2009 TINKER GRANTEE NARRATIVES

ALVAREZ, MARIA GABRIELA. A Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Hispanic Languages and Literature working on “From melodrama to social awareness: The evolution of the Mexican telenovela,” will travel to Mexico to research the Latin American popular culture of telenovelas of the past three decades by conducting interviews and visiting Televisa archives in Mexico City.

BENAVIDES, MARTIN. A first year Masters student in Marine & Atmospheric Sciences Department working on “A field and DNA-based investigation into the shark fin trade of Peru: A critical step towards informed shark conservation in South America.” His research in Peru will combine an in-depth exploratory investigation of shark fisheries in this country with cutting edge molecular techniques to establish which species and size classes of sharks are exploited for fin trade.

FERNANDEZ GONZALEZ, ANA. A Ph.D. candidate in the Hispanic Languages and Literature Department working on “Spanish Erotic Novels Written by Women (Fin de Siècle – Beginning XX Century),” will visit Madrid to research material at the Biblioteca Nacional de España and the Biblioteca de Mujeres. Her research examines Spanish Literature between 1890 and 1930 within the Erotic Literature genre and specifically the narrative fiction written by women during these years.

FREDRICK, SHARONAH. A Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Hispanic Languages and Literature working on “Amerindian Narratives of Space: Analyzing Colonial Mayan Mapmaking in the Contemporary Yucatan,” will be consulting diverse archives in Merida and Veracruz, Mexico and conducting fieldwork with local indigenous communities to explore the persistence of traditional and colonial concepts of space in present times.

ONSTINE, ALISON. A Ph.D. student in the Ecology and Evolution Department working on “The evolutionary history and speciation of migratory bird populations: DNA sampling of yellow-green vireos (Vireo flavoviridis) in Southwestern Mexico,” will travel to Sierra de Manantlán Biosphere Reserve in Mexico to collaborate with local researchers and collect DNA samples necessary to study the population of non-migratory vireos to understand what is feasible and realistic given the abundance of birds and nature of their behavior.

OTHEGUY, RAQUEL. A Ph.D. candidate in History working on “The Role of Race and Imperial Power in Intra-Caribbean Migration: Puerto Rican Laborers in Nineteenth Century Cuba,” will travel to Cuba to conduct research at various archival sites along with interviews of Puerto Rican descendants in local communities to gain significant information on Puerto Rican migration to Cuba.

PAGE POMA, FERNANDA. A Ph.D. candidate in Sociology from Argentina, working on “A case of collective “in-action” in Argentina,” will travel to Florencio Varela (one of the most poverty-stricken districts of Buenos Aires) to collect information and conduct interviews from this region of the events that occurred in 2001’s economic, social and political crisis.

SAAVEDRA CISNEROS, ANGEL. A Ph.D. student in Political Science working on “Exploring political psychology in Latin American: Comparative perspectives from faculty, students and citizens,” will visit Mexico to learn more about the Latin American way of thinking and political behavior through in-depth interviews, visiting various academic institutions and political experiments with native populations.

SANZ ALVAREZ, ARANCHA. A Ph.D. candidate in the Hispanic Languages and Literature department working on “Spanish Women Travelers,” will be visiting Madrid to review travel narratives and related material from the Biblioteca Nacional de España and Sociedad geografica Espanola (Spanish Geographical Society) that will assist her research of Spanish Women Travelers of the Nineteenth Century.

TOLEDO, ROBERTO. A Ph.D. candidate in Philosophy working on “Community- Based Healing through Religion and Hip Hop in Brazil,” will be conducting interviews with several community members to complete his research of hip-hop movements and religious movements that are currently the two most influential movements affecting troubled youths in racially marginalized communities in France and Brazil.

YOUNG, KEVIN. A Ph.D. history student working on “Patterns of Protest in Rural Colombia: The Regional Indigenous Council of Cauca, 1971-1991,” will be visiting Bogotá and Cauca, Colombia to locate archives and written records of indigenous protests and Indian-State relations along with establishing contacts with individuals and communities with historical experience in peasant and indigenous movements.

ZUNIGA ESPINOZA, CRISTOBAL. A Ph.D. candidate in the History Department from Chile working on “The Making of the Alliance for Progress from an Inter-American Perspective,” will travel to Venezuela to access archives from the Romulo Betancourt Foundation and explore documents of Betancourt at the National Archives and the Archives Ministry of Foreign Relations to identify which Latin American leaders influenced Venezuela’s official position towards the Alliance for Progress and which social and political leaders influenced the final outcome.

2008 Tinker Grantee Narratives
The Latin American and Caribbean Studies Center is pleased to announce the 2009 competition for The Tinker Field Research Grant. This travel grant is open to MA and Doctoral Students attending Stony Brook University in any field of Latin American and Iberian Studies. The Tinker program encourages preliminary travel and exploratory fieldwork by graduate students who are in the process of defining their future research and/or Ph.D. proposals. Supported by a grant from the Tinker Foundation (New York), it is being matched by Stony Brook University contributions from a range of programs and departments interested in the advancement of new global scholarship. LACS expects to award 15-20 travel awards, each worth in the range of $1,000-1,750 each, depending on the destination. LACS will be accepting applications until March 2, 2009, for travel --of at least four weeks duration-- during the Summer (or Fall) of 2009.

ELIGIBILITY AND REQUIREMENTS:

The Tinker Grant covers primarily TRAVEL COSTS (airfare and associated travel costs with some per diem expenses covered based on merit of request.) for the preliminary fieldwork experience, including the possibility of in-country travel for multi-sited research. Graduate students in good standing from any discipline or program are welcome to apply--be they social scientists or humanists, natural scientists or professional MA students with an international dimension to their work. “Field-work” is broadly defined: it can be traditional archival or data-collection, or it can involve interviews, surveys, textual analysis or it may involve immersion with the subject, groups, prospective colleagues, cultural institution, site or environment of future research and writing. Tinker funding is available only for Spanish and Portuguese-speaking countries of Latin America and the Caribbean (excluding Puerto Rico) and Spain or Portugal. (Students working on Puerto Rico, Belize, Indigenous languages, Latinos in the U.S., or Anglophone or Francophone Caribbean are unfortunately not eligible.) If travel is at least four weeks, it can also occur during the December-January academic break, with approval from LACS.

Priority will be given to students at the defining moment of their research, prior to proposal writing, major grant funding, previous fieldwork and actual dissertation writing. LACS will favor students who have not had prior opportunities to travel to their prospective research sites, but funding is possible for students to travel to their home countries. Students are eligible for only one Tinker grant per graduate career. Interdisciplinary projects are encouraged. There are no nationality restrictions.

Students must write and submit a brief and exact report, along with travel receipts, on their field experience due by September 15, 2009, and will participate in an interdisciplinary forum on fieldwork in the Fall semester. LACS expects this program to run for three rounds, 2008, 2009, and 2010. Eligible Proposals will be judged by an interdisciplinary LACS faculty committee, with funding results announced by April 1^st.
STONY BROOK-TINKER APPLICATION PROCEDURE:

The following materials must be included in all fellowship application packets:

• A completed application form (see form below)
• A short cover letter stating the relevance to your academic and career goals.
• Two letters of recommendation from faculty members who you work with.
• A current Stony Brook University academic transcript.
• A curriculum vitae that also indicates relevant language competency.
• A proposal (not to exceed four single spaced pages) that clearly specifies the relevant literature on the topic; the research objectives, design and methods; the duration and agenda of activities; the names of on-site institutions with which you may affiliate.
• A timetable and budget (with estimated travel expenses) for the proposed project (see form below).