Welcome to the Humanities Initiative

Shamik Dasgupta
Department of Philosophy
"Symmetry as a Guide to Reality"
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Shamik Dasgupta is a PhD student in the Department of Philosophy at NYU. His research is primarily in the philosophy of science and metaphysics, though he also has research interests in epistemology and the philosophy of mind. For more information, visit his webpage (www.shamik.net).

Lerna Ekmekçioğlu
Departments of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies and History
"Feminists and Nationkeeping: The Armenian Community of Istanbul, 1919-1933"
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Lerna Ekmekçioğlu is a PhD candidate in the departments of Middle Eastern/Islamic Studies and History at NYU. With a particular focus on the gendered reconstruction of the nation, she is working on the history of the Armenian minority community of Istanbul/Turkey right after World War I (from 1919 to 1935). She is a graduate of the Sociology Department at Bogazici University in Istanbul. She has a book in Turkish that she co-edited with Melissa Bilal about the first five prominent Armenian feminists of the late Ottoman Empire and early Turkish Republic [published in summer 2006 the book is entitled “Bir Adalet Feryadi” (“A Cry for Justice”)]. During the 2007-08 academic year, she was an International Fellow of the American Association of University Women.

Shane Minkin
Department of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies
"In Life as in Death: The Port, Foreign Hospitals, and Foreign Cemeteries in Alexandria, Egypt, 1865-1914"
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Shane Minkin earned a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.A. with honors from Emory University. She is currently a joint PhD candidate in the departments of History and Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University. Her dissertation, “In Life as in Death: The Port, Foreign Hospitals, and Foreign Cemeteries in Alexandria, Egypt, 1865-1914,” looks at the interplay between public spaces, the living and the dead as influences in categorizations of local and foreign in a colonial port city. Her work is the result of three years in Egypt, where she was the recipient of numerous fellowships including the Fulbright Hays, American Research Center in Egypt Dissertation Fellowship, various FLAS scholarships, and two fellowships with the Center for Arabic Study Abroad. In addition to work on her dissertation, