Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences Postdoctoral Fellows
2011 Fellows
Jocelyn L. Buckner
Jocelyn L. Buckner, PhD 2010
Theatre Studies, University of Kansas
Project Title
Shady Ladies: Sister Acts, Popular Performance, and the Development of American Identities
Department
Theatre Arts
Personal Statement
My research agenda focuses on U.S. popular entertainments and feminist and Black theatre, ranging from late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century practices such as minstrelsy and vaudeville to contemporary theatre by playwrights such as Suzan-Lori Parks. I earned my PhD in Theatre Studies from the University of Kansas in 2010, and also hold an MFA in Theatre from Virginia Commonwealth University.
"Shady Ladies: Sister Acts, Popular Performance, and the Development of American Identities" was an interdisciplinary dissertation project based on original archival research conducted at the Schomberg Center for Research in Black Culture, the Hatch-Billops Collection, and the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. I researched the histories of African American and European American sister acts, a sub-genre of the family performance troupe practice which was wildly popular in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, pairing the histories with a theoretically informed analysis of how female performers on both sides of the Jim Crow era color line negotiated and challenged social expectations based on gender, race, class, and sexuality. I will revise the project for book publication while I am at the University of Pittsburgh, and will also teach Directing and a special seminar course, "Rachel to Ruined: A Century of African American Female Playwrights."
Logan Dancey
Logan Dancey, PhD 2010
Political Science, University of Minnesota
Project Title
Restoring Congressional Integrity: How Members of Congress Respond to Congressional Disapproval
Department
Political Science
Personal Statement
Logan Dancey received his PhD in political science from the University of Minnesota in December 2010. He is currently working on a book-length project based on his dissertation, "Restoring Congressional Integrity: How Members of Congress Respond to Congressional Disapproval," which examines when members of Congress support reforms designed to improve public perceptions of the integrity of the legislative process. His broader research agenda is focused on the linkages between public opinion and elite behavior. His work has appeared in the American Journal of Political Science and Political Research Quarterly. In addition, he is currently working on projects on public reactions to political scandals, the content of legislative debate and confirmation hearings, and constituents' knowledge of their senators' roll call votes. In Spring 2011 he is teaching a capstone seminar on polarization and American politics.
Michael Gardiner
Michael Gardiner, DMA 2009
New England Conservatory
Project Title
Coupling Machines and Generative Combinatoriality
Department
Music
Personal Statement
Michael Gardiner is a music theorist and a laptop composer/improviser. His research interests include aspects of musical space in 12th century chant (with an analytic dissertation on Hildegard von Bingen), Japanese noh theater, and computer generated images of musical sound. Michael's articles have appeared in Current Musicology and Sonus and his recordings are available on Centaur and Visceral Media labels. His project for the postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh involves the separate analytic space (or heterotopia) that emerges when theory looks at processes in place of musical works through unlikely, even incongruous pairings of genres. Some of these pairings include: overlain vector-screens in jazz pianist Art Tatum's improvisations and Richard Wagner's Tannhauser Overture; Francois & Louis Couperin's 17th century conception of the keyboard suite and the iPod's modular construction; and sonic-landscape studies through the field recordings of Francisco Lopez and the orchestral works of Gustav Mahler and Olivier Messiaen. He also looks forward to many wonderful conversations…
David Kim
David Kim, PhD, 2009
Cultural Anthropology; Columbia University
Project Title
Divining Capital: Spectral Returns and the Commodification of Fate in South Korea
Department
Anthropology
Personal Statement
David J. Kim received his doctorate in socio-cultural anthropology from Columbia University in 2009. He is currently working on his book project based on his dissertation, Divining Capital: Spectral Returns and the Commodification of Fate in South Korea. The project examines magic and divination in contemporary South Korea, ranging from shamans, horoscopic fortunetellers, and the growing diversity in between. Featuring sites such as fortunetelling cafes, shamanic shrines, and street diviners, the ethnography paints a sensual picture of the everyday, yet also attempts to unveil traces of secrets and hidden desires that surface on the diviner's table. Under the backdrop of increased economic liberalization, the project also examines the bipolar urge of patrons to simultaneously embrace, yet protect against risk. Divining Capital, though grounded in South Korea, speaks to a growing body of anthropological work on economies of ritual, leisure, and gaming, as they relate to market forces, globalization, and neoliberalism. More recently, his work has begun to explore some of the antagonisms between recent theorizations of affect in relation to psychoanalysis. His other research interests include critical and post-structural theory, queer theory, technology and new media, and anthropology of the senses.
