Graduate Fellows
Graduate Fellows
Andreea Boboc - James A. Winn Graduate Student Fellow
English“Evidence and Feminine Authority in Late Medieval England, 1389-1463”
What constituted evidence in medieval England? Since no medieval legal theory of evidence exists, we must infer these practices from texts that, although not always concerned with legal questions of evidence and proof, nevertheless serve to define what is or is not true. Boboc plans to focus on literary texts that construct feminine authority in a wide array of roles: virgin, mother, wife, widow, businesswoman, anchoress and saint. She believes inferences from these literary and non-literary narratives can contribute significantly to the study of medieval evidence.
0582B Rackham/1070
(734) 936-1870
Graduate Fellows
Benjamin Bogin - Mary Fair Croushore Graduate Student Fellow
Asian Languages and Cultures“Tantric Buddhism, Visual Arts, and Liberative Violence in Seventeenth-Century Tibet: A Microhistorical Study of the Memoirs of Yolmo Tenzin Norbu (1598-1644)”
Bogin is conducting an annotated and detailed study of the memoirs of Yolmo Tenzin Norbu (1598-1644), a Tibetan Buddhist priest, painter and ritual expert. This close attention to biographical and historical literature, he believes, will lead him to understand the expression of abstract religious ideals in historical and local contexts. To this end, on the basis of Yolmo Tenzin Norbu's memoirs, he will examine the distinction between monks and non-celibate tantric priests in the light of the author's conversion from the former to the latter; the production, consecration, veneration and trade of sacred art; and the political role of prophecy and violent "black magic."
0586A Rackham/1070
(734) 936-1720
Graduate Fellows
Anne O’Brien Fisher - Sylvia 'Duffy' Engle Graduate Student Fellow
Slavic Languages and Literatures“The Con Man as Cultural Text: Appropriations of Il’f and Petrov’s Ostap Bender”
Fisher's dissertation focuses on one of Russian literature's most popular con men, Ostap Bender. Bender, created in 1928 during the early Soviet period, does not fit neatly into binary models of official versus unofficial literature and high versus low culture. Tracing the ways in which Bender has been interpreted, appropriated and performed by Soviet and post-Soviet readers, Fisher reexamines the hierarchies and mechanisms of power between literary producers, regulators and consumers. Her project shows that the figure of Bender is an important vehicle for negotiating issues of identity, agency and community.
0582A Rackham/1070
(734) 936 1865
Graduate Fellows
Asli Igsiz - Mary Ives Hunting and David D. Hunting, Sr., Graduate Student Fellow
Comparative Literature“Fragments of Home-land, Narratives of Return: Rewriting History, Politics of Genre and Collective Memory in Compulsory Greek-Turkish Population Exchange”
She is examining the types of genres used in the aftermath of political upheaval to make public the private stories of events. Her exploration of why different cultural settings require different genres to convey stories of rupture begins with a broad question: What does a cultural setting "do" with political rupture, on an individual and collective level, and why? Previous scholarship on rupture leans heavily on trauma theory based on Freudian notions of mourning and delayed understanding. But she believes that approach homogenizes experiences of ordeal and disregards individual and cultural agency. Instead she is undertaking an interdisciplinary cultural analysis of collective memory, one that introduces genre as a critical site for studying rupture in relation to collective memory.
0590B Rackham/1070
(734) 763 5515
Graduate Fellows
Karen Johnson - Mary Ives Hunting and David D. Hunting, Sr., Graduate Student Fellow
Classical Art and Archaeology“Materializing Childhood: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Study of Children in the Roman World”
Childhood is as elusive in its definition as it is in its experience. Considering how difficult it is for us to detail our own childhood experiences, imagine the pitfalls of describing the childhood of past individuals, particularly from an archaeological perspective. Johnson addresses this challenge both by outlining in broad terms what kinds of artifacts speak to the material world of children and childhood and by examining actual artifacts excavated from the Roman Egyptian town of Karanis, occupied during the first to fourth centuries C.E. Her multidisciplinary analysis produces new ways to glean information from artifacts and also reveals a depth to children's life experiences and concepts of childhood across the Roman world.
0586B Rackham/1070
(734) 936 1725
Graduate Fellows
Ronit Ricci - Mary Fair Croushore Graduate Student Fellow
Comparative Literature“Islamic Literary Traditions in Javanese and Tamil”
Ricci is studying two Muslim communities that were in touch for many centuries across the Indian Ocean, one in India on the Coromandel coast of Tamil Nadu and the other in Java. Her inquiry focuses on the Tamil and Javanese versions of a well-known text, "The Book of One Thousand Questions," which tells of a meeting between a Jewish leader in Arabia with the Prophet Muhammad, the many questions he asked the prophet and his subsequent conversion to Islam. Through a comparison and analysis of the story's Tamil and Javanese versions, Ricci raises questions about the role literature plays in religious conversion and the power of shared ideas to transcend geographical and cultural boundaries.
0590A Rackham/1070
(734) 763 4466
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