Research

Research
Fletcher Family Fund

Faculty Resources Committee Awards - Fall 2002

Fletcher Family Research Grant
John Lichter, Assistant Professor of Biology and Environmental Studies
Mike Palopoli, Assistant Professor of Biology

Ectomycorrhizal Community Development During Primary Plant Succession on Coastal Lake Michigan Sand Dunes.
Plant-soil microbe interactions are the most poorly understood area of plant ecology. These interactions include symbioses between plans and ectomycorrhizal fungi that generally benefit both organisms. Recently ecologists have begun to employ some of the tools of molecular biology to begin to sort out the complexity of these relationships. In this regard, we formed a collaboration that is proving to be exceptionally fruitful. Our investigation is focused on changes in the composition and diversity of ectomycorrhizal fungi associated with white pine seedlings colonizing coastal Lake Michigan sand dunes. We request funds to complete the laboratory portion of the research. This study will be the first to clearly document concomitant changes in plant and ectomycorrhizal communities during primary plant succession. It will almost certainly result in a publication in a premier ecology journal.

Fletcher Family Research Grant
Kristen Ghodsee, Assistant Professor of Women's Studies

It Takes a King?: Women's Political Participation in Post-Communist Bulgaria.
This study examines the sudden rise of women's political participation in Bulgaria as measured by the number of female members of parliament. Across Central and Eastern Europe the elimination of gender-based quotas after the fall of communism in 1989 precipitated a rapid decrease in the number of women in the national legislatures. Although these numbers have increased in some countries throughout the 1990s, only Bulgaria has more female parliamentarians than it did at any time under the previous regime. After the 2001 election of the National Movement Simeon the Second (NDSV) government, the number of women in parliament increased by a drastic 142 percent. This increase is almost wholly associated with the return of Bulgaria's former king, Simeon Sazecoburgotski, and the electoral success of the NDSV. My research will be a qualitative study of this phenomenon and will include interviews with 25 female and 10 male members of parliament in Bulgaria in the summer of 2003.

Fletcher Family Research Grant
Michael Kolster, Assistant Professor of Art

Las Vegas Revisited: Color
I seek support in the form of a Faculty Research Grant in order to photograph the ongoing human occupation of the desert environment in and around Lad Vegas, Nevada. While I have visited the area on two previous occasions and have exhibited work resulting from these visits, I plan to return in January 2003 to re-photograph certain scenes. I wish to track the degree they have changed over time and plan to use color film to record these landscapes. I hope the experience will offer a compelling comparison with earlier attempts completed in black-and-white.

Fletcher Family Research Grant
J.B. Capino, Visiting Assistant Professor of Film Studies

Inscriptions of Race and the Colonial Encounter in Bison's "The Head Hunters."
This project involves archival research on the 1913 silent film, The Head Hunter, a Kansas love story set in colonial Philippines, featuring an interracial love triangle between a Kansas soldier, a Midwestern belle and her rich Filipino fiancée. The story is significantly set during the tumultuous Philippine Insurrection of 1989-1903 and involves historical figures such as Gen. Arthur MacArthur (Douglas' father) and Philippine president Emilio Aguinaldo.

The film, made by the famous motion picture company, Bison, is remarkable both for its representation of history and racial politics, but is practically unknown to contemporary scholars. (I re-discovered the film at the Library of Congress during the course of my dissertation research.) My study discusses the film in relation to the conventions of staging race in early cinema and, equally important, to the cultural history of racial difference in American-occupied Philippines.

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Faculty Research Fund Award
Matthew Tomlinson, Visiting Assistant Professor of Anthropology

Fijian Narratives of Historical Decline and Their Political Effects
In indigenous Fiji, narratives of historical declines ('the present has less power than the past') are not mere nostalgia, for they underlie political actions from local disputes over chieftainship to national-level debacles such as the coup d'ètat of 1987 and 2000. In this project, building on dissertation fieldwork (1996, 1998-1999), I will record such narratives from chiefly oratorical performances and nightly kava-drinking sessions on Kadavu Island, and archival sources. This data, which will be gathered over six weeks in May and June 2003, will be invaluable as I expand my dissertation into a publishable manuscript and orient future research.

Faculty Research Fund Award
Stephanie Richards, Visiting Assistant Professor of Biology

Identification of Nuclear Localization Sequences in RSK
When mammalian cells receive a signal to grown and divide, a number of proteins in the cell are switched on, including an enzyme called RSK. When RSK is switched on by growth signals, it physically moves from the main body of the cell, through a channel, and into the nucleus. Once in the main body of the cell, through a channel, and into the nucleus. Once in the nucleus, RSK helps to initiate the process of cell growth and division. Understanding the mechanism that RSK uses to execute that transport is of great interest to cancer researchers as a potential target for therapeutic intervention, because specifically disrupting that transport may abrogate uncontrolled cell growth.

Faculty Research Fund Award
Songren Cui, Visiting Associate Professor of Asian Studies

Chinese Language Teaching in the United States: a Historical Survey
This project intends to inquire into the early stage of Chinese language teaching in the United States. Specifically, it will focus on several universities that first offered Chinese language courses between the late 19th century and the early 20th century, such as Yale, Harvard, UC Berkeley, and Columbia University. The study will help us not only gain valuable knowledge of the origin and pioneers of Chinese language teaching in this country, but also better understand part of the history of cultural exchange between China and the United States.

Faculty Research Fund Award
Nancy Riley, Associate Professor of Sociology

Feminist Perspectives on Reproduction Control in India and China
Request for financial support to attend a small meeting of collaborators on a project assessing the birth programs in India and China. I will spend 5 days working with two scholars who are coming to Hawaii from the US Mainland. We are examining the ways that gender and feminism have been part of the development and criticism of family planning programs in these two countries. At the end of our meeting, we will submit an article to an academic journal.

Faculty Research Fund Award
Barry Logan, Assistant Professor of Biology

A Genetic Exploration into the Mechanisms of Light Tolerance in Plants
Light absorbed by plants in excess of the needs of photosynthesis is potentially damaging to essential cellular constituents. Plants engage in 'photoprotective' processes that minimize light-mediated damage. One such process is 'energy dissipation', whereby excess light is safely eliminated via conversion to heat. Antioixidants, enzymes and molecules that detoxify dangerous molecules that are formed when excess light is absorbed, serve as the other arm of photoprotection. I seek funds to purchase chemical reagents needed to quantify the antioxidant systems of a mutant line of plans that lack the ability to perform energy dissipation.


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Fund for Course Development Award
J.B. Capino, Visiting Assistant Professor of Film Studies

This proposal seeks funds to cover film rental expenses for a course on the history if experimental film and video in the United States from the 1940s to the present. Since practically all of the films to be screened for class are either not distributed on video or too expensive to purchase, the department needs to rent 16mm film prints and pay just royalties to the non-profit filmmakers' cooperatives and museums that distribute these films.