Alice Mattoni
Alice Mattoni, PhD 2009
Social and Political Sciences, European University Institute
Project Title
Towards a Middle-Range Theory of Social Movements and Media in Contemporary Societies
Department
Sociology
Personal Statement
I am a sociologist whose main research interests are in social movements, political communication, and temporary/vulnerable/precarious workers. I received my PhD from the European University Institute in October 2009 (supervisor: Donatella della Porta). My dissertation investigates interactions between social movements and the media in mobilizations about temporary, vulnerable, and precarious employment in Italy and Europe today. In the dissertation, I have employed the sensitizing concept of 'activist media practices' to understand what activist groups do with the media today. During my time at the University of Pittsburgh I will turn the dissertation into a book manuscript. I have taught undergraduate classes in war and media, media ethics and Italian politics at the Lorenzo de' Medici School and Elon University, both based in Florence. I have taught and organized intensive workshops on computer-assisted qualitative data analysis for PhD students at the European University Institute. I am a member of the research group "New Media and Online Politics" based at the Istituto Cattaneo and of the standing group "Forms of Political Participation" of the European Consortium of Political Research. I am a co-editor of the online journal "Interface. A Journal for and about Social Movements."
Joel McKim
Joel McKim, PhD 2010
Cultural Studies, University of London—Goldsmiths College
Project Title
Memory Complex: Competing Visions for a Post-9/11 New York
Department
History of Art and Architecture
Personal Statement
Joel McKim received his PhD from the Centre for Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths College, University of London in 2010. His doctoral research entitled "Memory Complex: Competing Visions for a Post-9/11 New York" considers the intersection of memory, politics, and aesthetics at five distinct architectural sites connected to the events of September 11. He will be preparing this research for book-length publication while at the University of Pittsburgh. McKim was an FQRSC postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Art History and Communication Studies at McGill University in 2010 and taught as a full-time Lecturer in the Department of Communication Studies at Concordia University in Montreal from 2007 to 2010. In addition to his work on architecture, memory, and politics, McKim's research has also explored the expanding role of media technologies in architectural design and the infrastructural impact of urban cultural economies. His recent writing has appeared in the journals Theory, Culture & Society, Borderlands and Topia and in the collected volume Informal Architectures: Space and Contemporary Culture. He is currently coediting an issue of the journal Space & Culture on the topic "Spaces of Terror and Risk."
Mario Pereira
Mario Pereira, PhD 2010
History of Art, Brown University
Project Title
African Art in Renaissance Europe
Department
History
Personal Statement
Mario Pereira is a cultural historian who focuses on issues of cross-cultural interaction and exchange in the early modern Atlantic world. He is a specialist in the arts of Europe and Africa in the early modern period. His research explores the complex cultural and diplomatic dialogues fostered between Europeans and Africans and investigates the pivotal role of art in articulating and cultivating these cross-cultural relationships.
Mario is currently developing his dissertation into a book. His other projects include an article on the artistic patronage and collecting practices of D. João de Castro (1500-1548), viceroy of the Estado da Índia, and an article on hunting in Europe and Atlantic Africa in the early modern period. He has received an ACLS/Mellon Early Career Fellowship and the J. M. Stuart Fellowship at the John Carter Brown Library.
Adrienne Shaw
Adrienne Shaw, PhD 2010
Communication, University of Pennsylvania
Project Title
Identity, Texts, and Contexts
Department
Communication
Personal Statement
Adrienne Shaw received her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication in 2010. In Fall of 2010 she was a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Mudra Institute for Communication Ahmedabad in India. She studies and lectures on the politics of representation, video games and gaming culture, cultural production, and qualitative audience research. Her primary areas of interest are the representation of marginalized groups in media and the construction of identity and communities in relation to media consumption. She has published articles in Games and Culture, Global Media Journal, and The Journal of Lesbian Studies. She also has chapters in the books The Handbook of Child Development, Multiculturalism, and Media (Sage) and Designing Games for Ethics: Models, Techniques and Frameworks (IGI Publishing). Dr. Shaw has given invited lectures on her work at the University of Pennsylvania and the Center for Internet and Society in Bangalore, India. Her dissertation focused on the relationship between players' identities, identification with video game characters, and the importance of representation of marginalized groups in video games.
