Social Science Research Council

SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH COUNCIL
DISSERTATION PROPOSAL DEVELOPMENT FELLOWSHIP

BLACK ATLANTIC STUDIES 
Fall 2007 WORKSHOP AGENDA

Research Director: Andrew Apter
Research Director: Percy C. Hintzen

Crowne Plaza St. Louis Downtown, Saint Louis, MO
Thursday, September 6 – Sunday, September 9

This is the second of two annual DPDF workshops designed to help graduate student fellows prepare cogent and fundable dissertation proposals in their chosen field.  The two goals of the second workshop are 1) to help fellows synthesize their summer research; and 2) to draft proposals for dissertation funding. The fall workshop focuses on the mechanics and the philosophy of proposal writing. The workshop also aims to challenge fellows to reflect on their summer research in ways that link meaningfully to their research field. In this, the goals of the fall workshop are closely related to the project of mapping a research field that was started during the Spring workshop in Denver, Co.

Fellows will come out of the second workshop with supportive networks, consisting of both mentors and cohorts of new scholars carrying out research in their fields, as well as intellectually mature dissertation proposals.

The two goals stand in close relation to each other: through a sustained and structured discussion of student proposals and their component parts, we hope to have each student leave with a highly competitive dissertation proposal as a basis both for satisfying their respective university requirements and for receiving research funding. The September 2007 workshop incorporates the students’ summer field experiences into working research proposal drafts.  Intensive discussion and feedback from directors and students will be incorporated into revisions on the third day, during working sessions organized by sub-groups.  These sub-groups will be formed according to common themes, methodologies, and/or areas.  For example, students whose projects require microanalyses of ritual performances may group together to compare technologies and techniques; others working on Cuba, urban North America, or coastal-hinterland relations may self-organize around common social and historical developments.   On day four, the revised proposals will be subject to final critique by the faculty organizers, as thematic, methodological, and tactical issues (e.g. letters of support and affiliation) are coordinated and fine-tuned.  Students should leave the September workshop with robust proposals that can be adjusted for the major fellowship competitions in autumn 2007, and for defense and submission to their home department.

Workshop Readings and Resources:
Research Field resources have been placed on the secure DPDF web portal. 

Workshop Assignments

September 4th. Fellows are asked to upload a draft dissertation proposal to be examined during the workshop.
September 8th. Fellows are asked to work together as a team to present their research fields during the last plenary session on Sunday. 

BLACK ATLANTIC STUDIES: WORKSHOP SCHEDULE 

Session 1: The Dissertation Proposal: Strategies and Funding Sources
(Thursday, 9 AM – 12:00 PM)

- Welcome and Introductions (DPDF Program Director Peter Sahlins)
- Dissertation Funder Presentations

Dr. Leslie C. Aiello, President, Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research
Mr. Tony Claudino, Director, Fulbright IIE
Mr. William Hahn, Program Director, Division of Graduate Education National Science Foundation (NSF)
Dr. Nicole Stahlmann, Associate Director, SSRC International Dissertation Research Fellowships (IDRF)

Sessions 2-6: Thursday, Friday, and Saturday

These sessions will focus on student proposals, which have been (roughly) grouped in thematic / methodological clusters. 

In Workshop 1, each student was assigned a proposal for critical examination and review and for presentation to the group.  In this workshop, we will reverse the order or presentation.  Each student will present her/his revised proposal.  This will be followed by a critical commentary by the student originally assigned to present the proposal in Workshop 1.  This commentary should focus on the changes, additions, and improvements to the original proposal based on summer fieldwork and on the critical feedback received in May.  After this presentation, the proposal will be opened up for general discussion and input.  This procedure will be followed for each of students.  They will be grouped into the original themes as specified in the May workshop and will be presented and discussed, in the same order.  While the themes will be used to focus on the broad debates in the field, each proposal must be presented and discussed on its own merit.

Session 2: 
(Thursday, 2:00 PM – 5 PM) 

List of Proposals up for discussion:

- Akissi Britton, “From Brooklyn to Brazil: Race, Place, and Religion in the Mapping of Diasporic Blackness”
- Joshua Jelly-Schapiro, “Of Youth and Revolution: The Cultural Politics of Race and Nation in Contemporary Cuba.”
- Jamie Davidson, “Embodied Knowledge in the Tambor de Mina of Maranhao”

The basis for selection of these three presentations relates to their significance to mapping the field of Black Atlantic Studies and to the conceptual and theoretical issues that are at the core of the field’s concerns and the methodological and epistemological problems that they raise.

