Student Profiles

Franky Abbott
fabbott@emory.edu
20th century African-American migration and southern identity. Areas of focus include return South migration, and African and Haitian immigration to the American South since 1970

Folashade Alao
falao@emory.edu
19th and 20th Century African American Literary and Cultural Studies, African American Migration History, and Post-colonial literary studies; the research engages in a literary study of migration, which chronicles lieux de mèmoire or sites of memory, the impact of ethnicity and race on migratory experiences and destinations, and the function of mythic memory as a way of interpreting and resurrecting marginalized cultural histories; the dissertation is entitled, "African Roots/American Routes: Migration, Memory, and Place Identification in African American Sea Islands' Texts

Jere Alexander
jalexa5@emory.edu
Ethnography of dogfighting in the U.S. South; history of representations of pit bull dogs in popular culture, film, and literature; critical and feminist legal analysis of breed-specific legislation and animal welfare laws; posthuman theory

Claudette Anderson
caander@emory.edu
Research explores the cognitive relationship between healing rituals and narratives; drawing on ethnomedical anthropology, cognitive linguistics and African-derived religion, seeks to illuminate how stories about healing are also texts about shared patterns of thinking and behaving; and how rituals serve as cognitive manifestations of worldview. Through an engagement with the Jamaican healing tradition of Balm, examines how language and rituals reflect individual Jamaican thought as well as conventions and schemas in Jamaican culture.  Work is an investigation into what it means to be ill, and conversely what constitutes healing; and addresses the question of how rituals as well as stories of healing told by both healers and patients reflect, construct, validate and violate ideas about sickness and healing

Melissa Anderson
cmande4@emory.edu
The evolution of cultural narratives that represent difference, both mental and physical, as monstrous and grotesque" in a variety of media including "literature, film, photography, television, advertising, non-fiction, and political propaganda

Camila Aschner Restrepo
caschne@emory.edu
Performance Studies, theater and politics, cultural history of the ninetheenth and twentieth century in Latin America. Comparative studies in carnival and festivities. Interested also in cultural policies and public scolarship

Chante' Baker
ccbaker3@emory.edu
Twentieth-Century African-American Literature; Explorations of race, region, and representation in the writings of African-American writers; Currently studying the works of Ernest J. Gaines and his depiction of African-Americans, especially black males, in the rural south

Zeb Baker
szbaker@emory.edu
Focuses on the cultural and intellectual history of the 20th century American South, especially those cultural narratives through which college football became an agent of regional identity politics

Mary Battle
marybattle@yahoo.com
American Studies and History (especially oral history); research focuses on the impact of various forms of tourism as an industry on communities in the American South, especially in representations of race and class in historical and cultural tourism on the South Carolina coast

Stephen Bransford
sbransf@emory.edu
Documentary Studies, American Vernacular Music History, Video Production

Harold Braswell
haroldbraswell@hotmail.com
Via research in disability studies and continental philosophy; to expand our understanding of bioethical issues, particularly euthanasia and assisted suicide; exploring how a consideration of bioethics might contribute to the discussion of topics in philosophy, political theory, gender studies, and the anthropology of violence

Jean Paul Cauvin
pyjpclk@yahoo.com
Twentieth Century Programs in Ontology, particularly the work of Deleuze, Badiou and Laruelle; History and Theory of Aesthetics, particularly nineteenth and early twentieth century french theories of the imagination

Susan Chen
stchen@learnlink.emory.edu
Cultural anthropology, visual culture analysis, and Asian Studies focused on the Trans-Himalayan formations of Tibetan identity

Ajit Chittambalam
achitta@emory.edu
Philosophies of nonviolence of Gandhi and King as a practical strategy as well as a theoretical response to violence and oppression

Brittney Cooper
bccoope@leanlink.emory.edu
Changing concepts of the "race woman" in 20th century African-American literature, culture and politics; specifically the work of Shreveport, LA based clubwoman and fraternal leader Cora M. Allen; hip hop feminism

Elizabeth Daley
iconoclassy@gmail.com
The relationship between American spiritual tradition and cosmetic surgery and body image. Other interest include spiritual autobiography, popular culture and history of technology.

Kwesi DeGraft-Hanson
kdegraf@emory.edu
Identifying what he is terming "Landscapes of Slavery"; interested in extricating enslaved's narratives from, and envisioning these Landscapes; through interdisciplinary research, and design, his ultimate interest is to advocate for and propose a befitting commemoration to those who endured enslavement.

Stephen Dominick
stephen.dominick@gmail.com
Interested in exploring the explicit and implicit structures and/or beliefs, especially in relation to personal identity, that condition volitional action; hoping to approach this topic by engaging theories of identity construction and action in phenomenology, cognitive science, and Tibetan Buddhism and examining how these theories account for social agency and the mechanisms of social domination and reproduction.

