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Amy Hilgendorf, UW-Madison Doug Kiel, UW-Madison Jen-Li Ko, UW-Milwaukee Crystal Marie Moten, UW-Madison |
Amy Hilgendorf (ahilgendorf@wisc.edu), Department of Human Development and Family Studies, UW-Madison - "Teachers' Perceptions of Students and Families: The Multiple Influences of Race, Class, School Culture, and Professional Development about 'Diversity.'"
Research has demonstrated that teacher perceptions of students and families can affect teacher practices and student outcomes (Mandara, 2006). Other studies confirm that family support and involvement positively influence students' achievement (Jeynes, 2003). However, many families feel misunderstood, unwelcome, and disrespected by school staff (Lawrence-Lightfoot, 2003). Given the importance of school-family relationships to academic success, an understanding of the factors that influence teacher perceptions and practices is particularly important in low-income and culturally diverse schools where the backgrounds of teachers, students and families can be quite different. Several factors likely influence teachers' constructions of students and families, including personal backgrounds and identities, ideologies about race and class, school culture and teacher-to-teacher interactions, and participation in professional development experiences about "diversity."
Given the complexity and richness of these factors, Hilgendorf employs a sociohistorical cultural approach (Rogoff, 2003), critical race theory, and ethnographic methods to answer two questions: What are teachers' perceptions of families? And, how do these perceptions develop? With in-depth interviews, participant observation, and content analysis of school policies and archival materials, Hilgendorf examines influences on the perceptions, beliefs, and practices of teachers in two urban schools as these relate to students and their families. The setting for this study - an elementary and middle school in a high poverty, small urban school district - reflects the demographic characteristics of many urban school districts in this country, with increasing numbers of low-income students of color from a variety of racial, ethnic, linguistic, and national backgrounds, amongst a mostly monolingual English-speaking, middle-class, white female teaching staff.
Doug Kiel (dkiel@wisc.edu), Department of History, UW-Madison - "The Oneida Resurgence: Modern Indian Renewal in the Heart of America."
This research narrates the "rags-to-riches" story of one American Indian community in the Midwest from 1921-1991. Over the course of a single lifetime, the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin underwent a dramatic reversal of fortune and achieved their own version of the American dream. Having once been nearly landless and one of Wisconsin's most impoverished communities with insufficient access to healthcare, education, and employment, by the 1990s the tribe had become one of the largest employers in the Green Bay area. This study explores the interconnections between family, tribal, and national histories in the 20th century and highlights the complex process of accommodation, resistance, renewal, and change that has characterized Native revitalization.
While contemporary indigenous prosperity is frequently associated with gaming enterprises, this research will demonstrate that casinos are somewhat epiphenomenal in the story of modern Indian renewal. Throughout the 20th century - as the pendulum of federal Indian policy swung back and forth between forced assimilation and sovereign self-determination - the Oneidas individually and collectively determined the course of their own future, stumbled along the way, and through two landmark U.S. Supreme Court victories, set precedent in the process. This dissertation highlights the roles of both urban and reservation communities in tribal rebuilding, examines the mutual influences that federal law and policy and tribal society have had on one another, and exhibits the tremendous sway that one Indian Nation has held over the predominantly white residents of Green Bay, a place in the popular imagination not often associated with indigenous peoples.
Jen-Li Ko (jenliko@uwm.edu), Department of Anthropology, UW-Milwaukee - "Cultural Representation, Identity and Museums: The Construction of Ethnic Identity among the Chinese Immigrants in Chicago, Post 1965."
Ko's research examines the cultural representation and ethnic identity of Chinese immigrants by focusing on the creation of ethnic displays in museums, the invention of traditions, and the politics of ethnic identity. Her study explores the ways in which ethnicity is experienced in-and created through-self-representation by Chicago's Chinese community. Ko will further explore the possible functions of the Chinese-American Museum which include how an existing collective imagination is represented, how new types of collective imagination are promoted, and how dominant readings of collective imagination are enforced.
This research will be conducted over a one-year period using qualitative ethnographic field research. Case studies will be performed on institutions that include the Ling Long Museum (1933-1975), the Chinese-American Museum of Chicago (2005-Sept. 2008), and the rebuilding of the Chinese-American Museum of Chicago (Sept. 2008-present). The case studies will also incorporate participant observation and more than forty interviews with community members, community leaders and museum staff. These will be used to analyze the differences of conceptions of Chineseness in terms of socioeconomic status, age, area of origin, and immigration background.
The study is significant because it examines the self-representation and the self-making of the human agent (Chinese immigrants) and the locality (Chicago) with the influence of globalization. Ko hopes to promote the visibility and understanding of Chinese Americans in mainstream society and contribute to Asian American studies in the Midwest and Great Lakes area.
Crystal Marie Moten (moten@wisc.edu), Department of History, UW-Madison - "Milwaukee as a Microcosm? Towards an Understanding of African American Women's Activism in the Postwar North."
Moten's research explores African American women in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and assesses their activism during the modern struggle for African American rights and equality from the 1940s until the 1970s. Before the large influx of African American migrants to Milwaukee during the 1950s and 1960s, African American women were elected to positions of prominence within both traditional African American and mainstream organizations such as the Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA), the Milwaukee City Council, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Urban League, and African American religious institutions. This project analyzes not only the factors that contributed to their ability to obtain these positions, but also considers their goals and the nature of their leadership and activism. Furthermore, it explores the impact of migration on African American women's leadership. It considers how the dramatic increase of Milwaukee's African American population transformed their visions for equality and expanded the spaces of their activism in this industrial, rust belt city to include unions, professional associations, and welfare and housing organizations. Issues pertaining to activism, leadership, and migration were not unique to Milwaukee, but were characteristic of many northern cities. However, there are few studies that explore the nature of African American women's activism within the northern context during this period. This research on Milwaukee aims to be seen as a microcosm to aid in the understanding of the nature of women's activism in the North as a whole.