Conference Abstracts
“Writing the Hard Truth: Post-9/11 Latinx Speculative Fiction”
Antonia Aguilar Cole, Bryn Mawr College ‘20
9:00 AM English and Intertextuality
Kohlberg 115
If they are going to fall, hari-kari, they will fall on themselves. - Giannina Braschi
What is the meaning of Empire, and when does it fall? On September 11, 2001, the world stopped to watch two-hijacked planes be flown, one after the other, into the sides of the previously untouchable US imaginary. This catastrophic moment was swiftly followed by a violent shift in US foreign policy and the launch of the “War on Terror,” a neo-imperialist global campaign to combat domestic and international terrorism, which has long been written as a moment of shock and grief for the US people. Much of the fiction that has traditionally been termed post-9/11 literature is written by white male authors and relies heavily on the apocalyptic nature of the attacks, but it falls into narcissistic guilt and despair. However, Giannina Braschi’s The United States of Banana, a cross-genre Latinx novel of philosophical fiction, intentionally confronts the ultra-patriotic, self-possessed aftermath of September 11th by turning notions a critical eye on and performing an autopsy on the nation’s remains. I argue that Braschi’s novel in both content and form provides readers with a more comprehensive understanding of crime and violence endorsed by the state and the ever-troubling question of defining the terrorist and the liberator. This US Puerto Rican text, which is part of a growing field of Latinx speculative fiction, is prophetic in its economic-socio-political knowledge of the effects of 9/11 on immigrant communities and communities of color as militarization and surveillance have increasingly become part of the US norm. This talk, as part of my larger project’s analysis of the matrix of US empire, aims to draw connections between state violence as enacted against black and brown communities in the US and around the world. MMUF, which aims to bring scholars of color together and into the ivy tower, is disrupting imperial power much in the same way that the fiction, poetry, and literary theory I explore in my project is contesting US Empire.
“Masked Spellbook: Hauntological Factors in a Literary-Spiritual Engagement with Zong!”
Lourdes Taylor, Haverford College ‘21
9:00 AM English and Intertextuality
Kohlberg 115
Traveling from the coast of West Africa to Jamaica, the captains aboard the Zong slave ship committed what is now known as the Zong massacre in 1781. At least 130 African slaves were drowned in the Atlantic ocean to secure an insurance return upon the ship’s return to Britain rather than pay for the “natural” deaths that had been occurring, the loss of cargo. The insurance claim was taken to court and became the Gregson vs. Gilbert case. This sole legal document is the chief source material for Marlene NourbSe Philip’s collection of poetry Zong!, as told to her by Adamu Setaey Boateng. In the pursuit of recognizing the re-manifestations of American slavery in the modern day, my essay investigates the complexities and function of Zong! as a work that draws its readers into the work of dismantling slavery. Published in 2008, Zong! resists being discussed in traditional academic and literary terms because Philip firmly believes in “not-telling” the story of the Zong massacre. The collection is known for its abstract nature, in many ways and instances refusing to take a legible form in order to combat the racist, sexist, and classist ideologies and practices that continue to tailor English language and literature. My essay attempts to provide a perspective of Zong! that engages it as a departure from traditionally structured poetic forms. My work discusses how the text, paratext, and unused language combine to create a work that is not intended to be read so much as it is intended to be used by those who engage with it. I will argue that Zong!, presenting no direct narrative or argument, becomes activated in the mind and voice of the (often frustrated) reader, conjuring, in a literary and spiritual sense, the narrative that died with murdered African slaves in the middle passage.
"A ‘Musical Terrarium:’ Examining Narratives of Black Violence and Trauma in Recitatif, ‘Long Black Song,’ and ‘Pantaloon in Black’”
Ashley Codner, University of Pennsylvania ‘21
9:00 AM English and Intertextuality
Kohlberg 115
Julia Kristeva’s “Word, Dialogue, and Novel” describes intertextuality as a conversation and exchange between texts of all mediums, naming three dimensions of textual space: the writing subject, the addressee, and the exterior texts that influence the author’s work. This paper will explore intertextuality on two fronts: first, by examining narratives of black violence and trauma in Toni Morrison’s Recitatif, Richard Wright’s “Long Black Song,” and William Faulkner’s “Pantaloon in Black.” An intertextual reading allows us to account for the context in which these stories—whose authors were separated by identity, readership, and time period—were written in order to grasp the socio-cultural implications that their messages contain. With these protocols enumerated, I will then integrate my knowledge of musical form and affect to demonstrate how a musical lens provides a more encompassing language with which to theorize how these authors approach their depictions of the black experience. Ultimately, I claim that the freedom of form and multiplicity that music embraces provides a more apt framework for measuring the varying degrees of success with which authors have rendered the black experience.
“The Optics of Mass Destruction: A Reexamination of the Violent Imperial Legacy of Alexander the Great as a descendant of Philip II of Macedon”
Jaylin Lugardo, Princeton University ‘20
9:00 AM Interdisciplinarity and Violence
Kohlberg 226
Scholars recognize Alexander the Great as the fourth-century BCE military prodigy and hegemon of Greece who amassed one of the largest empires the world has ever seen. He died a man with accomplishments that seemed so unique and unprecedented for ancient Greece at that time; the Macedonians, the peoples he conquered, and even the ancient historians who wrote about him, claimed his aggressive warfare and conquest was guided by a wholesome ‘pothos’ (“longing”) none of his contemporaries could attempt to match or understand.
Modern scholars of Alexander the Great challenge the concept of pothos (“longing”) that ancient scholars have used to summarize his internal drive to conquer, as the ancients used the ambiguity of the word to justify Alexander’s anger and total annihilation of cities when they denied him entry into their walls, such as the Battles of Tyre and Gaza during his campaigns. Modern scholars have attempted to desensationalize this potential ‘irrational’ characterization of Alexander by nesting their analyses deep into his battle strategies in order to better understand Alexander’s ambitions as a military leader. However, in limiting their analysis to Alexander’s battles, they neglect to address Alexander’s political and military prowess gained not only in his experience as hegemon of Greece but as the successor of the most powerful man of the mid-fourth century, his father Philip II.
This paper engages in a comparative analysis of the “optics” maintained by Philip II and Alexander the Great in the most decisive, violent, and destructive battles of their respective war campaigns in the fourth-century BCE. In juxtaposing the two, I explore how Alexander employs the skills of warfare and politics that his father used, namely the optics of mass destruction and annihilation, to establish dominance on their respective target audiences. This in turn makes Alexander’s violent tendencies and colonialist disposition not unprecedented, but rather manifestations of a political tactic passed down from his father, less renowned in history.
“Precarious Archives: The Role of Family Archivists surrounding the Rwandan Genocide”
Ruby Bantariza, Swarthmore College ‘20
9:00 AM Interdisciplinarity and Violence
Kohlberg 226
Transnational media representations of the 1994 Rwandan genocide have proliferated over the past fifteen years. Kalí Tal asserts in Worlds of Hurt, “personal trauma cannot be separated from the collective memory shaped by literary authors and filmmakers through and within which survivors seek forms of social recognition”. What would ensure the visibility of personal trauma within a larger framing of the Rwandan genocide? In my own experience, I concluded that my family photos, particularly photos in Uganda from the early 1960s to the late 1980s, reveal the most about personal trauma within the larger political context of Uganda at the time. In the case of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, analyzing family archives can be a means of establishing space for personal trauma while also examining the interconnectedness it has with collective and official processes of memorialization. I hope to investigate the significance of family archives surrounding the Rwandan genocide, as well as how archives influence the documentation of conflict, the significance of family archivists, and the relationship between family archives and post genocide reconciliation efforts.
