Sarah Bloom (Anthropology PhD, Advisor)
I am beginning my PhD in Anthropology after spending the last few years working in museum education in the U.S., and in cultural heritage site management in the Middle East. Prior to that, I earned my MA in Classical Art and Archaeology from the University of Colorado. I am interested in understanding how museums and other cultural institutions relate to their local communities. I have a special interest in this issue with respect to the boom in the establishment of Western-based museums in the Middle East. This topic involves studying the commodification of art and culture, and the role that background plays in perceptions of art and culture.
Darren Byler (Anthropology PhD, Advisor)
Having completed an M.A. in East Asian Studies at Columbia University in 2009 and a year of language study at Xinjiang University in 2010, I am now entering my first year of the Social Cultural Anthrolopogy PhD program. I’m interested in the anthropology of place, translocal cultural resilience and change, as expressed through the visual, material culture and the built environment in Northwest China and Central Asia. My most recent research has analyzed public parks of Xinjiang as sites of cultural performance and levity which coexist with the militarized state, widespread cultural displacement and the pervasive threat of ethnic and economic violence in the region. Future projects will focus on the art community of Urumqi centered around the government-sponsored art district Qi Fang Jie. I’m fascinated with the ways in which differently positioned artists, musicians, and poets represent “being Chinese” in the desert and mountain landscapes of Central Asia and how these representations are in turn related to understandings of human ecology and politics.”
Michael Marshall (Anthropology PhD, Advisor)
Nicole Robert (Women Studies PhD, Co-Advisor)
Having completed an M.A. in Museology in 2009, I am now entering my second year of the Women Studies PhD program. I am interested in the politics of representation in history museums, with a particular focus on the hidden histories of sexual minorities. Recent research has pursued the story of the Lesbian Mothers National Defense Fund, the potential of social media tools to broaden both the reach and participation of museum work, and the application of an intersectional analysis to local history exhibits, considering their representation of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, race and ability. I recently returned from the International Conference of the Inclusive Museum where I was pleased to present the results of my M.A. research, which evaluated the inclusion of LGBT artifacts in Seattle area history museums.
Jaye Sablan (Women Studies PhD, Co-Chair)
Na’an-hu si Jaye Sablan. Ginen i tano i Chamoru. Ginen i taotao San Antonio Village, Saipan. Patgun Diana Pangelinan Sablan. Ginen i familian Talu yan i familian Katingting. My name is Jaye Sablan. I am from the land of the Chamorros. I come from the village of San Antonio, Saipan. I am the child of Diana Pangelinan Sablan. I am descended from the Talu and Katingting family clans. My proposed dissertation research focuses on the ways gender liminal (between “maleness” and “femaleness”) and sexually non-normative (or queer, for lack of more culturally approximate terms at the moment) Native Chamorros deploy various cultural productions such as drag and musical performance in order to articulate politics about indigeneity, gender, sexuality, and nation. Three theoretical fields that inform my work are Pacific Islander Feminisms, Oceanic Cultural Studies, and Transnational Genders and Sexualities. I am a fifth year doctoral student in the Feminist Studies program at the University of Washington.
Shuxuan Zhou (Women Studies PhD, Advisor)
I earned a BA in Finance from the Central University of Finance and Economics in China. My undergraduate thesis analyzed microfinance programs for women in China. Now I am starting my first-year of study in the Women Studies PhD program. I am currently broadly interested in feminist ethnography and oral history. Specially, I hope to conduct oral history research on the life conditions of Chinese female workers in national factories from the 1960s to 1990s, as well as the ways in which collective experience impacts them, especially when they are laid off.