Kristen Tobey
Kristen Tobey, PhD 2010
Anthropology and Sociology of Religion, University of Chicago Divinity School
Project Title
No People are Better Fitted: Shifting Boundaries in American Religious Communities
Department
Religious Studies
Personal Statement
I hold a PhD from the University of Chicago Divinity School, in Anthropology and Sociology of Religions. I work on religion in America, and my dissertation, Performing Marginality: Identity and Efficacy in the Plowshares Nuclear Disarmament Movement, treats a small group of Catholic anti-nuclear activists, active since 1980, who pour their own blood over nuclear equipment in civil disobedience actions that they understand as "symbolic disarmaments." The dissertation is an analysis of the boundary work that the Plowshares undertake in order to protect their theologically imperative claim to "marginality." As a Postdoctoral Fellow, I will revise the dissertation for publication, and will then turn to a second project that stems from the same interest in religious identity. Tentatively titled No People Are Better Fitted: Shifting Boundaries in American Religious Communities, the project begins with work I have done on Jewish agrarian utopias in mid-nineteenth-century America, and examines how exclusive religious communities go about loosening or changing sectarian boundaries to include those who previously would have been considered outsiders. I have taught courses on American religious history, religion in society, religion and law, and world religions. The course I will teach at Pitt is an examination of religious communities in America, from colonial days to the present, and how they have been received and interpreted. Other teaching and research interests include religion and violence, religion and socio-political engagement, and ritual studies.
Frans Weiser
Frans Weiser, PhD 2010
Comparative Literature, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Project Title
Redefining Public Intellectuals from the Margins: Comparative Politics and the Representation in the Americas
Department
Hispanic Languages and Literatures
Personal Statement
Frans Weiser received his MA and PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His dissertation, entitled Con-Scripting the Masses: False Documents and Historical Revisionism in the Americas, analyzes the strategies of literary texts in Spanish, Portuguese, and English that pose as official or archival documents in order to undermine the authority of sanctioned historiography. His interests include Latin American cultural studies, Hemispheric American Studies, Postmodern Lusophone and Hispanophone political and historical fiction, and urban representations in international cinema. Most recently, he studied on a year-long internship in Spain, and he has published on fiction and criticism from the Americas. His current research project examines recent political and institutional developments in Latin America in conjunction with the interplay of media and artistic representation. It develops a comparative analysis of the contemporary public intellectual with a broader redefinition of marginalized intellectuals' roles outside a traditional academic sphere—from fiction and film to social movements, and from political commentators to political actors.
Emma Wilson
Emma Wilson, PhD 2009
English Literature, University of St. Andrews
Project Title
‘I’ll Prove Anything With Logic’: The Changing Role of Logic on the Early Modern from Lyly to Ford
Department
English
Personal Statement
Dr. Emma Annette Wilson completed her PhD on John Milton's use of logic in Paradise Lost in 2009 at the University of St Andrews, during which time she honed her method of applying early modern discursive techniques pragmatically as a means of analyzing literature of that period. After this, she was a Canadian DFAIT Commonwealth Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the University of Western Ontario using the same methodology to compare the literary styles of John Milton and William Shakespeare. She is the coeditor of two essay collections on the logician and pedagogue Petrus Ramus, and is currently working on two monographs, one on John Milton, and the other entitled In Defence of Logic: A History of Early Modern Logic 1543-1724. In summer 2010 Emma led a small team of researchers in a study of early modern jestbooks at the Newberry Library, and they are currently coauthoring a book detailing their findings. Emma's research at Pittsburgh involves examining the role played by early modern logic on the early modern stage: logic was the subject governing all forms of discourse in this period, including the literary, and Emma is looking forward to investigating its changes and their ramifications in English plays from those of John Lyly in the 1580s to John Ford in the 1630s.