Loading
Print This Issue
Subscribe:
E-Almanac

Weigle Information Commons 2010 Seltzer Family Digital Media Awards
PDF
May 25, 2010, Volume 56, No. 34

Thanks to the generosity of Penn Libraries Overseer Jeff Seltzer (W’78) and his wife Annie, the University of Pennsylvania Libraries are proud to announce the five students who have received 2010 Seltzer Family Digital Media Awards: Rose Espinola, Olivia Jung, Sascha Murillo, Yuval Orr and Allison Rhodes. Each student will have exclusive use of technology valued at $1,000 for one year. Proposed technology items include video cameras, audio recorders, laptops and multimedia software.

This is the third year that the Seltzer Family Digital Media Awards have supported student projects. The awards are administrated and managed through the Penn Libraries in partnership with the Center for Undergraduate Research and Fellowships (CURF).

The five funded projects are:

Under the guidance of Dr. Ann Farnsworth-Alvear, associate professor of history at the School of Arts and Sciences, Rose Espinola (C’11) will capture oral histories of young activists of Latin American descent supporting the Florida farmworkers in the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW). Ms. Espinola has been working with CIW since 2008 and began the oral history interviews this semester. This award is part of her Civic Scholars Capstone Project and her major thesis in Latin American and Latino Studies. It is expected to help create a rare archive of primary source audio and video materials.

Under the guidance of Dr. Keith Weigelt, Marks-Darivoff Family Professor at the Wharton School, Olivia S. Jung (C’12, W’12) will explore what drives people to become socially responsible using microfinance as a model. Using audio recording and transcription technology, she plans to conduct and analyze interviews about intrinsic motivations with Wharton students as well as with the founders of microfinance institutions. Ms. Jung is in the Huntsman Program in International Studies and Business.

Under the guidance of Dr. Frances Barg, assistant professor of family medicine and community health at the School of Medicine and assistant professor of anthropology at the School of Arts and Sciences, Sascha Murillo (C’11) will explore how sociopolitical, economic, and cultural contexts shape meanings of motherhood. She will work with two non-profit organizations—Maternity Care Coalition in Philadelphia and Pagus in Ghana—to conduct video interviews with mothers and to expand on two videos she created last semester. She plans to build on this project towards a video thesis for her major in medical anthropology.

Under the guidance of Dr. Ian Lustick, Bess W. Heyman Chair and professor of political science at the School of Arts and Sciences, Yuval Orr (C’11) will research the development and transmission of nationalist narratives through the medium of Israeli and Palestinian hip-hop. As part of his honors thesis work in the Modern Middle Eastern Studies program, Mr. Orr plans to conduct video interviews in several cities this summer and compile his documentary over the next academic year.

Under the guidance of Dr. Timothy Powell, research specialist at the Penn Museum, Allison Rhodes (C’11) plans to create a web-based exhibit of Cherokee storytelling based on indigenous Cherokee knowledge systems. She will interview Freeman Owle, a Cherokee elder in Cherokee, North Carolina, and will use video-editing and web design technologies. Ms. Rhodes expects this project to complement her academic work towards her cinema studies major.

The award committee consists of Inge Herman (executive director, Huntsman Program), John MacDermott (director for instructional technology, SAS Computing), Ian Seltzer (C’09), Dr. Kristen Stromberg (assistant professor of history), and Anu Vedantham (director, Weigle Information Commons, Penn Libraries).

 

 

Almanac - May 25, 2010, Volume 56, No. 34