Five HFA Graduate Students Use Summer Research Grants to Work on Dissertations
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Five graduate students were selected to receive $3,000 from the College of Humanities and Fine Arts as part of its inaugural Summer Research Award program. The awards were intended to support graduate students in the beginning stages of writing their dissertations.
Evgeniia Trufanova in the MA+PhD German and Scandinavian Studies program worked on the first chapter of her dissertation, “Wir haben lange geschwiegen: Women-Centered Collective Filmmaking Practices in Germany.” In this chapter, Trufanova explores the emergence of the collective mode of filmmaking among women in the 1970s and the 1980s in West Germany and establishes collectivity as an alternative to the mainstream form of film production for these decades. Her work this summer included analyzing archival sources such as manifestos, journal articles, press releases, and interviews with filmmakers.
Thomas Morrison in the Department of Philosophy furthered his research on philosophical issues about the metaphysics and epistemology of natural kinds; the differences and similarities between the social, physical, and life sciences; and issues about the possibility of reduction of higher-level sciences to lower-level sciences.
Alejandro Beas Murillo in the Department of English worked on the first chapter of his dissertation analyzing forms of Afro-Caribbean resistance, the legacies of marronage, and kinship in two texts by Dionne Brand.
Giovanny Salas Torres in the Spanish and Portuguese program worked on his dissertation, “Memories of Proust in Latin American literature: Art, Experience, and Sensibility,” which built on both the archival research he had conducted over the last two years.
Timothy Ong in the Department of English worked on his dissertation prospectus, which outlines his research on U.S. military imperialism and its intimate link with militarized ecologies in the Asia-Pacific region. His work included assembling the archive from which he drew his analysis of U.S. imperial formation and the militarized logics of planetary life management focused on the Asia-Pacific region. Through the prospectus, Ong articulated the theoretical and methodological foundation for his dissertation that makes visible the connections between U.S. imperialism and its complicity in speeding up ecological collapse through militarization.
The Summer Research Awards program was created to complement the summer dissertation fellowships awarded by the Graduate School.