Graduate Fellows
Elizabeth Ben-Ishai - Sylvia "Duffy" Engle Graduate Student Fellow
Political Science
The Autonomy-Fostering State: Citizenship and Social Service Delivery
Ben-Ishai’s dissertation explores the obligations of the state to foster autonomy in its citizens, particularly its most vulnerable. The capacity for autonomy is a key requirement for access to full citizenship rights in contemporary democracies. Hence, she argues, an inclusive and universal notion of citizenship requires a version of what she refers to as “the autonomy-fostering state.” Ben-Ishai examines three “case studies” of social service delivery, drawing on empirical examples in order to theorize the conditions under which the state structures its relationships with citizens in ways that enable, rather than constrain, the development of autonomy-competency.
Yolanda Covington-Ward - Michigan Graduate Student Fellow
Anthropology
Embodied Histories, Danced Religions, and Performed Politics: Changing Conceptions of Kongo Cultural Performance
Covington-Ward’s dissertation utilizes the study of makinu—a general term for a complex of Kongo performance forms that incorporate dance, music, and song—to examine how the meanings and uses of Kongo cultural performances change in the contexts of socio-historical transformations, and how embodied practices in performances can be used to transmit, represent, and transform moral values, religious and political ideals, and group identities. Through her focus on cultural performances, Covington-Ward seeks to illuminate an area of study that has been largely overlooked by other scholars of Kongo culture and society, thus contributing new insights to the anthropology of performance in West-Central Africa.
Jonah Johnson - James A. Winn Graduate Student Fellow
Comparative Literature and German
Seasick yet Still Docked: Casting Kant’s Shadow in Post-Enlightenment German Drama
Johnson’s dissertation examines the consequences of early German Idealism for the writing and theorization of tragedy in the wake Kant’s critical philosophy. By situating dramatists such as Friedrich Hölderlin and Heinrich von Kleist within the context of late-eighteenth century German philosophy, he argues that the often discussed “death of tragedy” during this period is tied to a crisis of representation shared by post-Enlightenment dramatists and philosophers alike.
Min Li - Mary Ives Hunting and David D. Hunting, Sr., Graduate Student Fellow
Anthropology
Conquest, Concord, and Consumption: Becoming Shang in Eastern China
Min Li’s dissertation research is based on archaeological excavations at a frontier city of the Shang civilization (circa 1600-1040 B.C.) in early China. He investigates the ways that aspects of symbolic, social, and natural worlds converged in human interactions with animals, particularly in the realms of food and religious communication. In the context of state formation and imperial conquest, the distinction between human and animals, often construed and demarcated along lines of social difference involving the human other, informs on the self-definition and identity construction of early states and civilizations.
Jennifer Palmer - Michigan Graduate Student Fellow
History and Women's Studies
Slavery, Race, and Gender in Eighteenth-Century La Rochelle
Jennifer Palmer examines how French people on French soil constructed and participated in slavery. To do so, she focuses on the port town of La Rochelle, a vibrant locale where people crossed boundaries of race, status, and culture. By concentrating on visual and archival sources, she explores the tension between two representations of slavery: slaves as the ultimate luxury goods, and slaves as community members embedded in networks of kinship, friendship, and patronage. Through a narrative of family relations with a subtext of visual representations, she considers how the ever-changing conceptions and practices of slavery were shaped and defined in France, not only in the colonies. In doing so, she conceptualizes slavery as central to French people’s understanding of family and self.
Stefan Stantchev - Michigan Graduate Student Fellow
History
Embargo: the Origins of an Idea and the Effects of a Policy
Stantchev’s project will clarify the origins and development of embargoes and the results of their employment. Economic sanctions have primarily interested political scientists who have analyzed them chiefly as economic tools for the achievement of foreign policy goals. Focusing on the use of embargoes by the Papacy, Venice, and Genoa primarily against Muslim, pagan, and Eastern Christian lands during the Middle Ages, Stantchev asks when, how, and to what perceived effect trade sanctions were employed. The main question that his work will address is whether or not embargoes (and thus economic sanctions in general) can be seen not only as an economic, but also as a cultural tool of statecraft.