“Carceral Reform or Technological Setback?: Analyzing Risk Based Assessment Tools and their Racially Disproportionate Repercussions”
Matthew Oakland, Princeton University ‘20
9:00 AM Interdisciplinarity and Violence
Kohlberg 226
Over the last several decades, the link between technology and the carceral state has strengthened, as evidenced by tools such as predictive policing software, among others. A new tool that is being touted as a reform for the carceral system by politicians and criminal justice advocates is that of risk-based assessment tools. These technological instruments use data from past criminal cases in order to isolate factors related to the likelihood of re-arrest, or recidivism, and thereby create an actuarial tool that can assess the risk of recidivism for future defendants. However, although these tools are being lauded for their objectivity, many scholars and criminologists have argued that such tools actually reify existing racial and class disparities within the carceral system. In my paper, I will argue that risk-based assessment tools are not a carceral reform, but in fact are a dangerous step towards a criminal justice system attached to technologies that make obscure or invisible racial discrimination. As such tools create a risk score for a defendant not based on their own particular circumstances and that of their case, but rather how close such a defendant resembles the statistical data isolated in creating the tool itself, a kind of “statistical” justice is being performed. This talk will begin to explore how, for communities of color, poor people, and other groups that have been historically marginalized, being compared to statistical data and actuarial profiles can have the effect of only reinforcing the existing disparities of the system; however, because the tools are based on “objective” data and determined factors, the language and ability to assert such tools are racially discriminatory is lost. Furthermore, a “ratchet” effect is produced, wherein the discriminatory data that goes into the tool only leads to even more deleterious discriminatory outputs and assumptions. As follows, this research is grounded through an interdisciplinary approach involving African American studies, Carceral studies, Sociology, and Actuarial studies, utilizing these disciplines in order to interrogate the assumptions and positive views we have towards technological advancement in order to ask: Can we create data-driven technologies that are fair? What form of carceral modernity are we engaging in? Through these questions, I hope to demonstrate how such risk assessment tools are not a carceral advancement, but rather a new form of social control that incarcerates rather than assists communities of color and/or poor people.
“Perception and Navigation of Racial Barriers to the Entrepreneurial Cuban Tourism Economy”
Sophia Lindner, University of Pennsylvania ‘20
9:00 AM Sociology and Inequality
Kohlberg 228
This project analyzes Cuban perception and navigation of the entrepreneurial tourist economy as it has evolved among recent changes in tourism to the country. The project uses onsite in-depth interviews to evaluate the nature of participation in the casa particular economy, a subset of the entrepreneurial tourist economy in Cuba, examine the perceptions Cubans have of any racialized components of these processes, and determine the degree to which Cubans consider the entrepreneurial path a feasible mode of achieving economic mobility under the decline of tourism that started in spring of 2019. This data collection builds upon evidence of prominent, though understudied, effects of the paradox of Cuban racial ideology and sociopolitical condition that has developed in the last two decades - a paradox in which nonwhite Cubans are negatively impacted by displays and enforcement of racial hierarchy while at the same time navigating a nationalistic egalitarianism that attempts to deny such hierarchy. Research has shown that within the tourist economy the former aspect of this paradox results in a severe underrepresentation of blacks among casa particular owners. The results of my study, organized through coded interview categories that address respondents’ opposition to recognition of this underrepresentation, show how the latter aspect then has potential to contribute to ideological gaps between perception and acknowledgement of such race-based disparities. My data thus strengthens the call initiated by other scholars for new ways of addressing disparity via this ideological gap. The primary data collection, contemporary temporal interventions, and policy-related implications of this project position it squarely and innovatively within the Sociological field; though the immediate implications of the project are confined within Cuban borders, it contributes meaningfully to the current sociological literature on race within economic reformulations more broadly. Further, as Cuba gains more presence on the international economic stage via interaction with the United States government, this research has the potential to provide insightful benefits for numerous transnational understandings of the relationship between identity, the economy, and the state.
“Reimagining Sustainable Futures: The Capitalist Narrative’s Aversion to Public Health and Justice”
Vic Say, Bryn Mawr College ‘21
9:00 AM Sociology and Inequality
Kohlberg 228
As we are in the age of climate change and environmental injustices, there is much discourse on how sustainability is pivotal for future generations. But what does it mean to be sustainable? Are reusable straws enough to save lives? Are community gardens enough? Who is telling us that our individual actions can halt climate change? As climate change is continuing to reveal itself, as it is causing the ends of some worlds, we have to look at who has historically been left behind, and who is being left behind. It is crucial to link sustainable practices and justice together, thinking about what futures we want to inhabit. In the present, environmental injustice takes a multitude of forms, like toxic air and water pollution and their connection to high cancer rates, poor infrastructure, and the taking of land.
In this project, I explore how the mainstream sustainability narrative is a function of the overarching agenda of global capitalism, rooted in Western supremacy and modernity, and how it has physically manifested in different communities. In particular, I will focus on and analyze sustainable initiatives in Philadelphia, such as GreenWorks and The Philly Land Bank, and how these initiatives exist parallel to the burdens Black, Brown, and low-income communities face. Through this research, I hope to extend into the larger system that is the United States and its major cities, the spatial disparities of sustainable initiatives and development, and how they affect historically impacted EJ communities in the context of neoliberalism and globalization. In this globalized epoch, capitalism—as an inherently racist and unjust instrument—is killing us. The mainstream sustainability narrative averts ongoing public health crises, like lead poisoning to risk of cancer due to historical, purposeful neglect and ever-growing corporate greed. “Just Sustainability” is rarely a reality. Metal straws will not save us from climate change or those poisoned by lead in water. Reforming capitalism will not save us— “Sustainable” capitalism does not exist. This research is relevant to MMUF field of Sociology, as I am analyzing environmental problems that disproportionately impact Black/Brown communities alongside the social processes that enable such inequalities.
“Puerto Rican Housing Tenure in the U.S.: An Analysis of Metropolitan Variation in Homeownership Rates”
Ángel Ortiz-Siberón, University of Pennsylvania ‘20
9:00 AM Sociology and Inequality
Kohlberg 228
Owning a home in America has become an integral part of the “American Dream.” Serving as a primary source of wealth, homeownership is a key determinant of one’s socioeconomic status and the economic wellbeing of a community (Hinojosa 2017; Schwartz 2010). However, many have yet to enjoy the benefits of homeownership in America. Racial and ethnic disparities in homeownership rates severely hinder opportunities for upward mobility among minority groups. Such inequalities are particularly evident in the wealth gap that negatively affects African-American and Hispanic communities in the U.S (Krivo and Kaufman 2004). While numerous studies have attempted to explain homeownership patterns among Hispanics, very few have focused on housing tenure for Puerto Ricans in the U.S. (e.g., Villarubia-Mendoza 2010; Hinojosa 2017). Recent growth of the Puerto Rican population in the U.S., their dispersion across metropolitan areas, and their below-average homeownership rates call for a closer look at the factors affecting housing tenure for this population. This paper considers metropolitan variation in homeownership for stateside Puerto Ricans and disparities among other racial and ethnic groups in the U.S.
