Through a competitive application process, eleven Wilkinson College faculty were selected to participate in the third annual Chapman Grant Writers’ Boot Camp, designed to assist faculty in learning about all phases of applying for external grant funds.

In this simulation of the grant process, faculty respond to a Request for Proposals (RFP), learn about the details of grant preparation at Chapman, participate in the review process, and revise their proposal. Upon successful completion of the Boot Camp and revision of their mock grant proposals, they each receive a $4,000 Grant Writers’ Award to use as seed funding to further their research and creative efforts.

In addition, Georgiana Bostean (Sociology) and Fiona Shen (Escalette Collection) participated on the event’s successful investigators panel to share their tips on securing grants, and Pete Simi (Sociology), another faculty with a successful grant record, served as the mentor for the Social Sciences mock peer review panel group.

Let’s take a look at some of the faculty research projects in the works!

Afro-Amerasians: Blackness in the Philippine Imaginary
Angelica Allen (Africana Studies)

Dr. Allen’s book, Afro-Amerasians: Blackness in the Philippine Imaginary, analyzes the contemporary experiences of a community in the Philippines known as the Black Amerasians (the progeny of African American servicemen and Filipina women). Despite their membership in one of the largest and oldest Amerasian diasporas, Black Amerasians remain one of the most unrecognized and under-researched communities to arise from the Philippines’ neo-colonial relationship to the United States. Drawing upon ethnographic fieldwork with Black Amerasians living near the homes to two of the largest former U.S. military bases, Allen examines how members of this community form and negotiate their identities while living near militarized zones, and analyzes how they grapple with racist and gendered mythologies that assign Blackness a marginalized space in the Philippine social hierarchy.

From Cholera to COVID-19: A History of Hygiene in Modern Japan
Alexander Bay (History)

Dr. Bay’s book, From Cholera to COVID-19, examines Japanese responses to public health crises from 1858 to 2020. Most explanations cite Japan’s long history of hygiene, mask-wearing, and ingrained social distancing as the foundations of its public health. Modern hygiene developed in Japan during the 19th-century cholera pandemics. The 1918-1919 influenza pandemic established the use of masks to protect against respiratory diseases. Dysentery and typhoid fever prevention after World War II made handwashing part of daily hygiene practices. When SARS emerged in 2003 and COVID-19 in 2020, the Japanese people were well-versed in advanced hygiene practices that prevent the spread of disease-causing germs. This award will fund archival research in Tokyo and Kyoto during the 2022 summer to expand Bay’s source base to strengthen future grant proposals.

The Corrections to College Pipeline: Nuanced Strategies to Provide Secondary Education opportunities for Reentry Young Adults Through Collaborative Community Efforts
Victoria Carty (Sociology)

The Chapman University and Underground GRIT (UG) Partnership helps young people who have been impacted by the criminal justice system re-enter society from juvenile hall, prison, and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention. To accomplish this goal, the program invites them to participate in courses taught by Chapman University faculty. The Corrections to College Pipeline Initiative benefits formerly incarcerated students who successfully complete the course as they will possess the experience and skills necessary to advance in higher education. Correctional education has shown effectiveness by reducing recidivism rates by 43 percent, increasing employment chances by 13 percent, and has demonstrated a cost-effective approach that prevents recidivism and improves critical skills.

Human Rights in the Foreign Policy of Latin American States
Claudia Fuentes-Julio (Peace Studies)

This project is about understanding the role of human rights in the foreign policy of Latin American states. The current literature on human rights and foreign policy focuses heavily on countries from the Global North and pays too little attention to what and through which mechanisms countries from different geographical areas and with different political and economic capacities are doing to protect human rights internationally. This research aims to systemically assess the extent to which Latin American states include human rights as part of their foreign policy and understand how and under what conditions certain states develop a strong commitment to human rights internationally. In terms of methodology, this study is a comparative historical analysis based on case-oriented research. The comparative analysis includes Chile, Brazil, and possibly Argentina.

Gallery Tally Index: interactive database and census for gender representation in the arts
Micol Hebron (Art)

The Gallery Tally Index will be an aesthetically innovative and easy-to-use, interactive website database that archives, tracks, and visualizes statistical data pertaining to the ratios of male, female and nonbinary artists that are represented in the top 500 contemporary art galleries in the world. This interactive database and data visualization site would serve as an invaluable resource for artists, curators, art historians, collectors, and sociologists who are invested in seeing female and nonbinary artists achieve equitable representation in the arts, and will allow public users to research, analyze, and cite the collected data. Hebron aims to develop the Gallery Tally Index as the world’s primary source for data and advocacy pertaining to gender equity in the art world.

