2015 Grant Recipients

Summary of Graduate Grant Projects

• Theresa Gildner, PhD candidate, Department of Anthropology, Abstract: Lifestyle change, hormone levels, and parasitic disease risk among the Shuar in Ecuador—This study examines how hormone levels and economic change influence parasitic infection by comparing rural and urban areas with respect to testosterone profiles and parasite load as part of the Shuar Health and Life History Project. The results will clarify associations between lifestyle change, hormone levels, and parasitic disease risk and will also help target public health strategies and produce knowledge that will be used to help alleviate the physical suffering of participant communities.

• Julia Gómez, PhD candidate, Department of Comparative Literature, Abstract: Latin American Iconicities of Absence: A Cognitive Poetic Approach to Mirtha Dermisache’s “Unreadable” Books—Gómez will visit Argentine conceptual artist Mirtha Dermisache’s book archives in Buenos Aires. “Her ‘unreadable’ books allow us to bridge the study of Latin American artistic and cultural expressions to the concrete, empirical situations that give rise to literature. To engage her work, I draw from cognitive processes described by cognitive science and extend these considerations to hybrid visual and poetic forms. My approach helps to explain how viewers’ perception of the unmarked space in Dermisache’s book productions stimulates the socially located, embodied mind toward a subsequent interpretive response—one that distinguishes Latin American conceptual writing’s tenets from those stemming from North American practices.”

• Ricardo Valencia, PhD candidate, School of Journalism and Communication (Media Studies), Abstract: Who’s telling the ‘crisis’? Examining Latino and Non-Latino sources in journalistic coverage of immigrant children on the U.S. border—This research will examine the journalistic coverage of the flow of immigrant children in U.S. newspapers.

Summary of Faculty Collaborative Research

• June Black (JSMA), Carlos Aguirre (History), and Stephanie Wood (WHP), Abstract: Art and Human Rights in Latin America—This project seeks to examine how artists have responded to human rights abuses in Latin America and along the border between Mexico and the U. S. during the 20th and 21st centuries. The project will eventually include an exhibition at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art (JSMA) scheduled to be on view from September 2016 through September 2017 with related public programming; a UO course (to be offered during the 2016–17 academic year); related films during the Cinema Pacific film festival (spring 2017); and an edited volume with a website for additional digital content.