Graduate Dissertation Fellows 2006-07
Lalaie Ameeriar (Cultural and Social Anthropology) is writing a dissertation on "Making Globalization Work: Pakistani-Muslim Women and Migration". It explores Pakistani women's experiences of transnationalism and migration. The project has two goals: first, an interrogation of the category "South Asian"; and second an examination of theories of globalization through the lens of gender - how does globalization happen for women. A key focus of examination is the transformation of Islam in diaspora. She asks how we should examine women's experiences as they are informed by Islam which, due to the current political climate, is perceived in the West as being a patriarchal and oppressive tradition? Based on sixteen months of interviews and participant observation with Pakistani-Muslim Canadian women, this study focuses on the juncture between gender, ethnicity, citizenship, Islam, and labor in Canada. (lalaie.ameeriar@stanford.edu)
Kjersten Bunker Whittington (Sociology) studies gender and scientific careers. Her dissertation focuses on the impact of organizational context on male and female scientific productivity. She examines how differences in organizational goals, supply side demands, and the social arrangements and reward incentives of academia and industry contribute to differences in gender disparity across employment sectors and organizational settings. Using qualitative, quantitative and network methodologies, she addresses whether and how the durable gender inequality in science careers is affected by the recent changing boundaries between universities and firms, and the increasing trend to commercialize basic research in academia. (bunker@stanford.edu)
Nicole M. Slovak (Anthropological Sciences) is completing her dissertation entitled, "Examining Imperial Presence on Peru's Central Coast: Isotopic and Cultural Analyses of Middle Horizon Burials at Ancon." Her research combines multiple classes of data, namely skeletal, isotopic and cultural, to determine degrees of interaction between the coast and the ancient imperial Wari polity in the archaeological past. Bioarchaeological information generated from Slovak's study will be used to assess the overall health and status among women in the past, and explore the possibility of institutionalized gender inequality within Ancon society. (nmslovak@yahoo.com)
Sapna Cheryan (Psychology) is working on her dissertation, entitled "Strategies of Belonging: Defending Threatened Identities," which studies the behavior of individuals who deviate from others in their group in some important way. Her work looks at three groups in particular: Asian Americans (who do not resemble the archetypal White American); men whose strength has been challenged; and female engineers (who deviate from the stereotypical male engineer). Cheryan designed a range of experiments to reveal the psychological processes underlying identity threats. Her results demonstrate that, far from passively accepting these identity threats, individuals will actively re-assert a positive identity. Cheryan's work has implications for issues of diversity and inclusion. (scheryan@stanford.edu)
Kari Zimmerman (History) is working on "Women of Independent Means: Property Owners and Entrepreneurs in Rio de Janeiro, 1870-1910". Focusing on female slave holders and small business owners, this project argues that women were found in diverse market activities that substantially influenced the development of Rio de Janeiro's economy at the turn of the twentieth-century. Often overlooked in traditional analyses, women captured a significant portion of the economy in Brazil's former capital. Understanding the circumstances of these female economic agents in light of their social standing, demographic detail and legal status suggest how the role of gender could simultaneously limit and expand opportunities for women in the Brazilian urban market. (kezimm@stanford.edu)
Karen Rapp (Art History) curates the Art at the Institute program.
Jessica Payette (Music) is completing a dissertation entitled, "Exceeding Expectation: A Reception History of Arnold Schoenberg's Erwartung." Erwartung, a "monodrama" composed in 1909 for soprano and orchestra, follows the disoriented course of an unidentified and increasingly delusional woman in pursuit of her departed lover. The work's radical atonal dialect and thematic focus on conflict between the sexes have assured it a position in the musical canon as the quintessential document of musical Expressionism. This study traces the work's reception by a variety of interpretive communities, including composers of art music, film music composers, performance artists, and choreographers, to demonstrate that the monodrama's novel combination of vocal strain with unruly instrumental sonorities initiates the production of a specialized sound culture that repeatedly accompanies exhibitions of female trauma in diverse art forms. (payette@stanford.edu)
Brooke Weddle Ricalde (International and Comparative Education) is conducting dissertation research on the relationship between gender, human capital, social capital, and financial capital in the small business sector of Peru. Women are over-represented in this sector, but continue to have disproportionately less access to financial capital and professional training. Despite having only somewhat less education than men, female small business owners in Lima continue to engage in production that is characterized by low capital requirements, crowding in traditional industries, and comparatively less stable labor arrangements. This means that although Peruvian women have been able to realize greater economic security and independence, their work in the small business sector is primarily survival-based. Ricalde investigates these gender differences by examining how social capital, which generally refers to access to information and resources through relational networks, interacts with human capital to impact the level of income that male and female entrepreneurs derive from their businesses. (bricalde@stanford.edu)
Mukta Sharangpani (Cultural and Social Anthropology) has been involved with women's rights work for over fifteen years, as an artist, an activist, and an academic. Drawing from interviews, participant observation, and life histories, her dissertation examine people's perceptions of violence and the way they map their own intimate experiences upon such perceptions. The primary question she asks is: What might be at stake for middle class men and women in Mumbai, India in recognizing and naming their own violent family experiences as domestic abuse? By shifting the study of domestic violence from the discourse of rights and re-framing it within discourses of power, Sharangpani calls for a re-conceptualization of violence and argues that marital violence and class intersect in very crucial ways and that class membership affects the way that violence is named and framed. Abusive behavior is learned behavior and children who witness abuse often become abusive themselves. A key motivator for this project is to understand systemic and cultural causes of violence in order to develop strategic preventive models rather than those that focus solely on intervention. (mukta@stanford.edu)
Michelle Zamora (Modern Thought and Literature Program) studied transnational feminisms at the New School for Social Research where she received her M.A. in Gender Studies and Feminist Theory. Zamora's dissertation work examines understandings of female knowledge and leadership in Mexica tradition and culture. Zamora's work traces a genealogy of ideas about the body's relationship to spirit, as well as art/performance as energy movement, from the precolombian Indigenous painted books of Central Mexico to their expression in current MeChicano/MeXicano cultural productions including Danza Azteca, and Chicana-Indígena visual and literary arts. She was previously the Honors and Writing Mentor for the Feminist Studies Program, and will be teaching a Feminist Studies class in Winter Quarter. (zamoram@stanford.edu)
Graduate Dissertation Fellows 2005-06