"This is Your Life": Hiroshima Maidens and the American ideological superiority in the midst of the Cold War In 1955, twenty-five female victims of the atomic bombing flown to the United States and received extensive plastic surgery to correct severe deformity from keloids. Initiated by the American journalist Norman Cousins and the Japanese minister Tanimoto […]

Pidgin Comedy in Hawai'i: The Queer Resignification of Settler Culture In 1970s Hawai'i, Pidgin, also known as Hawai'i Creole english, was the major medium of comedy because it was the language, visual culture, and attitude of the islands, a stark contrast to imported U.S. settle norms. Rap Reiplinger was a household name with his 1982 […]

From Maidservant to Anomalous Aristocrat: Imaging and Imagining Dido Elizabeth Belle The double portrait of cousins, entitled, Dido Elizabeth Belle and Lady Elizabeth Murray, is truly an anomaly in 18th […]

Shooting Cameras and Shooting Weapons: U.S. Military Violence and Ecological Ruin in Coppola's Apocalypse Now This presentation examines the shooting history of Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979), which was shot on the Philippine island of Luzon. I investigate the collision between Hollywood's shooting of cameras and the U.S. military's shooting of weapons, and the […]

Do Lenders Value the Right Characteristics?: Evidence from Peer-to-Peer Lending Using a unique dataset of peer-to-peer lending with detailed loan and borrower information, I study the following research questions:|1) What are the borrower characteristics that lenders value when choosing which loans to fund?; and (2) Do lenders value the correct characteristics with respect to minimizing […]

Creative Ecologies of Practice: Collaborative Agential Modes of Eco-Aesthetic Pedagogy This presentation will discuss two collaborative environmental art projects aimed at creating experimental and experiential trans-disciplinary pedagogical practices. Both projects are examples of "creative ecologies of practice" enabling and requiring multiple modes of thought, multiple modes of encounter, and multiple modes of pedagogy. They are […]

"Its Ok,  We're Safe Here": Cultural and Eco Activism in the Film Windjarrameru (The Stealing C*nt$) Since 2008, the Karrabing Film Collective has made four films about the various cultural, political, and social realists of being Aboriginal in twenty-first century Australia. Their 2015 film, Windjarrameru (The Stealing C*nt$), highlights how social inequalities experienced every day […]

Israel and Palestine: The Landscape of Separation The Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank not only live under the occupation of Israel but also, contained behind the Wall that Israel erected, populate a space of physical, social, and cultural isolation. The Wall severs communities, people's access to services, livelihoods and religious and cultural […]

Sewing the Forest like a state: Forest Management, Wildlife Conservation, and Center-Periphery Relations in Northeast China, 1949 - 1965 My research aims to counter the prevalent premise that Mao-era China (1945-1976) was devoid of environmental consciousness or concern with environmental protection, and places Chinese policy in the context of the international development of environmental consciousness […]

Sustainable Happy cows: Change and Sustainability in California Dairies  California dairy advertisements often feature happy cows, but they mask social and environmental concerns over industrial milk production. Currently, California dairy producers face a mix of challenges with severe drought, regulation of methane emissions from cows, uncertain changes in milk pricing policies, and future implementation of […]