2009 Friedman Grants

Katherine Allan

History

Award Amount: $470

"Fightin' Words: Country Music in the Vietnam War"

"My project analyzed the current lack of historiography surrounding country music songs written specifically about the Vietnam War from 1965-1975.  Receiving the Friedman award allowed me to travel to Nashville, TN in May of 2009 to present my thesis, 'Fightin' Words: Country Music and the Vietnam War' at the International Country Music Conference."

Kimberly Greene

Doctoral Student in Musicology

Award Amount: $1,360

"Aesthetic Cultural Extremism and the Massacre of Twentieth-Century Musical Production"

"It is the intention of this project to investigate the premise that the aesthetic cultural extremism exerted through the musical endeavors of Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) and his followers, commonly referred to as the Second Viennese School, shattered the musical foundation of German Romanticism through the incorporation of serialist and atonal techniques and erected an impermeable divide between serious music and the music intended for mass-consumption; resulting in the marginalization of concert attendees that endures even today."

Originating from trans-disciplinary studies at CGU, the project and the accompanying paper were augmented and completed through research conducted at the libraries of Harvard University.

Nicole James

Art

Award Amount: $2,120

"The Dyke Nod Project"

This a film exploring "Feminine Lesbians within the Lesbian community...I decided to ask the coordinators of popular lesbian events to allow me to conduct interviews of their guests...I attended the events and solicited patrons as they were entering the events hosted by Ebony Droke, Mishelle Ramos and Ros Renfro...One goal of the film was also to represent women in academia.  For this I enlisted the help of Dr. Pearlie Baluyut, (Ph.D. Art History UCLA, Associate Professor Cal State San Bernardino)...I filmed 80 interviews and spent an average of 10 hours a week filming and 13 hours editing."

Shayda Kafai

Cultural Studies

Award Amount: $1,360

The Woman Who Dreamed the Fish

This is "an ethnographic book-length project entitled The Woman Who Dreamed the Fish.  This book gives voice to the female Iranian diaspora living in Los Angeles."

Tara Prescott

Doctoral Student in English Literature

Award Amount: $1,813

Dissertation research at the Beinecke Library, Sterling Library, and Yale Art Gallery.

"I was able to conduct my first archival research trip to Yale University in order to view artwork and manuscripts for my dissertation, 'A 'Lyric Elixir': The Search for Identity in Mina Loy.'  For two weeks, I worked at the Beinecke library from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. every day, poring through typescripts, letters, notes, drawings, manuscripts, and fragments."

Bryan Price

Doctoral Student in History

Award Amount: $750

Participation in the seminar "Conservatism, Religion, and History" at the School of Criticism and Theory at Cornell University.  The seminar provided research and information for a paper on T.S. Eliot, which will be presented at the annual conference of the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association in August.

"The paper I have in mind will not merely be a microhistory, but also an intellectual biography of a compact moment in time: Eliot's rapid tour of California.  In it, I plan to use Los Angeles as a context, and also to explore it as a subject, locating it in the world via Eliot's experience.  In this way I can explore Eliot's political thought against the backdrop of not just a city he seemed to have detested, but also a country--the country of his origin--whose common creed he was in the midst of attacking."

Cynthia Scott

Doctoral Student in History

Award Amount: $750

Research funding for forthcoming paper, "Contesting the Memory of Colonialism: Cultural Property Restitution in an Era of Post-Colonial Ethics"

"In my research I have been focusing on documentary sources relating to organizational activities within the United Nations General Assembly, UNESCO, the International Council of Museums, the Non-Aligned Movement, the International Association of Art Critics, and several museums in Europe, Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia."

Karen Beth Strovas

Doctoral Student in English Literature

Award Amount: $907

Research funding for periodical length article, "Memories of Sleep: Film and Trauma."

"This paper analyzes the ways in which the trope of the sleeping female developed during early decades of film. First, I explore the ways in which male authority figures in Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Lang’s The Blue Gardenia similarly prevent the major female characters in the narratives from understanding the memories of their own traumas. Analysis of the role of trauma and psychoanalysis in Hitchcock’s Marnie provides a useful contrast to Caligari and Blue Gardenia. All three films showcase a patriarchal system of power that attempts to control female memory and the mental instability that proceeded from the attack.

Secondly, I analyze the relationship between sleep and memory in these three films, and in film noir more broadly. My analysis of scenes depicting the sleeping or fainting female concludes that directors of noir use sleep in order to deny visual sight or identification of approaching danger, which translates into an unreliable memory during post-traumatic stress. Furthermore, noir incorporates sleep as a means to deny females authority over their own bodies. The loss of authority over the body and memory, due to the unconscious nature of sleep, contributes to the overall landscape of fear evoked in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The Blue Gardenia, and Marnie."

Scott Strovas

Doctoral Student in Musicology

Award Amount: $1,360

"Intuitive Process and Compositional Design in the Music of John Adams: A Literary Perspective"

"As one of America's foremost contemporary composers, John Adams has attained as large a following as new concert music might permit. But while many have cited his identifiably American aesthetic, socio-political awareness, and bright, consonant musical model as the reasons for his success, few have acknowledged the extent to which Adams cultivates his audience through literary contexts. This project, which has now evolved into my dissertation, "Commonplaces: Literature and Rhetoric in the Orchestral Compositions of John Adams," examines the ways Adams uses various literary texts, from poetry and fiction to historical monographs and aesthetic essays, to create an interpretive foundation for his listeners, and thus bridge the cultural divide between his instrumental music and contemporary audiences."