“Deconstructing Cultural Competency”
Obiageri Amaechi, Princeton University ‘21
10:30 AM Anthropology and Social Change
Kohlberg 115
This paper serves as an introduction to the background work I have done for my junior paper on the deconstruction of cultural competence within the health care system. Drawing from literature in the fields of global health and anthropology, I contextualize the transcripts I have collected through ethnographic research on the healthcare experiences of American immigrant families and South African hospital staff. As specified by Horvat’s Cultural Competence Education for Health Professionals, “Cultural competence education for health professionals aims to ensure all people receive equitable, effective health care, particularly those from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds”. Anne Fadiman’s book The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, contributes a unique perspective to the field of Anthropology through highlighting the distinctive issues faced by immigrant families in the United States such as language barriers, differences in beliefs towards medicine, structural violence, and unfamiliarity with the healthcare system. Works such as Fadiman’s legitimizes the necessity of initiatives such as cultural competency training. Marcos Cuento’s literature on malaria eradication critiques the use of “vertical” or “magic bullet” approaches towards remedying disparities within global health. Vertical or magic bullet approaches refer to the one size fits all ideology that plagues some policies and initiatives that are put in place. Cuento asserts that effective strategies must tackle an issue from several angles including socioeconomic inequality and cultural adaptation. Using the perspectives of these scholars I will argue that some implementations of cultural competency can be classified as a vertical approach in addressing the issue of health disparities. That at times these initiatives do not fully accommodate the specific needs of a population. This paper serves as a foundation from which I hope to further explore the implications of cultural competence in terms of knowledge production and postcolonial power dynamics.
“The Legacy of Nonviolent Resistance as Shown Through the Work of El Grupo de Apoyo Mutuo”
Natalia Mora, Haverford College ‘21
10:30 AM Anthropology and Social Change
Kohlberg 115
The Grupo de Apoyo Mutuo is a nonprofit organization based in Guatemala that works to bring about justice for the victims of the country’s armed conflict. The organization was founded in 1984, after one of the darkest times of the armed conflict. During this time the organization started documenting current and past cases of disappearances. Today the organization focuses on legal representation for victims of the armed conflict and other legal processes for human rights within Guatemala.
I flew down to Guatemala to research the legacy of nonviolent resistance throughout the Grupo de Apoyo Mutuo as evident through their archive and work. My research is based upon engagement with documents and interviews with human rights professionals and victims’ families, who are members of the Grupo de Apoyo Mutuo. The documents I used come from an archive held at the organization which contains 3,300 cases of forced disappearance during Guatemala’s internal conflict. I connect the shift in organization’s work, evident through its archive as well as interviews, to Gene Sharp’s 198 Methods of Nonviolent Resistance. The archive serves as a way to track the kind of documentation which the organization saw as valuable during various points of history. The interviews with members of the Grupo de Apoyo Mutuo demonstrate how nonviolent resistance is still evident in the organization’s work. Through interviews with members of the organization my research shifted to also explore how unaware the members of the organization are of how their work is part of the work of nonviolent resistance. I tried my best to not impose my thoughts upon my interviewees, however, I became aware of how different my views of their work was from their own.
I conclude that despite being unaware of how their work fits theoretical frameworks the Grupo de Apoyo Mutuo’s work serves as an example of the legacy of nonviolence. Along with this I point out the issues that can occur when researchers try to impose theoretical frameworks on the people who are being studied.
“Climate Change Responses in Latin American Indigenous Populations through the Millennia”
Casandra Paiz, Bryn Mawr College ‘21
10:30 AM Anthropology and Social Change
Kohlberg 115
First-world countries are the ones most mentioned in the news when it comes to global climate change and the effects of changing coastal environments on society. But what about the countries that don’t have the funds or government support to raise awareness of environmental impacts on their communities, and find sustainable solutions? More specifically, how do indigenous communities within Latin America create solutions to environmental problems without outside support? As most of Central America has a large population within coastal zones, the effects of coastal changes such as water levels rising has an impact on more than just individuals. It impacts their culture, their agriculture, and their lives as a cohesive society as a whole.
My project is looking at both the modern day communities of Indigenous peoples in Central America and the past societies of these populations. How did people in past archeologically-known societies react to changes in their environment and how does that differ from today’s solutions? My goal is to frame the climate change discussion around communities who’s lives on a daily scale are interacting with the environment, whether it be living in coastal regions or having their survival based around the climate and weather (fishing, agriculture, hunting). My specific focus is on the indigenous peoples within these living conditions. In the Anthropological world researchers usually only focus on either the present culture or the past material world of these societies. My goal is to retain the history of these communities and past archeological data while also taking into account present population’s response to changes in the environment, thereby combining elements of both cultural and archeological anthropology. These Central American indigenous communities have such a rich history they have built off and learned from. My research, in order to bring agency to the independence and experience of these communities, takes into account the knowledge they have maintained from their past and the complex societies they have come from. The goal of this project is to broadly access archeological data from present, early, and deep past in order to examine these community responses more thoroughly.
“'Won't let my freedom rot in hell': Beyoncé, Toni Morrison, and the black body as an archive”
Ashley Hodges, Princeton University ‘21
10:30 AM The Arts and Humanities
Kohlberg 226
Beyoncé’s Homecoming is a performance of black cultural memory that comes to fruition by way of a feeling of loss, and her citations of Toni Morrison in the film allows us to use memory as a thematic entryway for examining her Homecoming project. Homecoming accomplishes the portrayal of the black body as a site of memory in such a way that it evokes the black body as an archive. By using Morrison’s conceptualizations of memory in her works, we can begin to understand Beychella as evidence that the black body memorializes what has been lost in the archive which gives credibility to the repertoire. It is important to recognize Homecoming as a cultural artifact where the black body is able to function as a site of both repertoire and the archive because it demands an understanding of how the insufficient documentation of the black past strangely produces an altered space for black imagination in the black present.
The failure of proper documentation of black past is a prompt for black futurity as black creatives of the present are manipulating this loss. Black creatives such as Beyoncé and Morrison are constantly relying on a past that cannot be cited, so they are able to manipulate it. Harvey Young’s analysis of the black body creates the assumption that the black body is always going to be a condensed and flattened version of material blackness. However, by combining Morrison’s invention through loss and Beyoncé’s archiving of the repertoire we are able to see that such an analysis may be fallacious. It is true that the black body is a mere discursive representation of black people, but the special thing about the black body is that its immateriality is what allows it to be transmitted through time and altered to assist black creatives in their own making of histories. The black body gives the potential for imagining through the loss of the black past. Morrison is able to accomplish this through fiction while Beyoncé accomplishes this through performance.
This can be thought of as a form of embodied resistance that pushes back on the unreliability of the archive to properly document the history of black people. The work that I intend to engage with by using Morrison’s conceptions of memory as a lens to closely read Beyonce’s Homecoming allows us to think of the ways that the archive, an instrumental part of research, can lie outside of an edifice. Although this may cause questions of credibility, to see the archive as something that is living and mobile by way of the black body speaks to the field of African-American Studies more broadly. What I argue is an example of how the field seeks to be corrective. The black body as an archive in Homecoming is a direct, visceral reaction to it being shut out of traditional and exalted means of knowledge production.
“A Good Black Queer Manhood is Hard to Find: Tarell Alvin McCraney’s Choir Boy”
Allen Porterie, Cornell University ‘20
10:30 AM The Arts and Humanities
Kohlberg 226
This presentation examines the ways in which Black queer manhood is scripted, enacted, and radicalized by the work of Tarell Alvin McCraney’s play Choir Boy. McCraney’s play Choir Boy, recently produced on Broadway in 2019, centers on the narrative of a young, gay Black boy who must navigate the halls of a traditional Christian all-Black all-boys school in the Southern United States. McCraney uses this play to explore the ways that Black boys come to define their manhood as they grapple with issues of sexuality, abuse, and religious dogma. I draw from a popular adage in the Black community used to signify the trouble that one faces in finding a black man who performs his gendered duties correctly, “a good black man is hard to find,” in my analysis. Such gender duties include being the main provider for the heterosexual nuclear family, protecting his partner, and being present in his children’s lives. In this presentation, I shift from this saying to wrestle with the definitions of manhood set out by scholars of gender performance, queer studies, and Black studies. Manhood is defined as holding qualities of strength, courage, and sexual potency by scholars in these fields. Using this scholarship as well as performative texts by Tarell Alvin McCraney, I examine the ways in which queer-identifying Black men craft meanings of manhood beyond the binary structures of “acting gay/straight.” I use textual analysis of both the dialogue and stage directions set out by the playwright in crafting these modes of sexually oriented performance. Coupling this text with scholarship by bell hooks, Judith Butler, and E. Patrick Johnson, I seek not to concretize a definition of manhood, but to examine the complexities that arise when factors such as race and sexuality shape a cultural meaning of the word.
