Name

Email - all "@columbia.edu"

yg2229

In the process of be-coming a historical archaeologist. Currently, working to develop a dissertation on the communal manifestations in Taos, New Mexico exploring issues of materiality and ideology/philosophy of counterculture movements, efforts, and lived experiences in the form of the hippie communes that located themselves in northern New Mexico in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Also interested in post-1960s communal boom appropriations and commodifications of aspects of social life in the 1960s, within and without the communes and current counterculture projects that may relate tangentially to the experience or spirit of the 1960s communal efforts.

Hsiu-ju Stacy Lo                                                                                                      hsl2118     

Naeem Mohaiemen                                                                                  nm2678

Naeem Mohaiemen researches histories of post-colonial Bangladesh through essays, photography, and film. His work has shown at the New Museum, Sharjah Biennial, Frieze London, Kolkata Experimenter, Finnish Museum of Photography, etc. Projects have been published in Visual Culture Reader (3rd ed), Modern Painters, Granta, Art in America, Rethinking Marxism, and Arab Studies Journal. Project themes were described as "not yet disillusioned fully with the capacity of human society" (Vijay Prashad, Take on Art) and "ultimately more illuminating than Jacques Rancière’s microscopic examinations of the utopian kernels" (Ben Davis, ArtNet). At Columbia, he will research constructions of Bangladeshi national mythology, in the aftermath of 1947 and 1971. [www.shobak.org]

Fernando Montero                                                                                                  fm2440                                              

My research focuses on social inequality, ethnic relations, colonialism and postcoloniality, and subject formation in Central America and the urban United States. After working for 3 years on an ethnographic study of a predominantly Puerto Rican neighborhood in North Philadelphia, I am interested in writing an ethnography of the Moskitia in the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua and Honduras. Among other theoretical and practical questions, I am interested in examining howthe Miskitu political rights movements of the Sandinista era have fared in the contemporary era characterized by neoliberal socioeconomic policies and a rising concern over drug- andcrime-related violence. The Caribbean coast has historically been home to the largest concentrations of African descendants in Central America, and the Miskitu population itself is the product of a long process of mestizaje between local indigenous groups, freed andrunaway slaves, and West Indian immigrants. This raises important questions concerning the place of blackness and indigenousness in local race relations, state interventions, and interactions with external forces like transnational corporations, enclave economies, international powers, and the multi-million dollar drug economy. I am also an aspiring photographer and filmmaker and I seek to combine the tools of ethnography with those of visual media to both access my fieldsites and document them effectively.

Patrick Nason                                                                                                          pfn2104

My research examines the origination, transmission, and reception of Western conservation ideologies throughout Melanesia.  As these dynamic values travel across spatial and ontological borders, I explore the practical and theoretical meanings of this global intentionality.  Through ethnographic work that follows the migrations of oceanic megafauna, I aim to facilitate workable conservation strategies that embrace indigenous conceptions of marine nature.

My current research interests lie in the confluence between memory, identity, and space. The interplay between these three loci helps to explain the construction of monuments, the politics of nationalism, and the rabid belief in the supremacy of the local football team. Obviously the interplay of power, the control over media, and the resultant manifestation of action are integral to my research interest. I am presently engaging this interest through archaeological research on a set of 4,000 year old Native American sites off of the coast of Georgia, USA.

I possess a long-standing interest in Andean archaeology, both having excavated in Peru and producing an M.Phil thesis concerning Moche ceramic production. Recently I have become interested in music archaeology and its potential application within Andean archaeology. My proposed project will focus on the music and performance of the Moche, who occupied the northern coastal valleys of Peru from about 100 – 800 AD. Through an analysis of musical instruments, iconography and performance spaces, I hope to gain insight into the social and political areas of life in Moche society.

Nomi Stone

Nomi Stone is interested in mourning and conceptions of the soul and the afterlife in the Middle East, as well as Diaspora and refugee issues in the region. In the past, she has worked on questions of mourning, ritual, and homeland in the Jewish community of Djerba, Tunisia, and on Islam, magic, and pilgrilmage in Fes, Morocco. Her first book of poems, Stranger's Notebook, based on her work in Tunisia, was published in 2008 by Northwestern University Press, TriQuarterly Books.