Faculty Research Awards Fall 2023
SMALL GRANT AWARDS
SMALL GRANT AWARDS ARE FOR $10,000 OR LESS.
Professor Ashley Carter
Department of Physics and Astronomy
Title: The Physics of DNA Folding
Professor Carter will use her FRAP grant to study the physics of DNA folding. DNA is present in every organism on the planet. In many organisms, DNA is folded so tightly within a cell that an impressive series of biological motors, regulators, remodelers, and recruiters must work together to open the DNA and “read” the DNA sequence. That means that changes in the physical packing or folding of the DNA can be just as important as changes in the DNA sequence itself. In her research, Professor Carter is seeking to understand how DNA is folded within the cell by asking fundamental questions about the forces, energies, and structural states needed to fold the DNA. Answers to these basic science questions will be important in biophysics, nanotechnology, fertility, genetics, medicine, and materials science.
Professor Catherine Ciepiela
Department of Russian
Title: Oxford Handbook of Russian Poetry
The Oxford Handbook of Russian Poetry, the first of its kind in the field, aims to reassess the canon, bringing new critical vocabularies and voices to the study of Russian poetry. During the three decades since the fall of the Soviet Union, Russian poetry has flourished, absorbing a vast range of styles and modes from world literature and from its own repressed archive. The Handbook gathers some forty essays by American, Russian and European scholars and poets. The editors of this volume (Catherine Ciepiela, Amherst; Luba Golburt, Berkeley; and Stephanie Sandler, Harvard) find it especially urgent to assess these developments as this work comes under threat from the Putin regime.
Professor Jill Miller
Department of Biology
Title: Genetic Marker Development and Reproductive Isolation in an Undescribed Plant Species
Lycium sp. ‘De Hoop’ is a distinct yet undescribed taxon in the plant genus Lycium restricted to the Western Cape of South Africa. Professor Miller’s project will use restriction-site associated DNA sequencing to generate variable genetic markers and assess DNA content (and thus ploidy level) and sexual system expression in this putative new species. Newly developed genetic markers will be leveraged to investigate genetic structure across the natural range of the lineage and infer contemporary patterns of gene flow among closely related species. In addition to the generation of new genetic resources, this project will contribute DNA content and ploidy estimates for this taxon, which can contribute to an understanding of gene flow between emerging polyploids and their diploid progenitors. Chromosome number (ploidy) is an important feature that often restricts reproduction, as individuals with different chromosome numbers are typically not interfertile. Thus, this project will contribute to an understanding of how ploidy level and sexual expression contribute to reproductive isolation and speciation.
Professor Jonathan Obert
Department of Political Science
Title: Origins of Gun Rights: An Economic Perspective
This project entails the construction of the largest and most comprehensive dataset of historical gunmakers available. This data, which includes the names, dates, and biographical information of both firms and individuals involved in the arms trade over the past five centuries, is part of Professor Obert’s larger research effort to try to understand the role of the arms industry in the construction of gun rights movements and discourse.
Professor Krupa Shandilya
Department of Sexuality, Women’s and Gender Studies
Title: Urdu Poetry and Politics in Contemporary India
Professor Shandilya will use her FRAP award to complete research for her ongoing book project, “Urdu Poetry and Politics in Contemporary India.” One of the fundamental concerns of her book is the repression of Muslims and the erosion of their rights in the context of growing Hindu nationalism or Hindutva in today’s India. Professor Shandilya argues that the performance of revolutionary Urdu poetry in recent progressive Bombay cinema (2014–2020) and public protests (2019–2020) creates a new discourse of belonging for Muslims and other religious, caste, class, and sexual minorities anchored in the imaginative terrain of poetry, challenging their legal and political marginalization by right-wing forces.
Professor Jessica Wolpaw Reyes
Department of Economics
Title: Abolition Economics
Professor Reyes will use her FRAP grant to support work on the development of a new subfield of economics—Abolition Economics—which aims to bring critical race theory into conversation with radical economics. This project involves uncovering the neoliberal ideological frameworks of mainstream economics, introducing interdisciplinary abolitionist perspectives, and building/ imagining a new radical economics that offers greater potential for human thriving. The FRAP grant will support this work in two complementary ways: first, via enabling colloquy with diverse scholarly communities engaging in such reconceptualizations; and second, via supporting immersion in founding texts of hegemonic neoliberalism in the form of Margaret Thatcher’s papers. As an abolitionist project, this work centers building rather than destruction: Abolition Economics aspires to be an ideological, methodological, and practical project of freedom-making.
LARGE GRANT AWARDS
LARGE GRANT AWARDS ARE FOR MORE THAN $10,000 AND UP TO $50,000.
Professor Jallicia Jolly
Department of American Studies and Black Studies
Title: How We Get Free: Black Feminist Reproductive Justice Organizing across the African Diaspora
"How We Get Free" explores Afro-diasporic girls and women's lives, activism, and political visions of reproductive justice in response to HIV/AIDS stigma, sterilization, and obstetric racism and violence. It foregrounds a diasporic consciousness in Professor Jolly's study of the interplay of race, gender, sexuality, class and reproductive coercion in Black women's lived experiences. Afro-diasporic women have been at the very heart of struggles against reproductive coercion, HIV/AIDS, and intersectional forms of structural vulnerabilities that heighten the emotional, psychic, and bodily trauma endured by Black communities globally. Even as they have led movements, they are often excluded and/or deprioritized in academic scholarship, health interventions, and leadership spaces. "How We Get Free" examines how the entanglements of HIV activism, medical violence, and Black female pathology inform Afro-diasporic women's resistance to state, institutional, and hegemonic scientific practices that manifest within and beyond United States contexts. Drawing on critical ethnography and oral history as well as a theoretical optic of African diaspora theorizing, critical race theory, feminist theory, cultural studies and Black feminist health science, Professor Jolly illuminates the afterlives of imperialism, colonialism, and neoliberal structural adjustment policies in the embodied experiences of girls and women. "How We Get Free" explores the wider resonance of notions of personhood, bodily autonomy, and freedom that emerge from the complex site of colonial encounter that comprises the Caribbean and African regions. Importantly, it thinks through the ethical and political challenges posed by current humanitarianism and health interventions that index overlapping forms of state violence, inviting us to (re)imagine how we might articulate humane visions of care as we build more just and sustainable futures.
Professor Adam Levine
Department of Art and the History of Art
Title: The Etheric Body
Professor Levine's project, "The Etheric Body," is a feature-length documentary film that will delve into the intriguing story of a pioneering and enigmatic figure, Dr. Thelma Moss, and her unconventional research conducted at UCLA in 1968. Dr. Moss, originally a Hollywood screenwriter and actress, transitioned into psychology, seeking answers to the existence of an elusive energy beyond the human body. Her laboratory in Los Angeles became a global hub for investigations into extrasensory perception, spiritual healing, hypnosis, and more, drawing attention from diverse corners of the world. Yet, by 1978, the lab was closed, and Dr. Moss faced professional challenges and rumors that continue to surround her legacy. Professor Levine's project employs a hybrid approach, blending first-person testimonies, archival material, contemporary footage, and dramatic reenactments. Through this multifaceted narrative, the film explores the intersection of science and the arts and the untold story of Dr. Thelma Moss's groundbreaking work, all set against the backdrop of Los Angeles, a city where the paranormal met postmodernity. The project promises to shed light on a hidden chapter of American scientific history and provide a fresh perspective on the relationship between the human mind and the unexplained.