URC – Halle Global Research

Petra Creamer, PhD

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, EMORY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES, MIDDLE EASTERN AND SOUTH ASIAN STUDIES

Rural Landscapes of Iron Age Imperial Mesopotamia

The Rural Landscapes of Iron Age Imperial Mesopotamia project (RLIIM) seeks funding to investigate the nature of the rural settlement Qach Rresh in the Assyrian Empire of the Iron Age Near East (c.900-600 BCE), located in modern-day Iraqi Kurdistan. This project involves targeted excavations and remote sensing of Qach Rresh and its surrounding landscape on the Erbil Plain, expanding from two seasons of excavation in 2022 and 2023 directed by the PI. Geophysical remote sensing investigations led by the PI at the site have revealed several structures potentially related to storage, administration, and associated pastoral practices. RLIIM seeks support from the URC for two seasons (6 weeks in June-July, 2 weeks in mid-August) of investigations at Qach Rresh and its surrounding area. Excavations will explore the Assyrian occupation phases of three large building complexes and their association with local agropastoral production and storage. Excavation will be accompanied by a vastly expanded remote sensing program using magnetic gradiometry to map site and landscape features. A robust sampling and analysis program (isotopic analysis of faunal and botanical remains; petrographic analysis of ceramic material; etc.) carried out by the PI and other core team members will investigate the extent of centralized administrative systems, adjustments in local subsistence strategies and human-environment interactions in premodern imperial spaces.

Maho, Ishiguro, PhD

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, EMORY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES, MUSIC

Gifts from the Waves: Acehnese Dance and Music in Post-Tsunami Aceh, Indonesia and Beyond

Where are the voices of female Acehnese performing artists living under Aceh’s current Sharia law? My research focuses on the performing arts from Indonesia’s Aceh province, an understudied area due to its 30-year political and military struggle with the central government of Indonesia (1976 - 2004). Since the resolution of the conflict, only achieved through a devastating tsunami in 2004, political scientists have produced scholarly works which focus on male-dominated political and religious spaces. Overlooked is how Muslim women have been marginalized by Aceh’s recent move away from a traditionally matrifocal society to an increasingly patriarchal and conservative society governed under Sharia law. My book project, Gifts from the Waves: Acehnese Dance and Music in Post-Tsunami Aceh, Indonesia and Beyond, is the first monograph on the Acehnese performing arts, exploring facets outside its male-dominated spaces that rarely include women’s voices. I argue that the changing relationship between Acehnese performing arts, discourses on gender and localized forms of Islam in Indonesia have shaped unique spaces for their creative and devotional practices, transforming the ways Muslim women dancers navigate their artistic, religious, and social worlds. Based on ethnographic research conducted in Indonesia, my project foregrounds the voices of arts practitioners in order to illustrate a manifold world of profound artistic expressions and powerful religious belief in Acehnese society. The URC award will assist me in completing this book project by granting the time for revisions and for conducting a two months period of fieldwork in Indonesia.

Caroline Fohlin, PhD

PROFESSOR, EMORY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES, ECONOMICS

Leveraging ‘Big Data’ and Artificial Intelligence to Study the Rise of Authoritarian Rule and the Economic Impacts of Political Turbulence in the 1920s and 30s

This research explores the economic causes and effects of the global decline of democracy and the rise of authoritarianism over the interwar period. With a primary emphasis on Germany, complemented by a comparative analysis of France and the United States, the research is the first to use truly “big data” and advanced artificial intelligence and natural language processing to investigate the interconnections between political regimes, social upheaval, financial systems, and the macroeconomy.

The current stage of the project focuses on data collection and language model training for variable creation and preliminary analysis. The project design and methods therefore involve obtaining source materials, ascertaining the most efficient approach collecting raw data, developing language models to identify and create the necessary variables, and specifying robust statistical models for hypothesis testing. To achieve these project milestones, the URC grant will fund undergraduate and graduate student research assistance in both computer science and economics, data collection and modelling costs, and sabbatical travel to work with colleagues and archival materials in Europe.