Shlomit Ritz Finkelstein
shlomit@mindspring.com
Drawing on philosophy of mind, cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and linguistics, will be seeking to understand the relations among language, culture, and brain by studying coprolalia, the involuntary cursing that afflicts some Tourette Syndrome patients

Kazumi Hasegawa
khasega@emory.edu
Historical relationship between African-Americans and Japanese in the 19th and 20th centuries, particularly the influences of black philosophy/education to the nation-building of Japan

Josef Horacek
jhorace@emory.edu
Examines the cultural and political implications embedded in the theory and practice of literary translation. His English translations of modern Czech poetry have appeared in New American Writing and elsewhere

Ju-Hwan Kim
jkim42@learnlink.emory.edu
Research interest include postcolonialism, Orientalism, U.S. Military and Cultural Imperialism in Asia, Asian American History/Culture, intersection of race, gender, sexuality, and nation 

Aukje Kluge
aukje_kluge@yahoo.com
Relationship between cigarette smoking and self-medication

Mashadi Matabane
mashadi_matabane@verizon.net
Interested in studying overlooked representations of blackness, especially black bicultural identity in the United States and the wider African Diaspora

Elizabeth Milewicz
emilewi@emory.edu
Investigates the academic library culture using methods and theories from linguistic anthropology and sociology and background in library science; the dissertation will examine the soundscape and architecture of academic libraries in the digital age

Manuel-Julian R. Montoya
mrmonto@emory.edu
Foreign Relations and Comparative Literature; world literature, modern political philosophy, world systems theory; media literacy, magic realism, aesthetics, and global structures

Charles Muiru Ngugi
cngugi@emory.edu
Media studies, popular culture, constitutionalism, community and nationalism

Kenneth Terrance Oliver
kolive2@emory.edu
Black male homosexuals; identity formation; masculinities; race, class, and gender oppression

Angela Ragan
raganangela@hotmail.com
20th Century Native American History; area of focus is Native American participation in the United States Military and the collection of Native American veterans' oral histories

Aruna Ramachandran
aramac@emory.edu
Late 19th and early 20th century arts and crafts discourses in India; interested in examining processes of commoditization and the creation of value in the emergent sector of
"decorative arts" production in the subcontinent during this period, and the ways in which these discourses were appropriated into the nationalist movement in the early 20th century; research forms part of a wider interest in visual and material culture, museum studies, the
anthropology of art, and postcolonial historiography

Katherine Rawson
kerawso@emory.edu
Explores foodways: how food consumption and production relates to the formation of individual and social identities, and how people use food to negotiate power structures.

Leah Rosenberg
larosen@emory.edu
Explores the relationship between memory, mourning and television viewership of September 11, 2001

Anne Sinkey
asinkey@learnlink.emory.edu
Social movement rhetorics, feminist and queer theory; the dissertation argues that queer theory is indebted to a tradition whose rhetorical strategies, exemplified by the manifesto, contributed to the aestheticization and ubiquity of identity politics

Emiko Soltis
lsoltis@emory.edu
Music and soft power in the human rights movement

Theresa Starkey
tstarke@emory.edu
Interested in popular representations of women who have committed real or imagined crimes, and how their stories (and bodies) are treated, translated and consumed

Kyoko Taniguchi
ktanigu@emory.edu
Comparative Literature, Psychoanalytic Studies, Women's Studies; representations of "the maternal" in literature, examining them through Japanese and Western psychoanalytic understanding of motherhood; "Amae" (dependency, attachment); Japanese mountain witch (yamamba) legend

Brenda Tindal
btindal@learnlink.emory.edu
Black Power as a distinct genre of activism and its influence on women in the South; particularly interested in the manifestation of the Charlotte Three, the Winston-Salem Chapter of the Black Panther Party, and the Wilmington Ten. These Black Power constituencies serve as models of the maturation of Black Power in North Carolina from 1968 through 1980, and prompt new discussions about southern womanhood, and women's participation in “revolutionary" and/or "subversive" political activity"

Lynn Tinley
lynntinley@comcast.net
Research focuses on material culture of 17th and 18th century England and America, especially as related to textiles, women’s education, and religion. A further specialization is Quakerism and early Quaker samplers

Sarah Toton
stoton@emory.edu
Study of new media; social histories of technology; scholarly communication and web publishing; internet-based fan communities; dissertation will examine popular representations of technology in twentieth century America

Anna Vandenberg
avanden@emory.edu
Age Studies (Narratives), Medical Anthropology of Aging, Social Gerontology. Investigating acting as a possible intervention for compressing morbidity (dementia)

Stewart Varner
rsvarne@emory.edu
Globalization and Culture/Subjectivity, Critical Theory and the Rhetoric of Urban Change in Atlanta, 1996-2006

Lillien Waller
lwalle2@emory.edu
The relation between modernist aesthetic movements in the Americas and France, with an emphasis on Suzanne Césaire and Negritude between the world wars; interests include poetry as a political mode in modernity and the art and literary avant-gardes

Kira Walsh
kwalsh6@emory.edu
The intersection between psychology and literature, specifically in regard to Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis. Interests include reader response theory, the psychological novel, the psychology of creative writing

Philip Webb
pwebb@emory.edu
How bourgeois social and political anxieties about the impact of modernization are represented in shifting mythic symbols of a new homeless subject

Betty Woodman
bwoodma@emory.edu
Interdisciplinary, philosophically-framed, theoretical examination of the relationship between socialized gender ideology and questions of social freedom and peace in general

Haipeng Zhou
hzhou6@emory.edu
Representations of Asia in the US; the interconnection between Chinese and American culture; American experience in China during the first half of the twentieth century; long-term American sojourners in China and their reaction to different social orders and systems