2013 SHASS Research Fund recipients
The SHASS Research Fund supports research in the humanities, arts, or social sciences that shows promise of making an important contribution to the proposed area of activity.
The 2013 Recipients
Manduhai Buyandelger | Assistant Professor of Anthropology
Support for research to explore practices of violence in Mongolia that enable the exclusion of women from the political sphere. Against the background of postsocialist transformation and incipient neoliberal capitalism in Mongolia, Buyandelger's research will describe the conditions under which a new form of patriarchal post-sociliast state has emerged. The work will result in a new book, to be titled The Evidence of Things Not Seen: Gender, Election Strategies, and Neoliberal Capitalism in Mongolia.
Fred Harris | Director of MIT Wind Ensembles, Lecturer in Music
Support for a preliminary work to create a fifty-minute documentary film about conductor-composer Stanislaw Skrowaczewski. The film will build on Harris's recently released book Seeking the Infinite, the Musical Life of Stanislaw Skrowaczewski. The project will generate a seven-minute sample reel and advance the process of developing collaborators for production, release, and distribution of a film.
Mark Harvey | Lecturer in Music
Support for a new recording of Harvey's original large-scale jazz compositions, many recorded live in performance at MIT by the Aardvark Jazz Orchestra. The CD, containing some of Harvey's finest compositional work to date, is to be released as part of the celebration of Aardvark's 40th season (2012-2013).
Graham Jones | Assistant Professor of Anthropology
Support for a project to research how the Chinese acrobatic tradition connects the aesthetics of dicsiplined bodies with the power of a central state and the global ambitions of a rising superpower. Graham's resulting book will offer new ways of thinking about skill in performance, perspective on the politics of culture within contemporary China, and on Chinese cultural diplomacy abroad.
Keeril Makan | Associate Professor of Music
To support the recording of Dream Lightly, with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project. This endeavor will result in a compact disc presenting four to five original compositions for orchestra.
Clapperton Mavhunga | Assistant Professor of Science, Technology and Society
Support for research and interviews (in South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Mozambiquea) for a new book, The Black Bvekenyas: Four Generation of an African Hunting Family. The book traces the history of science, environment, medicine and politics in Zimbabwe (1900-present day) through the biography of four generations of a biracial family of famous hunters.
Jeff Ravel | Professor of History
Support for continued work with HyperStudio on the Comédie-Française Registers Project. This project is developing tools to enhance research in seventeenth and eighteenth century French theater practices. When complete it will provide access to unique records for the period. The creation of a searchable online platform, combined with advanced visualization tools will dramatically augment the scope of research in the field.
Jay Scheib | Associate Professor of Theater Arts
To support design development, rehearsal and presentation of the world premiere performance of "World of Wires," a work adapted for the stage, based on Rainer Werner Fassbiner's film adaptation of Daniel Galouye's novel Simulacron-3. Capping six years of development, "World of Wires" is the third and final installment in a trilogy titled "Simulated Cities/Simulated Systems."
Elizabeth Wood | Professor of History
Research for A Man Like Putin: Masculinity and Power in Russia, an in-progress book on the workings of power in post-Soviet Russia, including how a ruler's image-making can obscure and undermine policy in a contested space, and the creation of a complex masculine persona as a substitute for ideology.
More about the SHASS Research Fund