The funding will expand and accelerate the PI’s publication pipeline with articles that pose new questions and contribute new arguments to long-standing debates with the use of unique data sources. The work also contributes to the burgeoning research on applications of AI methods, language modelling, and the collection and analysis of “big data” in economics and financial history.

Harshita Kamath, PhD

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, EMORY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES, MIDDLE EASTERN AND SOUTH ASIAN STUDIES

ANNAMAYYA: POETRY, POWER, AND THE MAKING OF GODS AND KINGS

My proposed project will culminate in a critical history of the poet Annamayya (1424-1503 C.E.), his songs inscribed on nearly three thousand copper plates, and his impact on shaping the powerful presence of the Tirumala temple located in Andhra Pradesh, India. My project examines the life of Annamayya and his songs in order to trace the rise of Tirumala from a regional sectarian site to the most popular Hindu temple in the world today. At the broadest level, my research demonstrates that poetry was historically essential to the consolidation of power throughout South India. Annamayya mobilized multiple modes of power, including royal patronage of Tirumala and devotional discourse of the sectarian Srivaishnava community in order to exalt his god and popularize the Tirumala temple. Through Annamayya’s corpus, the god in the Tirumala temple shifted from being a regional manifestation of Vishnu to the primary god of the South Indian landscape, one who is visited by twenty million pilgrims annually.

Allison Linden, MD, MPH

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, SCHOOL OF MEDICINE, SURGERY, DIVISION OF PEDIATRIC SURGERY

Development of a multi-institutional registry for anorectal malformations in Rwanda

Congenital anorectal malformations (ARM) are a significant source of morbidity and mortality in low-income countries due to challenges in access to safe, timely, affordable pediatric surgical care. Current data regarding epidemiology, suggested operative approach, and short- and long-term outcomes originate in well resourced, high-income countries with multidisciplinary care teams. This environment is immensely different than that in low-income countries. Access to appropriate care, cultural differences, equipment availability and cost of care are only a few of the elements which can greatly affect suggested optimal care in a low-income country setting. The effect of these elements on ARM short- and long-term outcomes has not been studied. Better outcomes cannot be achieved without a greater understanding of these elements.

The goal of this proposed research is to establish an ARM patient registry at the three hospitals that perform pediatric surgical care in Rwanda in order to better inform outcomes and provide a platform for quality improvement. This valuable data will provide essential information to develop more effective treatment pathways for ARM care that are culturally relevant and context appropriate.

Stephen O'Connell, PhD

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, EMORY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES, ECONOMICS

From Displacement to Resilience: Aid, Economic Recovery, and Social Cohesion in Post-War Iraq

Civil conflicts leave profound and lasting impacts on individuals and communities affected by forced displacement. Exposure to violence, displacement, the loss of physical and human capital, and ruptured economic and social ties contribute to post-conflict environments exhibiting low levels of liquidity, trade, and capital investment as well as faltering trust and social cohesion. Livelihoods programming in post-conflict contexts has the potential to both support inclusion in labour markets and alleviate the root causes of low social cohesion by increasing economic opportunity, reducing inequalities and grievances, increasing contact, and lowering competition for services and resources. The role of livelihoods programs in improving social cohesion and securing durable solutions for displaced persons, however, is often assumed and only rarely studied. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Iraq operates a cash grant program in displacement-affected communities targeting poor individuals who have the potential to develop a business or enter paid employment. The programme provides several thousand new microentrepreneurs per year with \$2,000 each to establish a business– a value approximately two thirds of program participants' baseline annual income. In collaboration with IOM, we will randomize the selection of individual beneficiaries for the program to study the effects of this program on both economic and social well-being among applicants and their broader communities. In particular, the study will investigate how postwar recovery programming encourages sustainable livelihoods, economic resilience, and social cohesion in displacement-affected contexts.