“Contending Interpretations of the Prophet Muhammad: Barelvis and Deobandis”
Hamzah Qureshi, Swarthmore College ‘20
10:30 AM Religion and Politics
Kohlberg 228
As the first chapter of my senior thesis, this project seeks to explore the conflicts of two South Asian Hanafi Sunni groups, Barelvis and Deobandis. Despite living among one another, adhering to the Hanafi school of jurisprudence, as well as identifying with Sufi schools of thought, these groups are inherently conflicted, oftentimes hostile, and have a history of violence. Although these communities disagree on several practices and beliefs, an unparticular eye would likely consider them negligible. One of these admittedly minor differences, for example, is standing or sitting while reciting a particular salutation. However, these slight variations in ritual practice, I argue, are deeply significant and inherently tied to how these groups interpret the status of the Prophet Muhammad. As such, Barelvis and Deobandis are not conflicted on minor ritual differences, but on contending interpretations of Muhammad in Islam. This contention is not a new one nor is it particular to Barelvis and Deobandis, which makes for a fascinating study in which the contributions of renowned Islamic scholars across space and time can be utilized to better understand the nuances of each group’s interpretation of Muhammad.
In regards to the field of religious studies, I am interested in directing attention toward these Muslim communities because, although relevant and representative of many Muslims, they are often overshadowed by other, globally infamous ones. Groups like the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and ISIS have become widely recognized, not because they represent a large number of Muslims, but because of their hostility toward Judeo-Christian societies like the United States. Ironically, it is due to this opposition and consequent notoriety that such groups have come to represent Muslims regardless. As such, I hope to problematize the currently normalized assumption that all or many Muslim groups are, similar to the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and ISIS, the inherent “other” of progressive and democratic Judeo-Christian societies. Instead, I am arguing, that Muslim groups like the Barelvis and Deobandis, who happen to represent a larger number of Muslims globally, are chiefly concerned with the Prophet Muhammad. This project will thus inform the field of religious studies in two ways. First, it will direct attention toward less known, but more accurately representative Muslim groups. Second, through discussing and understanding the conflicts of these groups, the chief importance and centrality of the Prophet Muhammad for Muslims will be emphasized.
“Women of Power: Repositioning Korean Bible Women in the History of Religious Leaders in Korea”
Katie Chung, Haverford College ‘21
10:30 AM Religion and Politics
Kohlberg 228
Historians of Korean religions generally credit Christianity for bringing modernity to South Korea and, in particular, for promoting equality for women. Alongside historians, popular discourses similarly presume that a stringent male dominated Neo-Confucian culture is a quintessential aspect of Korean “traditional” society. However, women have occupied positions of power throughout Korean history. Writing against common analyses, this research questions the portrayal of Korean Bible Women as the first example of female empowerment. By focusing on how the preexisting power structures of the Korean tradition prefigured the space and work of Korean Bible Women, this study examines how the empowerment of women manifested in “traditional” Korean society, how Christian missionaries asserted their perceptions of womanhood, and how scholars construed Christianity in their narration of Japanese imperialism and Korean conservatism. It also challenges the assumption that Christianity pioneered the modern, or free, woman while assuming that Korean women were previously solely submissive and oppressed. Using secondary historical sources that document gender and the trajectory of Christianity in Korea, I investigate how the historiography of Korea continues to privilege western missionary perspectives. I argue that the success of Korean Bible Women relied on the power that women already held in Korean society rather than on the notions of Christian egalitarianism historians attribute to transforming gender politics. While many texts on this era position Christianity and Christian missionaries as emancipators and Korean Bible Women during Japanese occupation (1910-1945) as exemplars of liberation and enlightenment, women in fact enjoyed positions of power prior to Christianity’s arrival and its colonial civilizing mission. This study confronts the simultaneous valorization of Christianity and devaluation of Korean traditional culture in Korean religious historiography and informs our understanding of how the struggle for gender equality ensued in Korea.
“Religio-artistic Responses to the Six-Day War in the Arab World”
Yousef Elzalabany, Princeton University ‘20
10:30 AM Religion and Politics
Kohlberg 228
In the aftermath of the Six-Day War, the Arab world was left wondering what steps it needed to take in the wake of its devastating rout at the hands of the Israeli army. Public acts of mourning, such as Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser’s offer to resign immediately, were combined with calls to action in response to the tragedy. A few months after the war, singer Umm Kulthum performed her new song Hadeeth al Ruh (“Song of the Soul”), an introspective lamentation of the country’s state of affairs. The song was an Egyptian colloquial Arabic translation of an Urdu poem by South Asian philosopher Muhammad Iqbal. The original poem, Shikwa (“Complaint”), laments the state of “Muslim” lands underneath colonial occupation. Umm Kulthum’s decision to perform this song during this period of public mourning begs the question: what does it mean to respond to a distinctly Arab tragedy with an Urdu poem? Across North Africa and the Levant, the Arab intelligentsia took the defeat as clear evidence of the need to further secularize government and society. Yet, this performance – a call to a shared Islamic heritage between Egypt and South Asia – provides a striking example of the increased turn to faith in public life which dominated popular discourse in the Arab world in the ensuing decades. This paper seeks to address the central question of how cultural responses to the Six-Day War drew upon moments in Muslim history to frame the present moment in terms of religious tragedy, using Hadeeth al Ruh as a central case study. In answering this question, the project will contribute to a broader understanding of the historical origins of modern religious movements in the Middle East, as well as the relationship between cultural production and popular opinion. In the field of Middle Eastern/Islamic Studies in particular, this paper will add to the growing body of literature aiming to produce de-secularized readings of history, or re-understand the significance of religion as an acting force in the daily lives of the inhabitants of the Middle East.
“San Franciscan Warriors: Gerrymandering and Everyday Acts of Politics in Mid-20th Century San Francisco”
Abi Bernard, Cornell University ‘19
2:30 PM American History
Kohlberg 115
This paper delves into the intersection of historical and political science study, showcasing both my unique interests and adhering to the breadth and diversity that is Mellon Mays. My ultimate goal is to add a new perspective on realignment, but also a hopeful one: in the everyday throws of American life, citizens still find ways to assure that one person receives one vote. This project touches on the complexity and nuances of research: often a research question or project does not fit neatly into one field, but rather spans the methodology and focuses of several.
During the mid-20 th century, the political spectrum, originating with the Republican Party on the left and the Democratic Party on the right, flipped in a process known as realignment. This process has traditionally been framed as the result of political elites leading their constituencies away from the 19th century roots of their respective parties. Recently scholars of both history and political science have been crafting a more nuanced light on this national shift, giving more responsibility to the lay American and their political coalitions for the responses of their party leaders.
Eric Shickler, in his book Racial Realignments, argues that realignment is the evidence of extensive groundwork laid by “mass and midlevel party actors,” and similarly historian Lisa McGirr suggests in Suburban Warriors that the everyday suburban citizen was integral in maintaining and reforming their local political context during the mid-20th century. Both scholars take a grassroots level approach to a macro-level concept, a tactic that will be employed in this research project.
