Rhea Lathan, Department of English, UW-Madison - "Writing a Wrong: The Case of African American Adult Literacy Action in South Carolina, 1955-1962."
      This dissertation uses primary secondary data to explore the African American adult literacy activities of the South Carolina Citizenship Education Program, where writing and reading were taught as a means of increasing economic, political, social and spiritual autonomy. By questioning the relationship between writing instruction and learning to write, Lathan argues for an expansion of writing- to-learn as a concept that moves beyond "writing-in-the disciplines" to an arena where writing is a symbiotic relationship with social and political action. This concept is based on the idea that African American literacy practices are grounded in a history that links individual and community experiences.

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Donte McFadden, Department of English, UW-Milwaukee - "Diasporic Art and Politics: Examining the Cinema of the Los Angeles School of Black Filmmakers."
      The Los Angeles School of Black Filmmakers was a name designated for a loose collective of African American students enrolled in the film school at the University of California-Los Angeles between the late 1960s and the early 1980s. There are two central questions that McFadden will explore with his project: i) How do the films and critical essays that emerged from this period fit within the historical trajectory of African American cultural discourses in the 20th century?; and 2) How do historical and social conditions shape the relationship between art and politics in filmmakers' work, individually and collectively?

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Solsiree del Moral, Department of History, UW-Madison - " Race, Science, and Nation: The Cultural Politics of Schools in Colonial Puerto Rico, 1917-1938."
      This project will examine how, within a repressive U.S. colonial public school system, early twentieth century (1898-1938) Puerto Rican teachers constructed a nationalist project with the intention of contributing to the "racial reconstruction" of the allegedly racially degenerate Puerto Rican student body. She will examine how teachers employed "race" as both a scientific, biological concept and a social and cultural construction. Moral argues that teachers employed the "Latin race" concept in Puerto Rico to shield against U.S. colonial accusations of blackness, as a certificate of whiteness within an Afro-Caribbean context, and to subtly reinforce existing Puerto Rican racial hierarchies.

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Andrea Voyer, Department of Sociology, UW-Madison - "Doing Diversity in a New America: Interactions, Interpretations, and Institutions."
      This research will examine "diversity struggles" in an overwhelmingly white Maine town that is home to a Somali immigrant community. Through ethnographic work and interviews with public officials and residents, Voyer has observed that individuals experience diversity within everyday interactions, employ their experiences in order to make sense of their community, and orient their behavior to widely available "notions of "cultural sensitivity." African immigration has increased consistently since the 1970s, and these immigrants increasingly settle outside traditional urban centers. This project will contribute to scholarly perspectives on race, cultural assimilation, and integration. It will prove useful to policy makers and service providers in communities experiencing diversification, as well as suggest approaches to diversity that will allow communities experiencing new immigration to avoid problems, such as persistent social segregation, faced in many historical immigration centers.

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