IDA Student Fellows 2003-2004

Anna Letitia Mumford, Class of 2005, is from Olympia Washington. She is a double major in Urban Studies and Feminist Studies with a focus on the intersections of hierarchies of oppression.

At Stanford Anna has spent her time working in the student labor movement and creating socially conscience art. She has served as a coordinator for the Stanford Labor Action Coalition and worked as a union organizer for SEIU Local 715
Last May Anna was of the six students who fasted during seven-day hunger strike to improve labor practices at Stanford. As a disabled person, Anna likes to think that her visual impairment has given her the opportunity to create visual art from a unique perspective. Although Anna uses a variety of artistic mediums from printmaking and collage to installation and performance art, her favorite medium is large-scale mural painting because of its accessibility to the public. At Stanford she has painted a mural in the Women’s Community Center and another mural in the Tressidder Coffee House. Anna has participated in IDA for the last two years in an installation workshop lead by Mildred Howard and a video documentary workshop with Spencer Nagasako. This year she will assist with IDA artist Celia Rodriguez’s installation workshop.

Cristóbal Goa, Class of 2004, is of Venezuelan ethnicity, but has lived most of his life in Tappan, NY, in the suburbs of NYC. He is a senior majoring in Mathematics, and currently applying to medical school. He transferred from the University of Pennsylvania to Stanford in the fall of 2002, and has loved being at Stanford ever since.
Last year at Stanford, Cristóbal acted in three dramatic productions on campus, including Ollin, directed by Daniel Valdez in his workshop through the Institute for Diversity in the Arts. Cristóbal played Hernán Cortez, the conqueror of Mexico, in this interpretation of Daniel’s poem about the period surrounding the conquest. He also acted in Measure for Measure, by William Shakespeare, and in The Wheel, written and directed by Arden Thomas for her graduate one-act. The Wheel dealt with issues of transsexual/transgender people in society and incorporated dance and movement into dramatic scenes. Cristóbal has also been in numerous student films both at Stanford, and at NYU.

Cristóbal is very interested in finding the best way for him to effect social change in our ever-changing world, and he has decided that his path lies through medicine. However, he loves to act, and has experienced first-hand the power that theater can have over the audience and the actors in the struggle for equality and independence. Cristóbal will assist artist Rhodessa Jones with her Creative Performance, Creative Survival workshop.

Caroline Kuntz, Class of 2004, originally from the Seattle area, attended high school in Northern England. She is a Comparative
Studies in Race and Ethnicity major with an interest in hybrid performative arts and the formation of identities for women of color and artists of mixed race. Caroline is a writer and performer of theatre, dance, and spoken word. She has interned at Youth Speaks in San Francisco as well as La Peña Cultural Center in Berkeley where she helped coordinate their annual performative arts festival, Hecho en Califas. She formerly served as El Centro Chicano's publicity coordinator, and is also a founding member of the Stanford chapter of Sigma Theta Psi, Inc., a multicultural interest sorority. Last year, Caroline served as an IDA fellow assisting choreographer Joanna Haigood and will return again this year to assist Marc Bamuthi Joseph.

Sarita Pando Ocón, Class of 2004, is originally from Southern California. At the age of seven, Sarita and her family relocated to Salt Lake City, Utah, where she grew up and lived for fourteen years. Sarita is thrilled to share her Senior year at Stanford with her family who recently moved to the Bay Area.
Sarita is majoring in Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity with a thematic focus on the intersections of public policy in racial and ethnic communities. She is very excited to be part of the IDA team after having the opportunity to participate in the program her sophomore year.
Sarita's passion and experience lie within the theater and visual arts. Not only does her work transcend on the stage but also in her acrylic paintings, installation art and photography. Last spring, Sarita painted a new mural at Stanford's Latino/Chicano theme dorm, Casa Zapata. The mural encompasses the importance of familia. This is the second mural, which she has directed and painted.

She recently interned at Latino Public Broadcasting (LPB) and the American Film Institute (AFI). Through the mediums of film, theater and the visual arts, Sarita hopes to continue her artistic and acting endeavors within the professional world after graduating from Stanford. She will be assisting artist Celia Rodriguez in the IDA program this year.

Roopa Mahadevan, Class of 2005, was born in San Jose and has lived there all her life. She is junior majoring in biological sciences. Raised in a culturally diverse environment, she has always been interested in the notion of ethnic identity. Roopa's understanding of her own East Indian American identity has largely been a factor of her love for art. She strongly believes in art's duality as an aesthetic entity and cultural signifier. She is especially interested in the evolution of artistic traditions in the face of multiculturalism and globalization.

Her personal artistic passion lies strongly in the Indian Classical Arts. For the past 13 years, she has been training in Bharathanatyam, a South Indian Classical dance form, under Indumathy Ganesh of Nrithyollassa Dance Academy. Over the last 10 years, she has undergone training in Carnatic Music, a South Indian Classical music form, under Asha Ramesh, of the Ragamalika School of Music.
In 1999, she was awarded a grant for vocal music training from the California Arts Council to participate in their traditional arts master apprenticeship program. Since then, in 2002 and 2003, she has won first place in the national music competition organized by the Cleveland Music Festival in vocal music for song rendition and improvisation. She has also performed Bharathanatyam at the Ethnic Dance Festival, Asian Arts Festival, in numerous community events/temples, and in a dance tour through India. Here at Stanford, Roopa is a member of Everyday People a cappella. She was also a singer and actor in the play "The Natural Man," directed by Harry Elam and is an active participant as a singer and dancer in cultural shows organized by Sanskriti, Stanford's South Asian student organization. Last year, through the IDA program, Roopa was a narrator and dance choreographer in Daniel Valdez's Ollin. This year, Roopa will assist Ka'ala Carmack's workshop.