Throughout this period, the federal government began taking steps toward regulating gerrymandering, the process of redrawing of district lines for party advantage. This covert method of electoral manipulation is usually and understandably characterized as an intentional stifling of the citizen’s voice, which is precisely why I am choosing to insert it into the conversation on how political coalitions form at the local level. Reflecting Shickler and McGirr’s approach of investigating where macro politics meets the micro, this paper will utilize a qualitative approach to examine how San Franciscans from the early 1950s to the early 1970s engaged in everyday acts of politics while their political context—likely unbeknownst to them—changed.
“Burning Man as Internet City: The Exclusionary Urban Vision of Corporealized Digital Utopianism in the 1990s”
David Canada, Haverford College ‘20
2:30 PM American History
Kohlberg 115
For the 2019 Mellon Mays Conference at Swarthmore College, I propose examining Burning Man’s production of Black Rock City in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert during the late 1990s. Although the event traces its origins to 1986 on Baker’s Beach and first arrived in the Black Rock in 1990, I would devote particular focus to its instantiation following 1996 until the early 2000s. This temporal range is justified because, in the years following a decapitation and vehicular accident in 1996, organizers Larry Harvey and Michael Mikel created/formalized the event’s civic structure, not only banning guns and vehicles on the playa, but through the creation/expansion of the Department of Public Works, Department of ‘Mutant’ Vehicles, Black Rock Rangers, a Limited Licensing Company, and a formal urban plan by Rod Garrett; in short, Burning Man became Black Rock City. This material change marks an important discursive shift. As early as the mid-1990s, participants and media outlets touted Burning Man’s organizational structure, but, with these reforms, the event could also postulate itself as an exemplary, though still decidedly ephemeral, urban site. Given its deep affiliation with Silicon Valley, pastiche architecture, and overarching principle of decentralization (wherein the voluntary labor of a self-sufficient citizen constructs the majority of the urban space) members of the media and Burning Man organization began referring to Black Rock City as an ‘internet city’ in the last years of the 1990s insofar as it built an urban infrastructure around the organizational qualities of the internet and internet companies. Through this coverage, this presentation will enumerate upon the importance of Black Rock City as a corporealization of neoliberal organizational forms and ideology, especially in light of its endorsement by neoliberal economists/neo-imperialists Paul Romer and Grover Norquist.
This presentation intervenes at the level of Burning Man historiography and historiography’s normative foci. Unfortunately, most Burning Man historiography adopts the Burning Man Organization’s ‘official’ historical narratives and/or foregrounds the city’s experiential dimension. In contrast, I will take seriously the event’s claim as an urban space and contextualize it within a moment of mass deregulation and neoliberal approaches to the city. This intervenes at the level of historical foci insofar as it prioritizes analysis of the ‘trash of history,’ treating Burning Man as a cultural proxy in the same way that Walter Benjamin treated the 19th-century Parisian Arcades.
“Food Sovereignty and the Energy Insurrection: An Oral History of the Decolonial Turn in the Puerto Rican Environmental Movement, 1960-2019”
Kenji Cataldo, Princeton University ‘20
2:30 PM American History
Kohlberg 115
This paper introduces my thesis research on the modern environmental movement in Puerto Rico from its origins in the 1960s to the present. Based on oral history research conducted onsite during the summer of 2019, during which protests ousted Governor Ricardo Rosselló, this paper also offers reflections on the opportunities and challenges of writing history as both a researcher and witness of an historic moment. This project pushes the methodological boundaries of history in both its focus on interviews and personal experience and the recency of its period of study. The thesis will examine the relationship between environmental activism and the defining political question of Puerto Rico’s relationship with the U.S. In the wake of Hurricane María, Puerto Rico’s highly centralized power grid and dependence on imported food proved fatal. The two years since then have witnessed the expansion of movements demanding investment in community solar energy systems and local agriculture, which activists understand as a way to decolonize energy and food production. This decolonial turn, by which I mean the shift to understanding decolonization as a process of undoing and replacing colonial structures and practices beyond a change in political status, constituted a marked change from the early environmental movement, whose origins in the campaigns against open-pit mines in the 1960s and 1970s tied it explicitly to the independence movement. The decoupling of environmental concerns from the independence movement has both allowed activists to take advantage of their position outside the arena of partisan politics and invited criticism for becoming a depoliticized movement. By tracing this shift in interviews with environmental activists, I will argue that, rather than a depoliticization, the decolonial turn offers a redefinition of the political in Puerto Rico with a less determinate relationship to the question of status. The historic protests of July, 2019, can then be understood in the context of a decades-long shift in political consciousness—catalyzed by Hurricane María—that centers coloniality rather than official political status.
“The Indigenous Spectrality of La Malinche and La Llorona in Postcolonial Mexico”
Diana Ceron, Cornell University ‘20
2:30 PM Cultural Studies and Social Movements
Kohlberg 226
During Mexico’s post-colonial era women fell victim to the society’s strong machista and patriarchal norms. Their intellectual, sexual and emotional autonomy were reduced and stripped from them which resulted in their categorization as second class citizens. This effect was a product of the male voices that dominated the country’s dialogue and pushed propaganda that favored Eurocentric values. Said propaganda presented itself through literature and folklore that claimed to be directing Mexico, specifically women, on a righteous path. The Eurocentric propaganda created female archetypes that women were either expected to adhere or steer clear from. The creation of these archetypes abused the figure of indigenous women and resulted in what is now known as the cultural trifecta: la Virgen, la Malinche and la Llorona. Using this knowledge, I base my research on analyzing how the post-colonial era in Mexico was shaped by its attempts to hide colonial abuses and exploit indigenous female representation through figures like la Llorona and la Malinche. More specifically, I focus on how they were converted into haunting figures that advanced a Eurocentric lifestyle and suppressed female sexual and intellectual autonomy through scare tactics that are still influential today. Using Emilie Cameron’s, Indigenous Spectrality and the Politics of Postcolonial Ghost Stories, as one of my theoretical pieces I plan on using her main arguments which claims that “...ghosts allude to the presence of that which has been excluded, marginalized and expelled... it is only by living with, talking with, and accommodating our ghosts that we might ‘learn to live’ in these ‘post’colonial times” as my overarching focus for analyzing literary works. I hone in on contrasting representations of these figures through narratives presented by male and female authors. My main concentration for this presentation is the conversation between Octavio Paz’s, The Sons of la Malinche, and Rosario Castellano’s, La Malinche. Because la Malinche is considered to be a haunting figure that serves as a reminder of betrayal and a Western female model for Mexican women I provide a critical analysis of how these two authors present her and the role that Paz had in helping promote negative and fearful archetypes against indigeneity. Furthermore, I pose a question that asks how this history and propaganda plays a role in modern Mexico. Overall, my hopes with this research is to understand how Mexican literary rhetoric has affected Mexican women’s status in society and how they progress from it.
“Your Struggles are My Struggles: Epistemic Co-optation in the Discourse of Victimhood”
KiKi Gilbert, Princeton University ‘21
2:30 PM Cultural Studies and Social Movements
Kohlberg 226
Given the political and practical relevance of claiming victimhood status, it should come as no surprise that even seemingly privileged social groups or individuals may publicly claim to be victims of an injustice. So what happens when the seemingly wrong people claim to be victims? Using the umbrella terms of “epistemic injustice” as defined by Miranda Fricker in 2007, I parse out “epistemic co-optation,” which I define as the instances in which bodies of knowledge initially made epistemically legible to the public by disempowered communities are reclaimed by others either passively or actively attempting to benefit from associating themselves with the initially marginalized community.
