Austin Anderson worked with the University Archives to research the history and development of student cultural centers such as IU's LGBTQ+ Cultural Center, as well as the relationships between student recreational activity and increased activism and activity of these centers.
Natan Diacon-Furtado researched the Wylie House textile collections, as well as materials about Elizabeth Breckenridge, Sarah Parke Morrison, and Harvey Young from Wylie House and University Archives collections, to create an art installation that was projected at Wylie House.
Christopher J. Lee worked with the Dennis Duerden and Lee Nichols Collections as part of his ongoing project focused on the radio plays of the South African writer and anti-apartheid activist Alex La Guma.
Dr. Kristensen worked with the holdings of the BFC/A to look at how artists and writers in places like Jamaica, Haiti, New Orleans, and LA—recipients of long-term humanitarian efforts—react and relate to those efforts. In particular, Dr. Kristensen analyzed three films by Raoul Peck made before the 2010 earthquakes in the context of transnational Caribbeanness.
Dr. Vatin made use of Lorenzo Turner’s Brazilian Collection housed within the Archives of Traditional Music to further the publication of the second volume of Afro-Atlantic Legacies, a book and documentary film. These recordings represent the first systematic recordings of Candomblé songs, prayers, and tales in a variety of African languages, such as Yoruba, Fon, Kimbundu, and Kikongo.
Dr. Matei, along with IUB Professor Oana Panaïté, used the Manea Papers (1980-2014), an extensive archive comprised of thirty thousand items held at the IU Lilly Library. The life and career of the Jewish-Romanian writer, Norman Manea, epitomize the historical turmoil, aesthetic innovation, and ethical choices experienced by artist from his native country and, more generally, Eastern Europe in the second half of the twentieth century. Author of dozens of novels, short prose volumes, and essays translated in several languages, Manea began his career in Romania before becoming an exile in Germany, then in France, eventually, settling in New York City and joining the faculty of Bard College. His works have been translated in several languages and he has been the winner of major international awards including a MacArthur Fellowship.
Baker used archival collections to research how IU administrators and coaches did or did not confront the civil rights challenges that arose in Hoosier athletics from the 1920s through the 1980s. This history is brought into conversation with broader trends seen throughout the Big Ten Conference.
Collaborating with IU Associate Professor Giovanni Zanovello, Canguilhem conducted research on the “Guatemalan Music Manuscripts” preserved at the Lilly Library. They mostly contain sacred polyphonic music and chant, intended
to be sung during the Office in the churches of these localities. They proposed that the two main scribes were likely indigenous musicians and showed how the manuscripts reflect a mestizo character, through decorative style and in the music itself.
Dr. Hili has worked to introduce archival studies in her classes in Tunisia. Collaborating with IU Professor Christoph Irmscher focused on the collections at the Lilly Library related to the iconic twentieth-century poet Sylvia Plath. They used the autograph drafts for two Plath poems—”The Babysitters” and “The Surgeon at 2 A.M.”—to show how Plath moves from restriction and containment, imposed by the repressive ideologies of domesticity and feminity, to finding her own “perfected” voice.
Using photos, government land documents, a genealogy, interviews, and research in IU’s SRIFIAS collection, Karimov and his collaborator, IU Associate Professor Marianne Kamp, examined the ways that some of the members of an family associated with an important Muslim shrine in Tashkent, Uzbekistan adapted to Soviet modes of achieving social status, while others were arrested and executed. They also explored the ways that Soviet terror silenced bearers of a family legacy, and the ways collective memory within an extended family became a resource for reconstructing what happened to children of the Eshon.
By examining some of the more than 3000 educational videos, anthropological films, home movies, and documentaries about China housed at the Indiana University Moving Image Archive, Leung explored both the histories of an array of Chinese migrant communities and representations of Chinese both inside and outside China through moving images produced in the U.S. As a medium for documenting diverse social locations and cultural practices across time and space--these moving images may help re-evaluate Chinese history and lead to an alternative reading of Chineseness outside the discourse produced in mainland China.
The Lilly Library
Working with IUB Associate Professor Heather Blair, Abate conducted research in the children's literature collection at the Lilly Library. Abate worked on two separate projects, one on the concept of "conviction" in nineteenth-century children's literature and one on gender politics in early comic books.
Collaborating with IUB Associate Professor Lessie Jo Frazier, Cohen researched the political events and movements associated with 1968. They examined the political imaginaries animating social movements and sixties’ political culture writ large and how they are gendered, sexed, racialized, and transnational.
Gonella's research at IUB has focused on gathering historical, ethnobotanical data to support the Miami Tribe in Oklahoma's ongoing cultural and language revitalization efforts.
Novack-Gottshall's research centered on the ecological dimension of biodiversity through time, with emphasis on the body size of ancient marine animals.
Tyler explored how IU scholars and associated collectors and fieldworkers have documented the wide range of traditional folk and ethnic musics at home in the State. The primary focus was surveying and assessing the collections of sound recordings deposited in the Archives of Traditional Music that represent local traditions of music-making in regional and ethnic communities throughout the length and breadth of the Hoosier State.
Barnes conducted research in the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley Ethnohistory Collection at IU’s Glenn A. Black Laboratory of Archaeology. Barnes, co-director of the Shawnee Tribe’s Shawnee Language Preservation Project, also took the opportunity to visit the Archives of Traditional Music at IU Bloomington to survey their Shawnee language holdings, including linguistic and music recordings. He believes Shawnee people may be able to provide context and other information to enhance the usefulness of these collections for researchers and archivists.
Barnes gave a presentation titled “‘kewakotam’ka’fope’: Together We Find Treasures in Archival Sources of Knowledge” in which he discussed the benefits of creating what he envisions as “a consolidated, interdisciplinary native scholarship portal” at Indiana University. Barnes is eager to build networks for cooperative research. Collaborations between Indiana University and the Shawnee Tribe, he said, create opportunities for academics and tribal leaders
to come together “to build new understandings, remediate past understandings, and discover culture together.”
