Please join us in congratulating OHMA/GSAS Research Grant receipients, Christine Stoddard (2023) and Maya Gayer (2023)!
Christine Stoddard
Adriana Ascencio, a Salvadoran-American actress, holds a paper pulp mask that Christine made for her play "Mi Abuela, Queen of Nightmares" at The Tank in New York City. This was one of the costume pieces that Adriana used while performing in the play. The photo was taken at the end of the third interview Adriana and Christine completed this fall.
Christine Stoddard will be doing research related to women of the Salvadoran diaspora, with trips scheduled for Mexico, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, and El Salvador. In addition to filming interviews, she will be visiting and photographing archives, museums, and archeological sites related to El Salvador's civil war, the Indigenous people of Central America, and contemporary cultural production by Salvadoran-Americans. This includes Proyecto Laberinto near Santa Ana, El Salvador and Casa Lü in Mexico City, both artist residencies.
Maya Gayer
Photo by Amnon Horesh.
Maya’s thesis project focuses on building an oral history archive of Israel’s Democracy Protest Movement. Active since January 2023 in an attempt to stop the judicial overhaul led by the Israeli right-wing government, this is the largest protest movement in the country’s history and one of the most persistent in recent global history.
The archive’s aim is to serve as a public knowledge resource for scholars and activists across the world fighting against democratic deterioration and the rise of populism, and for future Israeli generations.