When detailing epistemic co-optation, especially with regards to victimhood discourses, I’ll differentiate between two different kinds: vertical co-optation and horizontal co-optation. Vertical co-optation refers to situations in which members of comparably powerful communities draw from the experiences of comparably disempowered communities to describe and frame their own oppressive experiences. Horizontal co-optation refers to situations in which members of generally disempowered communities draw from the experiences of other distinctly disempowered communities to describe and frame their oppressive experiences. Accordingly, epistemic co-optation can happen between allies who are similarly oppressed: in India, for example, a political group representing the violently disenfranchised “Untouchables” – the Dalit Panther Party – used a name inspired by the Black Panther Party to signal that they knew, felt, and experienced an oppression in alignment with the oppression of Black-Americans. This also happens especially in counter-movements like men’s rights activists groups or Blue Lives Matters organizers; these groups clearly absorbed the language of feminist and anti-racism movements before shifting the markers of victimhood.
I hope the framing of this term is helpful in both dismissing and uplifting communities that respectively reinforce and disentangle hierarchal disempowerment around the globe.
“Looking Through the Stained Glasses of Memoir”
Zoe Garcia, Bryn Mawr College ‘21
2:30 PM Cultural Studies and Social Movements
Kohlberg 226
It is no secret that academia privileges certain narratives while muffling the narratives of those who hold less social and capital power. The use of the word muffle is deliberate since people can never completely be silenced due to their lasting legacies on culture and memory in the archives of history. The narratives of queer women of color are often among the muffled due to the patriarchal, heterosexual, white dominated society of the U.S. My research examines the memoirs of Latina/x people living in the United States during the contemporary period in order to analyze how they have begun to write about their own understanding of self-identity in relation to their queerness, culture, society, and social movements. The current focus of my research is on A Cup of Water Under My Bed by Daisy Hernández, a coming-of-age memoir in which she describes important moments that helped her understand her own queerness and culture. My research is important because women of color stand at an intersection that demands an incredible amount of labor from them for cultural and social reproduction, but this queerness disrupts hegemonic norms and allows for commentary on larger institutionalized ideologies. There has been no scholarship that traces the trope of technology throughout this memoir, but by examining scenes in which television is present much can be learned about early formations of queerness and latinidad within a heteronormative and white supremacist society. By conducting this research, I hope to understand more about the ways in which queer identity is formed and understood by women of color, as well as a better understanding of the roles and challenges of Latina/x people within feminist movements and daily forms of cultural resistance to the patriarchy.
“Women, Food, and Farming: A Process of Cultural and Familial Reclamation”
Jessica Hernandez, Swarthmore College ‘20
2:30 PM Interdisciplinarity and Regionalism
Kohlberg 228
Within the past few decades, the attention placed on urban agriculture has increased. This form of cultivation refers to food production that occurs in an urban or metropolitan setting. As the pressures of food apartheid, environmental crisis, and urban planning intensify, urban agriculture and its ability to address these issues has become a site of curiosity. Because this type of cultivation offers an alternative to the capitalist-driven globalized model, local officials, scholars, and organizers are interested in its impacts. Though existing scholarship praises urban agriculture for its ability to increase access to healthy food, improve mental health, and foster community, the field is not without its debates. One of the primary concerns involves the reality of these effects, citing the challenges to measuring increased food security or wellbeing. Moreover, much of the literature focuses on the general community rather than individual experiences. Because of this lack of attention on personal testimony about the impacts of urban farming, I was drawn to learn why individuals become affiliated with these organizations, but more specifically on the motivations of women. When looking at existing scholarship on women and farming, the voices of white women were often at the forefront, thereby excluding women of color. Because of this, I wanted to better understand their reasons for engaging in urban food cultivation. From my research, I learned many women farmed because it was a common thread throughout their familial and ancestral history. Drawing on feminist political ecology, I argue race and culture have influenced these women and their involvement in urban agriculture. Moreover, I incorporate theories of the metabolic rift, citing modernity and its creation of a gap between individuals, culture, and environment. I argue farming serves a medium for repairing this rift and reclaiming cultural and familial history. Because I am interested in disparities of food access and distribution in low-income communities of color, I am drawn to the field of geography and its study of space, place, and race. I believe food insecurity is very much calculated initiatives our white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. Using geography, I hope to learn more regarding systemic disparities. I want to understand the intentionality behind them in order to maintain structures of domination and the white supremacist racial hierarchy. I believe food access is one of the mediums used to sustain racialized control, which is clearly concentrated within populations of color that have experienced various forms of disinvestment.
“Nation-building at Altitude: the Role of Mountains and Mountaineering in Imagining Post-Partition India”
Suraj Kushwaha, Princeton University ‘21
2:30 PM Interdisciplinarity and Regionalism
Kohlberg 228
Scholars have recognized the place of mountaineering in the historical narratives of mountainous regions. Joydeep Sircar noted the relationship between certain mountaineering endeavors and contemporary geopolitics in the Kashmir region of South Asia in his essay on “oropolitics.” Yet the extent to which—and how—these high-altitude exploits influenced the new conception of an Indian nation, especially as distinct from its neighbor Pakistan, remains woefully underexamined in the scholarly literature. This presentation builds on a previous project, which examined the transition from an era of European-dominated Himalayan mountaineering to the advent of a distinctly Indian mountaineering. By the time of independence from British rule, an elite echelon of Indian mountaineers had emerged. These Indian mountaineers, trained in British private school, developed a close relationship with the Indian Army during the time leading up to Independence. The partition of the subcontinent into India and Pakistan in 1947 sparked the development of an Indian military complex specifically dedicated to addressing the threats posed by foreign nations at the new nation’s mountainous borders. This project uses newspaper reports and writings by Indian mountaineers to explore the ways in which mountaineering played a role in the construction of India’s national identity in the decades following 1947. It seeks to ascertain whether high peak ascents in regions of conflict garnered attention in popular media, and if so, how Indians from mountainous regions and plains regions alike conceived of their government’s alpine campaigns on the borders.
“Afro-Asia: Coalition Building and Post-Subjectivity”
Raven Schwam-Curtis, Cornell University ‘20
2:30 PM Interdisciplinarity and Regionalism
Kohlberg 228
In this talk I will tackle histories of Afro-Asian coalition building during the Black Power and Anti-Vietnam War Movements. By looking closely at these historical moments, I seek to uncover underthought Afro-Asian histories, utilize these histories to debunk the perceived inherent validity of the ‘problem minority’ and ‘model minority’ myths, and present alternative modes of relationality. To proceed in this work, I draw on the scholarship of several thinkers, namely Grace Lee Boggs, Fred Moten and Stefano Harney, Gerald Horne, Daryl J. Maeda, and others from a range of Black feminist and Asian diasporic discourses. My selected sources illuminate a key insight my work seeks to tease out: that ‘African’ and ‘Asian’ are not discrete categories that occasionally intersect, but rather, are deeply interconnected and fluid modes of identity that can be enlisted as tools for mutual liberation. These historical moments will be engaged through a Black feminist transnational lens.
