Professor David Shorter traveled to New Zealand to chair a panel and present a paper at the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association annual meeting. His panel on “Object Orientated Science and the Fantasy of Alien Contact,” became the focus of a TV news program in Auckland and was picked up by the French website, Science et Vie. He was rewarded an AmerInd New World Seminar Residency in September to finish a forthcoming essay on multi-dimensionality. He was also invited to speak at the Beyond the Professoriate conference in September where he spoke to junior scholars about succeeding at research-intensive universities. PhD student Clementine Bordeaux, pictured with Dr. Shorter, presented at MAI ki te Ao Indigenous Doctoral Gathering held on Arterorea in June followed by the Native American and Indigenous Studies Conference (NAISA) 2019 hosted at the University of Waikato.

 

Third year Ph.D. student, Amira Hassnaoui, spent summer 2019 on a UCLA Graduate Summer Research Mentorship research trip in Tozeur, a city in Southern Tunisia. Amira is currently working with people in the communities in and around Tozeur who are practitioners of a trance music ceremony called Banga. The practice of Banga was transmitted over generations from Sub-Saharan Africa to North Africa. She is looking at how practitioners claim, negotiate and perform Banga music outside sacred spaces in public and staged spaces, especially in the light of socio-economic changes after the 2011 Revolution in Tunisia. Amira is originally from Tunisia and earned her M.A. in Popular Culture form Bowling Green State University. Her research interests include musicology, folklore, youth activism, feminism, social change, ethnomusicology and anthropology, focusing on Tunisian popular culture.

 

Ph.D. candidate Amy Alterman is currently conducting her dissertation fieldwork on abortion access in the United States. Since July 2019, she has traveled around the Midwest and South, touring with the Abortion AF (Abortion Access Force) organization and visiting independent abortion clinics across the states. With Abortion AF, the feminist abortion rights organization and subject of her dissertation, she conducts participant observation research on their 2019 Abortion AF traveling comedy show tour. Additionally, she joins them at their annual Garbage Fyre Festival www.garbagefyrefest.com

where they lead abortion activists from across the country in a series of counter protest events against hate group Operation Save America's (formally Operation Rescue) annual week long series of anti-abortion actions and terrorism. On her own, in between Abortion AF tour dates, she visits independent abortion clinics to interview abortion providers, volunteer on their projects, and lavish them with gratitude. She interviews providers about barriers to abortion provision, provider stigma, and the role of comedy in destigmatizing abortion. She has visited 7 clinics so far and counting—including the last clinic in Mississippi, Jackson Women's Health Organization/The Pink House.