining the integrity and respectability of its institutions. How did these notions of State power and responsibility penetrate the intellectual debates during a politically charged period in French history?
Curtis Roche
College '08, Classical Studies
“I’ll burn down the school”: Aristophanic Comedy and
the Trial of Socrates
In 399 BCE, an Athenian jury responded to Socrates’ incendiary philosophy by sentencing him to death on trumped up charges of impiety and atheism. The philosopher’s demise was prefigured roughly 20 years earlier in Aristophanes’ comedy, “Clouds”. The play ends when Strepsiades, a clownish rustic, proclaims Socrates evil and burns down his school. Was Aristophanes encouraging Athens to eliminate the self-professed gadfly, or was he warning Socrates to beware of public scorn? What were the origins of Aristophanes’ “Clouds”?
Serena Stein
College '09, Anthropology, Comparative Literature
Rewriting Origins: Indigenous Authors, Ethno-regenesis and the Rise
of Contemporary Aboriginal Identity in Argentina
While Argentina’s cultural narratives have often characterized indigenous peoples as phantoms of the past, recent decades have seen aboriginal individuals step forward to advocate distinct, contemporary identities. Using ethnographic accounts, political manifestos, autobiographies and poetry, this project probes the origins from which the present moment of indigenous reemergence, social organization and mobilization of identity has occurred, with specific interest in the key players who have taken into their hands the articulation of identity, countering past projections of indigenousness and questions of authenticity.In a globalizing world, how does indigenous identity maintain relevance, and how might the rise of transnational indigenous organizations complicate its fashioning? While Origin Mythologies have been bequeathed throughout generations, how do recently-constructed narratives portray the origin of future indigenism in Latin America?
Melissa Teixeira
College '08, History, Economic History
Caught on the Periphery: Portuguese Neutrality during World
War II and Anglo-American Negotiations with Salazar
World War II historiography has devoted much attention to the regimes of Vichy France, Nazi Germany, Mussolini’s Italy, and Franco’s Spain but often places António de Oliveira Salazar’s dictatorship in Portugal on the periphery of the crisis. Portugal’s pivotal geographic position on the Atlantic and her supply of Wolfram made her vulnerable to pressures from the warring powers for strategic concessions. Yet despite Salazar’s policy of strict neutrality and arduous negotiations, Portugal eventually granted the Allied Powers’ demands. This study intends to analyze Anglo-American negotiations with Salazar to determine how he balanced neutrality with Allied demands or whether he merely became a pawn for Anglo-American strategy. Salazar’s reactions to foreign pressures will serve to expose unexamined aspects of Portugal’s neutrality and reconsider the assumptions that exist about Salazar and his regime during the Estado Novo.
Samuel (Ari) Wisch
College '08, History
British Counterinsurgency Strategy: The 1936-1939 Arab Revolt
in Palestine
This study examines British counterinsurgency strategy in the 1936-1939 Arab Revolt in Palestine. Throughout the first half of the 20th Century, Britain faced a number of revolts and uprisings throughout the Empire. One such uprising, the 1936-1939 Arab Revolt in Palestine, was a crucial event in the history of the British Mandate and has been compared to the more recent First and Second Palestinian Intifadas. What counterinsurgency strategies were employed by the British and how effective were they? What was the strategy developed by the British military officer Orde Wingate, and what role did his joint British-Jewish Special Night Squads play in combating the insurgency? How can we relate the 1936-1939 Arab Revolt to the broader history of British counterinsurgency across the Empire in the interwar period?