My central question is thus: What methodologies were enlisted for Afro-Asian coalition building during WWII, the Black Power Movement, and the Anti-Vietnam War Movement, and what might those modes of solidarity in conversation with the myths of the ‘problem minority’ and the ‘model minority’ reveal about the necessary components for coalition building in the 21st century? My findings suggest the following: 1) ‘Afro’ and ‘Asia’ are not discrete and never were, but the misinformation of their discreteness resulted in further tensions and divisions that serve as monumental barriers to coalition building today. 2) The erasure and/or exclusion of Afro-Asian histories feeds the myth that Black and Asian folks are not only discreet, but also in competition with one another (i.e. oppression olympics). And 3) Coalition building in the 21st century demands a new relationship to identity—this new relationship necessitates a porous understanding of identity as a tool that is flexible and adaptable to new modes of utilization. Furthermore, the work of rethinking identity as a tool for liberation has been taking place, and must continue to, in the undercommons. Should I be selected to present my work, I will provide a brief snapshot of what Afro-Asia entails and an introduction to the work I do on WWII, the Black Power Movement, and the Anti-Vietnam War movement. This work has implications for Afro-Asian studies as a burgeoning field as well as all disciplines applicable to the MMUF program that grapple with the subjectivity of peoples.
“Nosotros no somos vuestros gitanos: Rosalía, Romani, and the Rebirth of Flamenco”
Joseph Spir Rechani, Haverford College ‘20
4:00 PM Anthropology and the Body
Kohlberg 115
Rosalía, a Barcelona-born singer in her early 20s, has for the past two years broken charts all across Europe and America with her blend of the canonical Spanish musical genre - Flamenco - with urban styles such as Hip-Hop, Trap, and Reggaetón. Her album El Mal Querer (2018) took conceptual inspiration from the 13th-century novel Romance of Flamenca, and granted her a myriad of nominations and awards across the globe. Such a combination has been considered by many a modernization of a classical, yet outdated, representation of Spain, though at its core lies the past, present, and future of the gitano or Romani community, who have been accredited with the creation of Flamenco, and who consider it central to their identity as possibly the most ancient and most marginalized minority group in Spain. By understanding the social, spiritual, and musical significance of Flamenco, my research will facilitate a discussion in which I critically analyze the singer’s stance as a non-gitano, privileged artist launching her take on Flamenco to mass importance vis-à-vis the cultural appropriation, or rather expatriation, of the gitano identity attached to the genre. I expand on theories proposed by Matthiew Machin-Autenreith (2017), Pablo Ortega (2018), Meira Goldber (2019), and others regarding how Flamenco is a racialized performance that became a practice of national and international recognition, by introducing the transition of classical Flamenco to a modernized version of Flamenco promulgated by singers like Rosalía. I consider the different perspectives in support or against Rosalía and her music with a specific emphasis on melody, lyrics, music videos, and live performances. Through such considerations, I contextualize and contest Rosalía’s role in Flamenco music and her position within - or parallel to - the gitano community.
This research stems from ethnomusicology and performance studies, though it is also founded on an anthropological framework. It narrates the connection between the former two by doing an in-depth analysis of the lyrics, melody, and style of Rosalía’s songs with the contextualization of the cultural stance of Flamenco - and its positive and/or negative repercussions on gitanos, Andalucía, and Spain. Further, by looking at the cultural manifestation of a new gitano identity that is embodied through an outsider like Rosalía and El Mal Querer, it will obtain anthropological value as it contemplates issues of racial politics, cultural manifestation, and national identity.
“Burying Your Virtual Body: Grief and Memorialization on Facebook”
Elyse O'Bannon, Swarthmore College ‘20
4:00 PM Anthropology and the Body
Kohlberg 115
This research looks at how social media, particularly Facebook, has changed how we grieve and how we memorialize lost loved ones. Additionally, this project seeks to understand if there is a best way to memorialize someone and how social media spaces may or might not be able to provide more equitable access to memorialization and remembrance than the graveyard model. This research centers Facebook because it is the only social media site that has protocol for handling dead users on its platform. I am going to do this specifically by analyzing Facebook and it’s memorial, tribute, and legacy contact system. I am not focusing on digital memorials that are created by users on the site through the page function of Facebook or Facebook groups that are made by users explicitly for grieving. The work being done in this project also helps us to understand and engage with the many ways that our lives are entangled with and affected by the policies of large corporations. This paper also helps to create a link between the corporatization of the funeral industry and current corporate practice by large social media companies. Like other commercial enterprises within the funeral industry, Facebook uses ideas of remembrances and memorialization to generate activity on their site. Within this process, Facebook inaugurates mourning conventions that promote its own business. While Facebook company policies try to frame what is appropriate mourning on the site, users adopt the policies that they want to in order to mourn in a way that feels appropriate to their needs. Users on social media sites are primed by those sites to think and act in certain ways, and memorial sites push users on Facebook to mourn in certain specific ways, but through examination, it is possible to see all of the ways that users also have power in forming the social media space.
“An Autoethnography about Autoethnographies: A Tool Toward Self-Preservation, Healing, and Resistance for Scholars of Color”
Leslie Luqueño, Haverford College ‘20
4:00 PM Anthropology and the Body
Kohlberg 115
Autoethnography - the act of writing about one’s own experiences and connecting them to social and cultural processes - has consistently been devalued by dominant discourses about knowledge production. Seen as overly subjective and non-empirical, autoethnographers have been pushed to the margins and often not included in the mainstream teaching of anthropology. In my paper, I argue that the disqualification of autoethnography as a valid research method is a form of epistemic violence that suppresses the voices of scholars of color and has kept them in the margins of anthropological inquiry. Using a Critical Raced-Gendered Theory and LatCrit lens, I explore how autoethnograhy’s devaluement within anthropology demonstrates the ways in which academia upholds whiteness through the silencing of experiential knowledge. Although my paper seeks to highlight the ways in which autoethnography is delegitimized, I take it a step further by showing why autoethnography in itself is a way of resisting against epistemic violence. By demonstrating how autoethnography has helped me practice self-preservation, healing, and resistance as a Chicana scholar, I myself challenge dominant paradigms that have repressed my personal experiences as a valid form of empirical evidence within the social sciences. Furthermore, my work is in conversation with a Chicana anthropologist tradition of valuing experiential, familial, and community knowledge within academia and claiming our space within a historically white and colonist discipline through personal storytelling. While I build off Chicana Feminist Epistemology and its conceptualization of autoethnography, my paper demonstrates that autoethnography can be a tool for all scholars of color to resist and heal from the wounds that epistemic violence inflicts.
“‘Things Lovely & Dangerous Still’: Towards a Queer Black Love Poetics”
Imani Davis, University of Pennsylvania ‘20
4:00 PM English and Power
Kohlberg 226
What power do we awaken as critics and creatives when we acknowledge that our desires are inseparable from the material world they inhabit? This paper concerns itself with how the political nature of love enacts itself in queer Black literary space generally, as well as poetry specifically. I am interested in naming the power that permitted the Black feminist poet-activists of the long 1980s to find passion in their work by theorizing a queer Black love poetics, one which I call black queer conviction. This project analyzes the understudied love poetry of June Jordan, Audre Lorde, and Cheryl Clarke in order to examine how queer Black women of the late 20th century utilized the love poem as a versatile liberatory space. As a craft container and advocacy tool, the love poem was malleable enough for these women to express the political nature of their desires while also serving as a speculative landscape for them to imagine utopic intimacies. Recent scholarship pays due attention to the more explicitly justice-centered work that my poets of focus produced between 1980 and 1995. However, I seek to understand how we might read their love poems as equally valid histories of resistance, interiority, and pleasure, understanding that these fields continually inform one another. For as Alice Walker notes in In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens, Black feminist/womanist movements have long regarded love as a revolutionary practice.
