A total of eight Cultural Exchange Fulbright grants from the Institute of International Education (IIE) were made to GSAS students in 2011, allowing students to conduct dissertation or other advanced research abroad during 2011–2012. Meet the winners here, and read their descriptions of their projects. You can also download a complete list of winners of all GSAS-administered fellowship competitions for 2011-2012.
Fulbright Winners, 2011-2012
Jakobina Arch, History, Japan
An Environmental History of Whaling in Early Modern Japan
My project explores the complex history of Japanese whaling in the Tokugawa (1603-1868) and Meiji (1868-1912) eras, using four case studies that illuminate the connections between scientific thinking, economics, social organization and religious beliefs in early modern Japan. There are only two book-length studies of Japanese whaling in English, both focused on modern whaling. My project will provide not just a new look at the whaling industry in early modern Japanese history, but also will enrich our understanding of relationships between the Japanese people and the natural world. I will be affiliated with Professor Akihisa Setoguchi of Osaka City University.
Peter Christensen, Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning, Germany
Berlin to Baghdad: Cultural and Architectural Exchange Before the Central Powers, 1870-1914
I propose to study the architectural and cultural exchanges between the German, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires in the approximate time period of 1870-1914, framed in the context of their alliance as a geopolitical entity, the Central Powers, in World War I. The majority of sources relating to important facets of this topic, museum collections and archives of the construction of the Berlin-Baghdad railway are located in archives in Berlin, Leipzig and Hamburg.
Kyle Jaros, Government, China
Foreign Economic Strategies of China's Interior Provinces
My research examines the foreign economic strategies of China's interior provinces and the political factors behind these strategies. Frustrated with lagging behind coastal areas, interior provinces have adopted various state-led initiatives to promote foreign economic ties. Through comparative study of eight provinces' experiences between 1992 and 2010, including intensive case analysis of Shaanxi and Sichuan Provinces, I will explore how leadership factors, institutional arrangements, and policy debates contributed to variation in provincial strategies across locales and over time. I would use a Fulbright-Hays grant to carry out 10 months of field research in Beijing (where I would seek affiliation with Peking University's School of Government), Shaanxi Province, and Sichuan Province.
Macabe Keliher, East Asian Languages and Civilizations, China
Rites and the Board of Rites: The Institutionalization of Political Order in Late Imperial China
My dissertation will investigate the Board of Rites and its paramount influence in late imperial China. In taking up this important but little understood administrative organ, my dissertation will argue that the Board's regulation of nearly all aspects of social and political life in the Qing dynasty (1644-1911) determined the parameters through which people negotiated the power relations that shaped their social and political environment. While most studies of Chinese political organization focus on a single period or event, I will account for both change and continuity over time by looking at how the Board's institutionalization of different rites in different eras gave birth to new criteria that constituted and reconstituted the political order.
Andrew McDowell, Anthropology, India
Negotiating Bodies: A Study of Knowledge and Tuberculosis Control in North India
I propose to study India's Revised National Tuberculosis Control Program and ideas about the human bodies. I use this lens to understand how knowledge changes or hybridizes as it moves through institutions and interpersonal interactions in India. I concentrate on three sites: Delhi, Jaipur and Bari Sadri (Rajasthan). In each I will look at various institutions and actors to see how their understanding of bodies may be a blend of several ideas.
Deonnie Moodie, Committee on the Study of Religion, India
Contesting the Temple: Kalighat in Contemporary Bengali Conceptual Worlds
Conversations among Hindu practitioners about what goes on in a temple, or what ought to go on in a temple, reveal conceptual worlds that disclose the place that this traditional institution holds in the lives of Hindus today. These conceptual worlds, in turn, also concretely affect temple life, determining to a large extent what does and does not take place in terms of temple ritual, aesthetics, organization, leadership, and relationships among human and divine figures. I propose to conduct in-depth, long-term ethnographic studies of these diverse groups of people who make use of Kalighat, the most important temple in the urban metropolis of Kolkata, and one that has surprisingly never been the focus of any fulsome ethnographic account.
Finnian Moore Gerety, Sanskrit and Indian Studies, India
Soma Songs: Nambudiri Samaveda
My dissertation in the Department of Sanskrit & Indian Studies at Harvard University investigates the transmission, ritual performance and history of Samaveda in South India, focusing on the udgatar ("lead singer"), one of the four main priests in the archaic Soma sacrifices that have been practiced for two millennia by the orthoprax Nambudiri Brahmins of Kerala. I explore the continuities and discontinuities between the udgatar's role according to ancient Sanskrit ritual handbooks and his role today among the Nambudiris. My project combines textual research with ethnographic fieldwork centered around the planned performance of a Soma sacrifice in spring 2012, seeking to arrive at some understanding of how archaic Samavedic traditions persist in modern India, how they are regarded socially, and what place they have in Hindu praxis.
Dinyar Patel, History, India
The Grand Old Man: Dadabhai Naoroji and the Contours of Indian Nationalism
I will provide a new intellectual history of early Indian nationalism through a critical reexamination of Dadabhai Naoroji, a pioneering nationalist figure. My study will demonstrate how early nationalism had far greater influence and intellectual vitality than scholars have otherwise acknowledged. I argue that Naoroji--shaped by the politics of Bombay and his own Parsi community--played a critical role in establishing the Congress Party's secular tone and the moderate, pluralist politics of the entire nationalist movement. I also argue for Naoroji's importance in endowing the movement with many transnational dimensions. Relying upon largely neglected archival resources, my study will help us better understand many of the political values and ideas that continue to shape modern Indian democracy.