2002-2003 Focused Research Groups
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" How Asian and Western Cultural Constructions of "Success"
and "Family" Shape Perceptions and Experiences of "Parachute" Children "
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"Sexuality Studies"
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“Cloning Bodies/Cloning
Cultures: Family Form, Inequality and New Reproductive Technologies”
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" Cultural
Citizenship"
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"Culture
and Market"
FORD FOUNDATION RESEARCH GROUPS
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How
Asian and Western Cultural Constructions of "Success" and "Family" Shape
Perceptions and Experiences of "Parachute" Children
Funded by a
generous grant from the Ford Foundation on “Intellectual Diversity and
Excellence”
This research project is concerned with a specific East Asian
transnational family type that is created when children are sent to the
U.S. without parents for educational purposes. The proposed project will
focus on these so-called “parachute children” from Taiwan, Hong Kong and
Korea. Specifically, this group will explore the ways that cultural and
social-class constructions of “status” and “success” among economic
elites in Asia shape this practice and its associated meanings. This
research will also explore the ways that parachute children inculcate
Western constructions of “family,” love, and nurturance, and how these
constructions shape their familial expectations and disappointments.
Thus, this research is concerned with contradictory processes of
cultural performance in Asia and the U.S., and the impact of these
contradictions on the subjective reality of “parachute” children growing
up at the crossroads of two cultural worlds. The two primary activities
of the proposed research are: 1) the collection and analysis of
intensive interview data from a sample of 30 parachute children; and 2)
the development of a more comprehensive research project to further
examine emerging issues and themes developed from this phase of study.
MEMBERS
RUTH CHAO,
Assistant Professor of Psychology
MASAKO ISHII-KUNTZ,
Associate Professor of Sociology
KAREN PYKE,
Assistant Professor of Sociology
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Sexuality Studies
Funded by a generous grant
from the Ford Foundation on “Intellectual Diversity and Excellence”
This group plans to bring together a series of scholars to discuss and
debate issues of sexualities. Given the degree of faculty interest in
this area, there will be broad support for those working in this field
to have the opportunity to come together in seminar. This project will
dovetail the conference on “Sexualities and Knowledges” held in 2001 and
will generate sexuality studies as a major research and teaching field
in the college, and create new journal articles and book chapters by
participating members.
MEMBERS
GEORGE HAGGERTY,
Professor of English, Department Chair
MOLLY MCGARRY,
Assistant Professor of History
CAROLE-ANNE TYLER, Associate Professor of English
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This group will critically examine the implications of
new reproductive technologies for our understanding of the concepts of
family and kinship. The group will conduct disciplinary and
interdisciplinary research related to the reproduction of dominant
ideologies of kinship, class, race, or gender through family formation
and family functioning. Prior research has shown that the new
reproductive technologies, adoption, and the potentiality of parenthood
for young adults are experienced differently along vectors of
racial/ethnic identity, gender, and social class. This group of
researchers will explore the ways in which processes of transmitting
ethnic/racialized and gender identities both reproduce and subvert
received beliefs. We will examine the ways that reproductive
technologies and reproductive rhetorics are used, as well as exploring
how structures of inequality among family groups, races, ethnicities,
genders and sexualities are “cloned” or reproduced. In exploring these
topics, our research group will drawn on Philomena Essed’s work on the
cloning of cultures and contribute to the larger cloning cultures
project.
SCOTT COLTRANE, Professor, Sociology
ROBIN DI MATTEO, Professor, Psychology
CHRISTINE GAILEY, Professor, Women’s Studies
ROSS PARKE, Distinguished Professor, Psychology
KAREN PYKE, Assistant Professor, Sociology
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ROCKEFELLER FOUNDATION
RESEARCH GROUPS
Cultural Citizenship
(Winter 2003)
Cultural Citizenship invites participants to consider anthropological,
historical, gender, science, sociological, political, and
cultural-studies theories of public subjectivity. It examines a crisis
in belonging—a population crisis of who, what, when, and where. The
crisis has been occasioned by changes in the global division of labor,
the end of state socialism, and the outpourings of US civil-rights and
social-movement discourses and institutions. We will investigate the
uneven development of citizenship from a political to an economic and
then a cultural model.
TOBY MILLER,
Cultural Studies & Cinema Studies, NYU
AMITAVA KUMAR,
Associate Professor of English, Penn. State
CYNTHIA YOUNG,
Assistant Professor of English, USC
ANNA SCOTT, Assistant Professor of Dance, UCR
EDGAR BUTLER, Professor Emeritus, Sociology
JENNIFER DOYLE, Assistant Professor of English, UCR
KATHERINE KINNEY, Associate Professor of English, UCR
TRACY FISHER, Assistant Professor, Women's Studies
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Culture and Market
(Spring 2003)
Culture and Market will look at the contemporary intertwined discourses
of cultural nationalism, cultural imperialism, and globalization from
the prism of the New International Division of Cultural Labor. We shall
consider such issues as negotiations in the GATT and WTO on culture,
Third World/Southern perspectives on cultural exchange, and the
respective role of governments, international organizations, unions, and
civil society in the global cultural infrastructure.
TOBY MILLER,
Cultural Studies & Cinema Studies, NYU
AMITAVA KUMAR,
Associate Professor of English, Penn. State
CYNTHIA YOUNG,
Assistant Professor of English, USC
CAROLE-ANNE TYLER, Associate Professor of English, UCR
AMALIA CABEZAS, Assistant Professor of Women's Studies,
UCR
MICHELLE RAHEJA, Assistant Professor of English, UCR
STEPHEN CULLENBERG, Professor of Economics, UCR
PAUL GELLES, Associate Professor of Anthropology, UCR
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