2002-2003 Rockefeller Fellows
 

This will be the second year that the Center has hosted Fellows through a grant received from the Rockefeller Foundation on”

“Global Migration, Social Change and Cultural Transformation”

The program focuses on the lived experiences and cultural expression of people who have or are currently enduring the transition of migration and immigration to the United States including the complex experiences of migration and immigration that are related to cultural forms of expression: their preservation, hybridization, origination and function as part of the process of social transformation. A substantial number of the College faculty do research related to issues of race, ethnicity, class and gender, with migration and immigration as a major emphasis.

Two Rockefeller Residency Fellowships have been awarded at UCR for the 2002-03 Winter and Spring Quarters.
 

Amitava Kumar, Associate Professor, English, Penn. State University

Professor Kumar received his Ph.D. in Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature from the University of Minnesota in 1993. Currently, he teaches in the English department at Pennsylvania State University. In addition, he is the editor of Class Issues (New York University Press, 1997), Poetics/Politics (St Martin’s Press, 1999), and World Bank Literature (forthcoming from the University of Minnesota Press). He serves on the editorial board of Rethinking Marxism, Minnesota Review, and Cultural Logic; he also co-edits the online journal, Politics and Culture. Kumar’s writings have appeared in several anthologies and the following journals: Critical Inquiry, Cultural Studies, Critical Quarterly, College Literature, Race and Class, American Quarterly, Rethinking Marxism, Minnesota Review, Journal of Advanced Composition, Amerasia Journal, and Modern Fiction Studies. He has been awarded fellowships from the NEH, Yale University, SUNY-Stony Brook, and Dartmouth College

Kumar’s non-fiction and poetry have recently appeared in The Nation, Harper’s, The New Statesman, Transition, Toronto Review, Civil Lines, Biblio, Outlook, Frontline, India Today, The Hindu, Himal, Herald, The Friday Times, The Times of India, and other publications. He is the author of a book of poems No Tears for the NRI (Writers Workshop, Calcutta, 1996). In addition to being a literary columnist for Tehelka.com, Kumar is also the script-writer and narrator of the prize-winning documentary, Pure Chutney (1997). He has been awarded a Barach Fellowship at the Wesleyan Writers Festival, and an award from the South Asian Journalists Association. His short-story “The Monkey’s Suicide” was chosen by Khushwant Singh as the best short-story of the year for the Asian Age Award. His new short-story “Indian Restaurant” has been published recently in Civil Lines 5. Kumar is also the editor of a volume of writing by Indian expatriate writers, Away (forthcoming from Penguin-India). He is the author, most recently, of Passport Photos (University of California Press, 2000) and is currently working on a book project entitled Bombay-London-New York.

While in residence at the Center, Professor Kumar will focus on a project that he has been developing. India and Pakistan fought their last war around the Himalayan region of Kargil. But this war was only a return to an earlier conflict. The partition of British India in 1947 – leading to the creation of independent India and Pakistan that had led to the largest migration in human history. The exodus went on for months, even years, across the hastily drawn borders. At least a million died in riots. In his proposed book-project, “Husband of a Fanatic,” the exodus of 1947 serves as the point of departure for a journey into the written literature as well as the psychology of relations between the two warring neighbors.

Cynthia Young, Assistant Professor, English, University of Southern California

Professor Young received her Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale University in 1999. She is currently an Assistant Professor in the English Department at the University of Southern California. Her publications include Havana Up In Harlem: LeRoi Jones, Harold Cruse and the Making of a Cultural Revolution, Science and Society, Winter 2001; Punishing Labor: Why Labor Should Oppose the Prison Industrial Complex, New Labor Forum, Number 7, Fall/Winter 2000; Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, The Sixties in America, Salem Press, Inc., 1998; Same Side of a Badass Coin: Postmodern Racism in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction/” Dispositio/n,XX. 47 (1995); Black Indepen(ce)ts in the 1990s, Black Independents in the 90’s, Third World Newsreel Catalog, February, 1997; On Strike at Yale, Minnesota Review, Numbers 45-5, May 1996; The White Negro and Superfly: Interracial Partnership and Race War in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, Screening Noir, 1: 2/3, March 1996.

In addition to the above publications, Professor Young received a Rockefeller Post-Doctoral Fellowship at the International Center for Advanced Studies. She also received the New York State/United University Professors Professional Development Award in December 1998; Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship for Minorities, September 1997; Yale University Fellowship, September 1992; Phi Beta Kappa, May 1991; and a Kluge Fellowship, September 1988.

While in residence at the Center, Professor Young with work on a project entitled “Soul Power: Cultural Radicalism and the making of a US Third World Left (under advance contract at Duke University Press. This project theorizes the role cultural production played in the formation and consolidation of a U.S. Third World Left between 1959 and 1978. Professor Young will consider intellectuals and activists, filmmakers and union organizers in urban settings including members of Third World Newsreel and Local 1199, a union of black and Latino/a health care workers. She is particularly concerned with excavating the transnational linkages forged by Asian-Americans, U.S. Latino/as and African Americans to Third World nations including Cuba, Puerto Rico and Hong Kong.