Congratulations to the Summer 2019 C.V. Starr Fund for A/P/A Research Awardees!
Kathryn Q. Mantele (graduate student, NYU Graduate School of Arts & Science ’19) will conduct research for her master’s thesis on Asian adoption to the United States, and ideas of race/racialization, identity, memory via photographs, and kinship formation. The project will consider pop cultural images, histories of war, imperialism, and geopolitics, and position the Asian adoptee within the larger context of Asian American and Asian diasporic history.
Aine Nakamura (graduate student, NYU Gallatin ’20) will travel to Park City, Utah in June 2019 to present her voice and body movement works, pieces on war and prayer, at the VU Symposium on experimental, electronic, and improvised music. Nakamura’s art works represent her “stance against violence,” and are informed by the history of World War II, and Japanese colonialism in Asia.
Deborah Ni (graduate student, NYU Steinhardt ’19)’s master’s thesis, “Solidarity Activism: Race, Power, and the Future of Food Justice,” focuses on methods of solidarity within the food justice movement, and the articulation of race and power across different sectors. Ni will travel to investigate historical case studies including the uprisings organized by Asian migrant sugar plantation workers in post-World War II Hawai’i, and the 1968 Black Panther Party’s boycott of Safeway grocery stores in support of the United Farm Workers. She will also consider the solidarity work of contemporary food justice organizations like Soul Fire Farm Institute (SFF) and Freedom, Inc.
Isa A. Spoerry (graduate student, NYU Graduate School of Arts & Science ’20) will pursue community-engaged ethnographic research for her master’s thesis, “The Hand That Fed Me: Food, Memory, and Resilience in the Diasporas of Sri Lanka.” The project explores the experiences of Sri Lankan diasporic communities in New York through the politics of language, intergenerational memory, and food.
The C.V. Starr Fund for Asian/Pacific/American Student Research is available by application to NYU students and scholars working on academic and/or community projects with particular emphasis on the New York metropolitan region. The goal of this Fund is to promote a convergence of theory and practice in A/P/A Studies and its related fields by providing financial support for research expenses and/or conference participation. Learn more and apply.