Article Archive
Interviews with the Apprentices
The Geballe Research Opportunities for Undergraduates Program (G.R.O.U.P.) seeks to bring multidisciplinary research in the humanities and related fields more fully into undergraduate education. The program is a network of research courses, collaborative team projects, and summer apprenticeships. The first of the apprenticeships took place this past summer. Twelve undergraduate apprentices each worked closely with faculty members and graduate students on a research project in one of the four G.R.O.U.P. themes: the humanities and human rights; the humanities and new media; the humanities and the environment; and the humanities and biotechnology, health, and medicine. As part of their research, the apprentices traveled to locations as far-flung as Turkey and Rwanda and delved into issues as varied as industrial pollution in 19th-century America and the digitization of indigenous music forms. We caught up with some of the students as they returned from their summer’s work and asked them to describe the experience.
Sun Lee worked with Professors David Cohen (Rhetoric) and Eric Stover (Human Rights Center) on a case study for their project, “The End of Impunity? Crimes against Humanity and International Justice in the 21st Century.”
Townsend Center: What was the project and what was your role in it?
Sun Lee: The overall project is a book on transitional justice—after genocide and civil wars, how do you deal with the aftermath? My research project was specifically on Rwanda. What’s happening in Rwanda is that after the 1994 genocide, they have a community justice system called the gacaca, and basically I was there to see what was going on and to analyze what kind of justice it was. In the gacaca people are released from prison if they agree to tell the truth about what happened. So I was sitting in on trials, and when trials weren’t happening I went to different sites to see the effect of the gacaca and how it affected the interaction between the members of the community. I tried to get a variety of activities that were going on with the gacaca—not only going to the courts and the information gathering sessions, but, for example, I was able to go to a site where they were digging old bodies up and be there when that happened. So I got to see what kind of effects gacaca had on the community and what it might lead to.
TC: Did you find that it’s important to people that this is something that comes out of their own tradition rather than a legal tradition that’s being imposed on them?
SL: A lot of people seemed optimistic about gacaca and they’re very enthusiastic about the fact that gacaca was being used since it is their own tradition. They acknowledge the fact that it’s not going to be perfect. They have different ideas about justice and what it is. And a lot of people seem to look at it not just for personal reconciliation but because this is best for Rwanda, this is best for the country.
TC: I take it you expect this to be a part of your future work?
SL: Yes, I’m definitely interested in this type of work. This is my first real project, and so it really gave me the confidence to do more even on my own, to go back to different countries and see more for myself before I go on to law school or grad school.
Ian Cheng worked on a project called “Visualizing Processes of Theoretical Biology” with Professors Greg Niemeyer (Art Practice) and Terry Deacon (Anthropology).
Townsend Center: What was your role on this project?
Ian Cheng: Primarily, what I was doing was helping Terry out to visualize his theory about how complexity and self-sustaining organisms form from chaos. It’s a very abstract process without visual aids, and so it was my job to visualize this. I suggested making a simulation whereby users could experience what was going on. It was my hope with this simulation that users could just have everything manifest itself through their own control and could get a really good hands-on feel for it.
TC: What stands out the most for you about the project?
IC: I’m an art and cognitive science double-major and it was almost miraculous that this project fell into place, because for a long time I was having a lot of difficulty trying to marry the two majors. And this project kind of gelled the two together for me.
TC: Looking at your own creation, do you feel like you have a better sense of Terry’s theory?
IC: Definitely. I had to go along a learning curve. Having to go to such depths to understand it and to make it, I definitely understand it a lot better.
As the animation shows, computer graphics offer the dynamic vocabulary necessary to make the theory salient, and to further refine some of the dynamic aspects of the theory. This and many similar cases call for a true interdisciplinary collaboration between anthropologists and artists, and, as a side effect, validate the neighborhood of both departments in Kroeber Hall.
The animation is available at http://art.berkeley.edu/niemeyer/images/autocell.mp4.
Justin Laue worked with Professor Sally Fairfax (College of Natural Resources) on “The Historic Portrayal of National Park ‘Friends,’” studying, among others, Glacier National Park.
Townsend Center: Describe the project and your role on it.
Justin Laue: Professor Fairfax is working on a larger program about profit and national parks, and where I came in was to provide the historical background on this and the way the parks were advertised by profit-seeking corporations.
TC: What did you find out?
JL: I found that it depends on the park. It’s actually surprisingly complex and orchestrated. Certain parks, for example Yosemite, Yellowstone, the big powerful ones, they had such a corporate influence. You can see that today. You can see Camp Curry, which is the camping spot in Yosemite, was created by someone back then who said, I think we should have these tents here. The government said, “Sure go ahead, put those in.” In Yellowstone they had a giant hotel built by the railroads. Some parks, like Mesa Verde, which is Indian ruins in South Colorado, had no railroads running nearby. The railroads didn’t waste their money advertising Mesa Verde, and consequently you can see that Mesa Verde has nothing really to show for it. There’s no hotels built there, there are no decent roads, and nobody visited it.
TC: How did you find this information?
JL: It was a combination of everything. It was a lot of fun. When I started out, I really didn’t know that much. I had been to National Parks, and I kind of knew really roughly where they came from. But Professor Fairfax and a GSR who works with her recommended some books for me to look at. And those gave a rough history of the parks system. So I started with that and then I did work in the library, so I got a good sense of how the archival system works there. Sometimes I just got magazines that I knew had advertising from that era, and I’d just look through them.
TC: How did you come into the project?
JL: My advisor sent me an email saying the G.R.O.U.P. projects would be a great opportunity for the summer to do some quality research. It’s amazing how one little email turned around my whole summer. My friends are saying, “I’m sitting in a cubicle making copies for some big I-banking corporation when you’re going to Glacier National Park in Montana and talking to rangers and doing all this cool stuff.”
TC: Is this project something you’re going to build on?
JL: I will definitely build on it. I could see myself maybe down the road getting a master’s thesis in this particular field. It really opened my eyes to academic research, which is something I never really saw before.
Kristin Birdsong worked with Professor Sue Schweik (English) on a project titled “Gifted and Talented Programs in Public Schools.”
Townsend Center: What did you do for this project?
Kristin Birdsong: Basically, we looked at the notion of the gifted child as a status similar to disability from a social standpoint, in terms of the fact that you’re put into a category. Originally I had tried to look at No Child Left Behind legislation and how that has affected policy and how schools are reevaluating their needs, and as soon as I started the research I realized that I couldn’t start there, so the project really evolved quite a bit in the first month. There really isn’t a gifted education policy anywhere. It’s this huge fluid experiment, and that’s pretty much been the purpose of my study: looking at legislation on all levels, from national to the states, looking at local school districts and various schools and looking at the ways it’s interpreted, because it’s all left open to interpretation, very much unlike IDEA legislation, which requires that certain things are in place for special education students. In Louisiana, where I’m from, a gifted child is considered underneath the umbrella of special education, so they have to have trained specialists who are actually certified in gifted education. In California, there’s nothing like that. Not to say that California doesn’t serve these kids, because they do, but they’re categorized differently.
What do you do for excellence, when you’re supposed to have equality in public education? That was the focus of this project—what are the policy issues, and fiscally speaking, where does the money come from?
TC: Do you see this work as leading towards something down the road?
KB: Definitely. I realized I need to do a lot more research. I’m definitely leading toward a year-long research project that would really do justice to this project. It’s something that has kind of perked up my ears—whenever I hear anything about disability studies, my ears perk up. It’s definitely something that I’ll be maintaining an interest in.