Graduate Student Participants, 2004-05

The New Visions Steering Committee is pleased to announce its selection of UC Santa Barbara graduate student participants for 2004-05, based on a competition from late 2003. Six students from four departments on campus have been awarded research assistantships, teaching assistantships, and/or research stipends. Information on each student, and research abstracts where applicable, are below. Congratulations to each student for an excellent and thoughtful application.

Jennifer Bernstein, Geography (Research Stipend): Jennifer Bernstein is a Master’s in Geography candidate at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She received her Bachelor’s of Science from the Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. Her major interests are forest ecology and management, Western American environmental history, and the role of boundaries in the cultural landscape. She has recently become interested in how the environment is portrayed in popular culture, and her master’s thesis addresses how the natural environment is used as a marketing tool in print advertising. In her spare time, Jennifer can be found gardening, surfing, and appreciating the art of B-grade horror movies.
Evan Berry, Religious Studies (Research Assistant, Research Stipend): Evan Berry is a graduate student in the Religious Studies Department at UCSB, and his research focuses on the intersection of nature and religion in the modern West. Such a project necessarily scrutinizes the theological and philosophical antecedents to contemporary ecological movements, and attempts to articulate the modes of thinking about nature that permeate both environmental and religious communities. The methodological basis for his research aims to connect a rich historical deconstruction of textual traditions and utilizes sociological techiniques to empirically ground such textual analysis. Evan's research abstract can be found here.
Robert Geraci, Religious Studies (Research Stipend): Robert Geraci is a PhD candidate in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of California--Santa Barbara. He is married and has a son born in March, 2004. As a cultural historian of religion, Robert is interested in how religion operates alongside other cultural endeavors, particularly science and art. His essay "Laboratory Ritual: Experimentation and the Advancement of Science" was published in 2002 by Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science. Robert's research abstract can be found here.
Andrew Raaf, Bren School of Environmental Science and Management (Research Assistant): Andrew Raaf graduated from Kansas State University in 2002 with degrees in Environmental Science and Natural Resource Management. He is currently pursuing a Master's Degree in Environmental Science and Management at UC Santa Barbara. Andrew is interested in habitat restoration and social ecology. In particular, his research interests lie in merging social sciences with physical sciences in ways that are consistent with envionmentally ethical beliefs.
Robin Roff, Geography (Research Assistant, Teaching Assistant): Robin holds a bachelors degree in Geography and Political Science from the University of Toronto, Canada. Specializing in natural resource management, political theory and Third World development, she graduated with honors in the spring of 2003. As a graduate student in the Geography Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara she is interested in the capitalist appropriation of natural resources and the subsequent creation of meaning, and focusing on the current tension between biotechnology and organic modes of production.
Elizabeth Swanstrom, Comparative Literature (Research Assistant, Research Stipend): Lisa Swanstrom is a third-year doctoral student in the Comparative Literature Program at UCSB. Her research interests include 20th Century Latin-American literature, Media Theory, American science fiction, and the literature of the fantastic. Lisa’s essay, “Records, Projections, and the Dixie Flatline: Character Loops in Adolfo Bioy Casares’ La invención de Morel and William Gibson’s Neuromancer,” was recently published in a special Annex of Tinta: Selected Proceedings of the Fifth Annual Graduate Student Conference on Lusophone and Hispanic Literature and Culture. She is currently working on an analysis of religious representation in science fiction film and literature. In addition to her academic work, Lisa is a passionate and dedicated writer of fiction. In 1998 she won an Intro Journals Award for Creative Nonfiction from the Association of Writing and Writing Programs (AWP); since then her creative work has appeared in the Mid-American Review, Closer Magazine, and Moxie Magazine, among others. A short story she wrote on the theme of religion is forthcoming in Migrants and Stowaways, a new anthology published by the Knoxville Writers’ Guild. She is also Co-editor of Sunspinner (www.sunspinner.org), an on-line literary journal based out of Santa Monica, California. Lisa's research abstract can be found here.