9 PM: Visual Culture movie screening, “Meet Me in St. Louis” (1944), directed by Vincente Minnelli, starring Judy Garland.

Session 3:
(Friday, 9 AM – 12:00 PM)

List of proposals up for discussion.

- Nandini Dhar, “Problematizing the Archive, re-writing Agency: “Neo-Slave” Aesthetics in Museums and Historical Novels of the African Diaspora.
- Jamila Moore, “Digitally Mapping the Black Atlantic: Spatial Imagination and the Politics of Re-Appropriatin Between Africa and the Americas.
- Sharon Kivenko, “Dancing Through “Performance Scapes”: Reflections on Transnationalism, Embodiment, and West African Performance”.

The basis for this grouping of presentations relate to issues of epistemology and methodology that they reflect and that are raised in Black Atlantic Studies.  What is “African” in the African Diaspora?  How do we construct the spatio-temporal coordinates of Black Atlantic historical dynamics?  How do we reconcile the objectivism of demographic trends with phenomenologies of performance and repressed historical memory?  How do we structure the “subjects” and “objects” of our research?  How do we identify relevant temporalities and historical trajectories, from the micro-arenas of performance contexts to the macro-perspectives of the “longue durée”?  How do we recover the actions and voices of African agency?

Session 4:
(Friday, 2:00 PM – 5 PM)

List of proposals up for discussion.

- Jessica Krug, “Fugitive Nations: Maroon Societies in Kisama, Angola, Sao Tome, and Brazil 1500-1700.
- Petra Rivera, “What is Afro-Boricua?: The Impact of Migration and Popular Culture on Understandings of Blackness in Puerto Rico and the Puerto Rican Diaspora.”
- Carmen Thompson, “Black Womanhood and Slavery: Survival Strategies in the New World and in West Africa, 1665-1863.

These sets of proposals focus on issues of the “roots” of Black subjectivity and consciousness and the contemporary issues that inform the field particularly as these pertain to the cultural politics stemming from the circulation of black bodies. 

Session 5: 
(Saturday, 9 AM – 12:00 PM)

List of proposals up for discussion.

- Chelsey Kivland, “Masking Change: Performing Order: The Ritual Histories and Political Arts of Haitian Carnival”
- Xelaju Korda, “Sex Tourism in the Brazilian Northeast: Gender Performances Within a Sexualized World Market.”
- Matthew Norton, “Ashanti to Gold Coast to Ghana: A Geneaology of the Experience of Documentary Rule.”

These proposals throw light on ethnographies, strategies, and sources.  They raise issues of the distinction between analytic and operational methods as well as the relationship between collection of data and the research hypotheses and questions.  Can ritual be approached as a living historical archive?  How are archival methods incorporated into ethnographic research?  How do we relate official texts to unofficial contexts? 

Session 6:
(Saturday, 2:00 PM – 5 PM)

Guest Presentation by Dr. John Nunley on Black Atlantic Rim Performance Arts, followed by a visit to the St. Louis Museum of Art (SMART) for collections viewing.

Into the evening: Black Atlantic Studies tour of the Saint Louis Museum of Art with John Nunley.

Session 7:  Plenary Session – Student Mini-Conference: Mapping Research Fields
(Sunday, 9 AM – 12:00 PM)

The last session of the second DPDF workshop is devoted to student presentations of their research field.  Students in each field are responsible for organizing their group presentations in the mode of a mini-conference.   Each field will be given a total of 25 minutes, and projects should be presented in an order and grouping that gives the field coherence.  Students are invited to use images and other media as appropriate, but should structure their very short presentations around the following:  1) a research question; 2) a working hypothesis; 3) the research site(s) and sources; 4) the methodological approach; and 5) contributions to the field.   These interventions, in short, represent the “cocktail party” version of the answer to the question, “what are you working on?”  The exercise is intended to give fellows the opportunity to develop a summary version of their research project while locating their work in a collectively-defined research field.