Center for the Arts and Humanities

Julianna Blair Watson (Modern Languages and Literatures), "Unheard Voices, Unknown Faces: Raoul Peck and Transnational Black Consciousness"

Blair’s project examines aesthetics of self-representation across Anglophone and Francophone Africa and their diasporas in the cinema of Raoul Peck. Through a transnational, transcultural and translingual reading of Peck’s films on Haiti, the Congo, Rwanda, and the U.S., the project argues that Peck enacts a new mode of representing Blackness, enabling each iteration of the African diaspora to speak its own (hi)stories to and through one another. This cinematic dialogue performs a transnational Black consciousness that defies borders and creates a space for justice and contrapuntal responses to anti-Blackness narratives. Click here to learn more about Blair.

Sonia Gomez (History), "A Gendered Diaspora: Intimacy and Empire in the Making of Japanese America, 1908-1952" This book project explores the complicated and changing race and gender logics that alternately excluded and included Japanese women in the United States. It demonstrates how intimacy (marriage) and empire (immigration policies) intersect in the making of Japanese America in the Twentieth Century, and discusses how marriage -- as a contested mode of immigrant incorporation -- shaped the process of immigration and settlement for women and their families. To learn more about Professor Gomez and her fellow's project, read the Q&A with her at her profile.

Tony Hazard (Ethnic Studies), "Afro-Indigeneity, Family Remembrance, and The Narragansett of Rhode Island" Tony’s project emerges from research into his indigenous Narragansett ancestors of Rhode Island, leading back six generations to James Monroe Hazard II (1825-1908) who appears on the original federal tribal roll of 1881. He explores this moment of “detribalization” (1880s) to uncover the contours and legacies of the racial logics of enslavement and colonialism that animated state and federal policy toward the Narragansett people in the 20thcentury. Additionally, he examines the inconsistent “racial” categorization of my Narragansett ancestors during this period, as the Narragansett people continued to define themselves and their own indigeneity within this context of settler violence and erasure.

Amy Lueck (English), "Indigenous Remembrance of the Winchester Mystery House" On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Winchester Mystery House’s public opening in 1923, Amy’s project is an examination of public memory at this local attraction, with a focus on indigenous representation and remembrance at this site. Exploring the role of local and national indigenous history in the legends and contemporary experience of this site, I want to use this project to encourage public audiences to recognize the deeply layered and entangled histories of such memory sites, and to critically examine the role of whiteness and settler colonialism in animating such stories. Click here to learn more about Amy and the inspiration for the project.

Lee Panich (Anthropology), "Insurgent California: Native Resistance and the Collapse of the Missions" This collaborative project examines Native Californian resistance during the final decade of the mission system. Though overshadowed by the annexation of California by the United States in 1846, the period between 1835 and 1845 was one in which Native people in the San Francisco Bay region fought to retain their lands and livelihoods as the previous colonial system crumbled around them. Work during the fellowship period will focus on the translation of primary documents and community outreach to contextualize the liberation movement of the late mission period with continued Ohlone activism today.

Mukta Sharangpani (Women's and Gender Studies), "Aging Across Borders: Towards an Ethnography of Loss and Hope" Mukta Sharangpani is an anthropologist whose work is situated at the junctures of kinship, modernity and mobility.Her project examines the shifting scapes of family-making among South Asian Bay Area multigenerational families. It centers the experiences of later life immigrants who, propelled by the uncertainties and anxieties brought about by the pandemic, have recently left their own homes and lands to join their children. Through their narratives of mourning and yearning, unsettling and resettling, forgetting and remembering, it highlights the coping strategies they deploy as they move across borders, and considers what avenues exist for them to find meaning, hope, and joy in this new and often final phase of their lives. As first generation immigrant and caregiver to her elderly parents, Mukta Sharangpani is drawn to this project at a personal as well as intellectual level. 

An exciting part of these projects is how they will engage with student, faculty, and community partners. Stay tuned for more details about these collaborations.