“Panels into the Past: The Narrative Function of Memory in Nnedi Okorafor’s Shuri and Eve Ewing’s Ironheart”
Alma Sterling, Bryn Mawr College ‘21
4:00 PM English and Power
Kohlberg 226
As a medium, comics relies upon the deployment of both text and image in conversation as a means to create narrative. The construction of time within and through the arrangement of images in space has long been of interest in comics scholarship. Hilary Chute posits that comics can express personal narratives powerfully through the form’s “disrupting spatial and temporal conventions to overlay or palimpsest past and present.” The spatial overlay of time and history position memories as ever present revelations of the structures that unceasingly shape experience and identity. Moreover, the multimodal and layered nature of the comics form allows for readings of the text from an intersectional standpoint, as multiple temporal realities exist in conversation to form a narrative aware of the complexities of identity and power. As an addition to the English MMUF field, I contribute the pairing of comics criticism and Black feminist literary criticism to provide an intersectional reading of graphic narratives. Using the superhero comics Shuri (2018) by Nnedi Okorafor and Ironheart (2018) by Eve Ewing, I seek to examine how memories are employed as narrative interjections and sources of identity formation. In looking at superhero stories, I aim to consider genre within graphic narrative, its conventions as well as its new developments. The memories employed in these books interrupt the unfolding action of the story and trouble the line between past and present to provide an alternative means of unraveling conventional narratives of (super)power. The depiction of these memories through time and space on the comics page reveal structures of race, gender, and class that Shuri and Ironheart must and do contend with in their continual assumption of a Black woman superhero identity. These comics, based upon both fantasy and material realities of marginalization, critique racialized structures of power and provide a means to imagine new avenues to power for Black women within, and perhaps even beyond, these structures.
“Surrender to the Air: ‘Free’ Movement and the Ruse of Freedom in Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon (1977)”
Rasheeda Saka, Princeton University ‘20
4:00 PM English and Power
Kohlberg 226
Toni Morrison’s third novel Song of Solomon (1977) is not only a story about a young man, who embarks on a quest journey to the American South: it is also a documentation of the will of characters that produce life and seek freedom in the wake of fraught histories, between the post-Emancipation and pre-Civil Rights period. In this vein, this presentation seeks to think through Song of Solomon as a site of (un)freedom in relation to “free” movement through the body in open spaces. In other words, the project of this paper is to outline how the ruse of freedom is both represented and conveyed to arrive at different conceptions of movement, space, and black subjectivities. Using black spatial geography studies and critical theory of afro-pessimist thought I argue that it is only in moments of stillness or surrender that freedom is attained. I also deploy black feminist theories of the human and “fleshiness” to discuss the affective and discursive practice and representation of “trembling” as an opaque mode of negotiating (un)freedom and capitulation. Looking ahead, this project seeks to consider how recurring representations and motifs of captivity, fugitivity, and (un)freedom are predicated upon the legacies of slavery and colonialism. In doing so, I hope to contribute to the field of black literary studies by problematizing the fixed categories of resistance and freedom to show the complexities of black freedom.
“Stories of the Body”
Summyr-Ann Glover, Bryn Mawr College ‘21
4:00 PM Global History
Kohlberg 228
The body is an instrument that has been used to establish and maintain power in history and in present day. This paper is acknowledging and analyzing the different types of governing bodies that practice making other vessels subservient. Recognizing the vessels being acting on and body that is doing the acting, and solely focusing on the hows and whys gives a more intimate view on power and its meaning.
My research will utilize books on medieval England regarding the social, legal, and religious use of a vessel. Books such as Law, Sex, and Society by James Brundage, From England to France by Willian C. Jordan, and Sexuality in Medieval Europe by Ruth M. Karras are on the aspect of a medieval society do seek on what is and is not allowed based on the social or legal beliefs; however, they do not break down the significance of a show of authority onto an individual’s body, like my paper will cover. My research asks questions on why a certain vessel is targeted or represented in a certain in contrast to another body that is in the same position but is treated differently. For example, if a man were to cheat his wife in 14th century England he will be taken and tried in court, yet if his wife was tried for the same court, she would not be. What does the difference in treatment mean? And can it be seen as an added layer of oppression?
“The Spanish Conquest of the Americas as a Case of Filtered History”
Claudia Ojeda Rexach, Haverford College ‘21
4:00 PM Global History
Kohlberg 228
History serves as a way to continuously revisit, unpack, and analyze the past as new information and theories emerge. It is a filter of information accumulated by sources that are interpreted in different ways by different groups of people. Thus, any historical fact that is known comes from a specific antecedent that at one point had to be studied and interpreted. An event has many sides, perceptions, and meanings to it that can’t be recorded in one way. Often, a specific historical narrative that is widely known is the one that remains in people’s minds and in the history books, even if it may not be the full picture. My research focuses on the story of the Spanish Conquest of the Americas as an important example of the way that history and historical events are filtered is. Using primary and secondary sources, I make distinctions between the traditional stories of the Conquest and other accounts and representations that focus more on the indigenous perspective in order to demonstrate the filtering and manipulation of historical events by those who hold power.
The main example I will use is the meeting between Aztec emperor Montezuma and Spanish Conquistador Hernan Cortés. The traditional story of this conquest says that when Cortés and the Spaniards arrived, Montezuma immediately surrendered to him and let themselves be conquered, portraying the Aztecs as being naïve, childish, and weak. Scholars like Matthew Restall, however, argue that Montezuma welcomed the Spaniards into his kingdom as a strategic way to incorporate them into his vast collection of foreign artifacts. I also use the examples of differing accounts of the meetings between Spaniards and indigenous groups and of indigenous myths and documents that were translated and manipulated by Spaniards. Through these examples and more, this essay shows the ways in which history is filtered down and manipulated by certain people with power who are able to make their accounts the most widely known, despite them not being the complete truth. It also shows the importance of taking into consideration all accounts available in recounting a historical event. My project contributes to the discussion in history about how historians may never know the complete truth about an event that happened and that it’s their job to get as close to the truth as possible using all the evidence available and understanding that more could be uncovered.
“Slavery in the Amazon: Subjugation, Resistance, and Race in Northwestern Brazil”
Leopoldo Solis, Princeton University ‘21
4:00 PM Global History
Kohlberg 228
In academic studies of slavery in Brazil, a narrative has been created which has historically focused on the development of slavery in mainly the Brazilian northeast and southeast, the likes of which served as centers of sugar, coffee, and gold mining from a period that spanned the existence of the institution of slavery itself. However, this regional focus has necessarily excluded the role of slavery in another important region - the Amazon. This work will attempt to give a summary about the development of slavery in the Amazon from the period of Portuguese colonization up until abolition, touching on relevant themes such as: the agricultural production of the Amazon and how it differed from that of other regions; the influence of slavery in local life; the influence of indigenous people, Africans, and the Portuguese in the regional culture; and finally a comparison of slavery in the Amazon with that present in the rest of Brazil during the same time period. This analysis will have as its goal shedding light on the ways in which the indigenous presence in the Amazon influenced the role of and form of slavery of Africans and indigenous people in the region. This work will conclude by paying special attention to the unique aspects of Amazonian slavery, and reinforcing the importance of studies of slavery in the region to have a more complete vision of the diverse manifestations of slavery throughout Brazil and the Americas at large. Ultimately, the Amazon for a more prolonged period than its coastal counterpart regions was uniquely characterized by the confluence of three main ‘roots’ of Brazil: indigenous people, Africans/Afro-Brazilians, and the Portuguese. However, what tied these people more often than not were either their attempts at subjugating, as is the case of the Portuguese, or that of resisting. Ultimately, all parties were shaped by the slowly (and sometimes sporadically) violent nature of colonialism in a way that is specific to the Brazilian Amazon.
“Reshaping Female Sexuality in South Asia and Nationalist Pursuits of Modernity”
Ariba Naqvi, Swarthmore College ‘20
4:00 PM Global History
Kohlberg 228
