Greg Carter, UW-Milwaukee
Cindy I-Fen Cheng, UW-Madison
Pao Lor, UW-Green Bay
Dung Ngo, UW-La Crosse
Margarita Refugia Olivas, UW-La Crosse
Devinder Sandhu, UW-La Stevens Point
Anika Wilson, UW-Milwaukee
Greg Carter, Department of History, UW-Milwaukee - "The United States of the United Races: Mixture, Progress, and Utopia"
Archival research as well as an analysis of legal and popular texts will be used to trace continuity in an important strand of American intellectual and cultural history. Tracing this continuity will allow Carter to connect the "racial amalgamationism" promoted by abolitionist Wendell Philips, early 20th century sociological ideas about a "melting pot," the theories of some Harlem Renaissance intellectuals such as Jean Toomer about racial mixing, and contemporary notions of the resolution of racial conflict through intermarriage. This book will show that in every period, optimism regarding mixing has been as central to the American conversation on race as pessimism.
Rachael Buff, Department of History, UW-Milwaukee, will serve as mentor.
Cindy-I-Fen Cheng, Department of History and Asian American Studies Program, UW-Madison - "Locating Race in Cold War America"
This book project argues that the effectiveness of U.S. Cold War policies to contain communism and promote democracy abroad depended on creating a racially integrated America following the onslaught of communist propaganda deriding U.S. racism during the early Cold War years from 1946 to 1965. The advent of the Korean War and the communist takeover of China put into focus the need to integrate Chinese and Koreans in the U.S., in addition to black Americans, in order to attest to the superiority of American democracy over communism. Cheng explores how this political agenda resulted in the formation of an idealized racial subject that promoted the benefits of American democracy and examines its impact on U.S. Cold War culture.
Leslie Bow, Department of English and Asian American Studies Program, UW-Madison, will serve as mentor.
Pao Lor, Professional Program in Education, UW-Green Bay - "Hmong Teachers' Perspectives and Practice in Wisconsin"
This research project will be a qualitative study on the experiences of Hmong teachers in Wisconsin. An underpinning and underlying focus will also be to examine and explore the influence of racial identity of teachers on their belief systems and teaching practice. Using open-ended life history methods, Pao will ask participants about their childhood, their family and community life, their schooling experiences at different levels, their current and previous teaching positions, and their personal philosophies and pedagogies of education.
Kou Yang, Kou Yang, Department of Ethnic and Gender Studies, California State University Stanislaus, will serve as mentor.
Dung Ngo, Department of Psychology, UW-La Crosse - "Development of Dementia Battery for Vietnamese Adults"
Given the availability and continued development of newer treatments for Alzheimer's disease, accurate and early diagnosis is crucial. This is a special problem faced by Vietnamese-Americans due to language and cultural barriers. The completion of this project will result in a Vietnamese Dementia Battery (VDB), once standardized, will be the first international comprehensive assessment instrument for use with this population. Clinicians will be able to evaluate and diagnose Vietnamese-speaking individuals suspected of having cognitive problems, as well as ascertain the differential diagnosis of dementia subtypes.
Daryl Fujii, Pacific Island Health Care Services Veterans Affairs Center for Aging, will serve as mentor.
Margarita Refugia Olivas, Department of Communication Studies, UW-La Crosse - "Latina Greek 101: The Performance of Latinidad"
This ethnographic study will look at Latina-based Greek-letter sororities and their members. Taking a Chicana Feminist approach, Olivas will report on the explicit and symbolic communicative practices of the LGLS and their members. The research will highlight the historical development of LGLS, the role LGLS play in academic success, race/ethnic and cultural identity negotiation, social and career networking practices, and the performance of Latinidad via organizational activities and website symbolism.
Jacqueline Martinez, Hugh Downs School of Human Communication, Arizona State University, will serve as mentor.
Devinder Sandhu, Department of Biology, UW-Stevens Point - "Molecular Characterization of Two Temperature Sensitive Male Sterile Mutant Genes in Soybean"
In soybean, male sterility system is one of the requirements to produce large quantities of hybrid seed. A fully male sterile (ms8ms8) and a partial male sterile, temperature sensitive mutants, have been identified in soybean. The main objectives of this investigation are to confirm if ms8 and msp are independent genes and to genetically map them. Bulk segregant analysis of the whole soybean genome will be conducted using 450 SSR markers to identify tightly linked markers to ms8 and msp. Fine mapping using an F2 population will be done using 174 and 134 F2 plants for ms8 and msp genes, respectively.
Reid Palmer, Department of Agronomy, Iowa State University, will serve as mentor.
Anika Wilson, Department of Africology, UW-Milwaukee - "Women, AIDS, and Marriage Law in Malawi"
This research project investigates marriage in the era of AIDS in Malawi, a southwest African country with a high incidence of HIV/AIDS. Wilson is pursuing knowledge of wives' everyday strategies of AIDS avoidance through the same channels through which they seek knowledge, by tapping into the gossip, rumor, and advice networks around them. Findings will yield insights into the ways in which women seek to preserve both their health and their marriages in homegrown maneuvers that draw upon social resources in ways that go undetected by top-down AIDS programs and reveals the tensions and contradictions in which women function.
Osei-Mensah Aborampah, Department of Africology, UW-Milwaukee, will serve as mentor.
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