Aaron Botwick and Gabrielle Kappes (English, Lehman College, CUNY), Creating a Literary Commons: Engaging Students in Digital Archives
Aaron Botwick is a PhD candidate at The Graduate Center, CUNY. He teaches English and composition at Lehman and City College. His dissertation is a study of suicide in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century British fiction. He has been published in Nabokov Studies and The Harold Pinter Review.
Gabrielle Kappes is a doctoral candidate in English Literature at the Graduate Center, CUNY. Her dissertation project examines experimental aesthetics in the journal and tour narratives of Dorothy Wordsworth, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Mary Shelley. Her chapbook, Homage to Leroi Jones and Other Early Works by Kathy Acker, was published in Series V of the Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative in April 2015. Gabrielle teaches literature at Lehman College.
Angelika Winner (Earth Science and Geography, Lehman College/Hunter College, CUNY), Ethnography of Food Provisioning in Newark, NJ: Food Practices, Health Status, Social Identities, and Place of Residency
Angelika Winner grew up in rural southwestern Germany, in a small town in the Black Forest. Both of my parents dropped out of high school and did not get a college degree, something that they both regretted since it forced them to work in jobs that were often physically tasking and low paying. Thus, they motivated me and my sister to do well in school, and to get a college degree. Early on, they created a home environment that nurtured learning and critical thinking. Additionally, I was very lucky to grow up in a country with equal educational opportunities across the class-spectrum, and I owe a lot to the social institutions in Germany which made it possible for working class students like me to get the same quality education as students from wealthier families. My experiences in Germany have since forged my dedication to public education as a means to achieve social justice, and play a big role in my decision to study and work at CUNY.
Demet Arpacik (Middle and High School Education, Lehman College, CUNY), Visual Documentation of the Clearance of Kurdish Language from the Linguistic Landscape of Kurdistan/Turkey
The goal of this project is to gather visual data via photography to document the changing linguistic landscape of the several Kurdish cities in the Kurdistan region of Turkey – Diyarbakır, Batman, Şırnak, Mardin – during this particularly turbulent time.
Jason Fox (Film & Media, Hunter College, CUNY), The Right to the Image: Syrian Film Collective Abounaddara’s Emergency Cinema
Jason Fox is a filmmaker and professor based in New York. He has taught in the Graduate School of Cinema Studies at New York University, Princeton University, Vassar College, and CUNY Hunter College. His award-winning work as a director, cinematographer, and editor has screened internationally in film festivals including Sundance, AFI Fest, and Venice, and internationally galleries and on broadcast television. He has worked as a film programmer in conjunction with The American Museum of Natural History, The Flaherty Seminar, and the Museum of Modern Art, among other venues. He is a recipient of a Union Square Award for social justice, and he is also the founding editor of the peer-reviewed journal of documentary studies, World Records, published by UnionDocs in Brooklyn, NY.
Harry Stafylakis (Music, City College of New York, CUNY), Innovating Technology In Art: Developing Contemporary Music for 3D-Printed Instruments
Harry Stafylakis (b. 1982) hails from Montreal and is now based in New York City. “Dreamy yet rhythmic” (NY Times), with a “terrible luminosity” and “ferociously expressive” (Times Colonist), his concert music integrates idioms drawn from classical and popular styles. With an intimate background in progressive metal and traditional Greek music, Stafylakis has developed a unique conception of musical temporality and rhythm, infusing his compositions with a characteristic vitality and drive.
Gittell Collective 