The Local News Initiative: A Voice of OC and Chapman Journalism Partnership to Train Student Journalists and Advance Orange County Civic Engagement
Vik Jolly (English)

Local journalism — the civic glue that holds democracy together — is being degraded and destroyed. Now is a crucial time to experiment with new models for teaching, journalism, and civic engagement. This project will deploy student reporters – serving as interns – into communities across Orange County to spark civic engagement, reinvigorate democracy, and chart new territory. Recruiting bright, committed, hard-working students — passionate about the role of journalism in democracy – is a game-changer for civic engagement. Under the mentorship of faculty and professional Voice of OC editors and reporters, students will file public records requests, interview city, county, and school officials, and question authority. Jolly will publicize success to inspire and empower others to implement similar experiments at their schools.

Jews and Race in the Italian Colonization of Africa, 1890-1945
Shira Klein (History)

Klein’s book, Jews and Race in the Italian Colonization of Africa, explores the causes, nature, and consequences of Italian Jews’ support for imperialism between the 1890s and 1930s. Klein argues that Italian Jews participated in the colonization of Africa and that by doing so, they unwittingly contributed to their own downfall under Fascism. Italian Jews supported the empire to its end, even after Italy embarked on its anti-Jewish Racial Laws in 1938, never seeing the strong ties between anti-Black and anti-Jewish propaganda. Using the method of social history and with a focus on ordinary people, Klein draws on intimate and daily-life sources, such as diaries, memoirs, and oral testimonies, alongside more traditional sources like newspapers and community records.

Blacklisted Rebels: Commitment to Child Rights in the Philippines
Minju Kwon (Political Science)

Internal armed conflicts in Mindanao, Philippines, have involved various violations of child rights by non-state armed groups, including the recruitment, abduction, and sexual exploitation of children. This research project explores casual factors that influence rebel groups’ reactions when they are blacklisted by the United Nations (UN) for their violations of child rights. Specifically, in the context of Mindanao, Kwon examines why the Moro Islamic Liberation Front would commit to its UN action plan for ending and preventing the use of children in armed conflict, whereas other non-state armed groups continue their violence against children. This project is the first systematic mixed-method research on UN action plans. It contributes to the literature on international institutions and political violence by analyzing the conditions under which the UN’s naming and shaming increase rebel groups’ commitment to international humanitarian law.

In-Person Exchange in FR309: Childhood in France
Veronique Olivier (World Languages and Cultures)

In Spring 2021, Olivier taught Representation of Childhood in French Literature and Film (FR375) which connected Chapman students with French students from INSPE at the University of Caen. Through this project, students improved their linguistic approach, communication, and cross-cultural skills and broadened their interest in future study or work abroad opportunities. Together with Olivier’s French colleague at INSPE, they plan to expand their collaboration with one-week international exchanges in Spring 2023. This initiative aims to deepen students’ knowledge of the education system, teaching methods, and the child’s place in the two respective societies. This exchange will help students create a new social network in France, which requires great communication skills in general, not to mention in a foreign language.

Geoglyphs of the Anthropocene
Julie Shafer (Art)

Geoglyphs of the Anthropocene is a research-based art project in which Professor Shafer collaborates with a Glaciologist and Microbiologist from the University Centre in Svalbard, Norway, and an Environmental Data Analyst from NASA/JPL, to document the climate crisis in the Arctic Circle. Visual images have the power to draw people in and create a sense of awe at the beauty and destruction held in the landscapes we inhabit and change. In Geoglyphs of the Anthropocene, Shafer will research, document, and make visible using thermal and infrared imaging, greenhouse gasses being emitted in record-breaking amounts in the Arctic. Using drones outfitted with infrared and thermal cameras, Shafer will photograph active and abandoned Russian coal mines, thawing permafrost, and fissures in the ice sheets.

A Prism of Documentarian Marxism under the U.S. Occupation of Japan
Junji Yoshida (Department of World Languages and Cultures)

Yoshida’s project, A Prism of Documentarian Marxism under the U.S. Occupation of Japan, aims to shed light on heroic headways made by David Conde and William Putnam and their aberrant patronage of Japanese Marxist tradition in the early days of the Occupation. Through an examination, translation, and contextualization of the 1946 film A Japanese Tragedy, this project emphasizes the merit of diverse opinions and ideological divergence for the greater benefits of intellectual and artistic creativity. The bilingual and cross-cultural partnership that fruited in the historical materialist ethos of A Japanese Tragedy will provide new insight into ongoing national dialogues, partly because this antiimperialist documentary denounced ‘the cult of personality” that gripped a Showa-era Japanese psyche.

Read more about the 2021 Bootcamp!