Nathan Suhr-Sytsma, PhD

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, EMORY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES, ENGLISH

African Poetry Worlds

African Poetry Worlds addresses the questions: what is new about twenty-first-century African poetry in English? How is anglophone African poetry distinct from other bodies of anglophone poetry? Why does poetry continue to matter for writers and readers in and beyond Africa? I argue that twenty-first-century African poets—and the pan-African communities they constitute—are engaged in worldmaking; they renew a quest for freedom amidst historic and continuing unfreedom, not just by challenging neoliberal political economies or stereotypical images of Africa that circulate globally, but also by breaching customary norms of representation for gender, sexuality, and family. More than just representing new social realities, recent poems by Africans enact new self-understandings about what it means to inhabit African lifeworlds. Each chapter of this book manuscript concerns how poems think sensuously through dilemmas pertaining to African peoples’ experiences of race (Ch 1), nation/diaspora (Ch 2), generation (Ch 3), motherhood (Ch 4), and futurity (Ch 5), with a conclusion on planetary crisis. Composed and circulated in performance, in print, and on screen, these poems increasingly depend, in turn, on a new media ecology. As contemporary African poets work through dilemmas of how to confront socio-existential situations and forge institutional networks, they fashion original poems with particular technical repertoires and mediated formats. Reorienting understandings of African literature and lyric poetry, the book will at once address the tendency of African literary/cultural studies to discount poetry and challenge scholars of poetry to do justice to living writers from the Global South.

Daniel Walter, PhD

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, OXFORD COLLEGE, HUMANITIES

Forced Migration and Second Language Learning: Investigating Syrian and Ukrainian Refugees learning German in Hamburg

The aim of this project is to understand how Syrian and Ukrainian refugees in Germany are engaging (or not) in German language learning through language and culture courses offered through the German government, as well as their daily experiences in work and community spaces.

I am interested in collecting interviews with speakers within these communities in Hamburg, Germany through connections with educators teaching German as a foreign language. In doing so, I hope to gain insight into their ability to express themselves in German and how their feelings about language education in Germany plays a role in their life.

The interviews conducted for this project will consist of questions related to the goals expressed in the government provided programming, what the refugees believe the purpose of these courses is, the effectiveness of these courses, challenges that these people face within these courses, and their recommendations for improvements to current practices.

The information these people can provide about their learning experiences, as well as aligning those experiences with linguistic outcomes measured through our questions, will provide important information for the German government about the effectiveness of its programming, as well as more broadly for how language training can be improved for refugees in other contexts.

Jing Wang, PhD

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, EMORY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES, FILM AND MEDIA

Globalizing Independent Cinema: Circulation of Independent Chinese Documentaries in Global Media Industries (1991-2017)

Using a media industry studies approach, my book Globalizing Independent Cinema examines the multi-dimensional, dynamic relationships between national independent cinema culture and the global film industry, as manifested in the overseas circulation of Chinese independent documentaries, from their domestic production sectors into global markets. My methodologies include extensive interviews with both domestic and transnational industrial professionals, evaluation of previously overlooked archival materials, discourse analysis within trade journals, and my own experience as a former documentary filmmaker for China Central Television.

The book argues that overseas circulation of nonmainstream Chinese documentary film has been mediated by transnational independent film circulation networks, consisting of key non-major industry stakeholders rather than Hollywood media conglomerates. These networks involve multidirectional cross-border flows of funding, production and distribution partnerships, creative talent and ideas, and media products. By analyzing particular stakeholders’ roles and mapping out their manifold interconnections, it uses Chinese independent cinema to demonstrate how transnational media contra-flows from non-Western countries have become multilayered, hybrid processes. These encompass both powerful forces for cultural homogeneity as well as countervailing pulls toward maintaining cultural specificity and autonomy on local levels. An understanding of Chinese independent documentary’s integration into global independent film circulation networks is useful in two respects: First, it exemplifies a model of transnational film networks in which national and global collaborators are fully intertwined, and second, it reveals the deep complexities and challenges for nonmainstream media products that flow from the non-Western world into the global media marketplace.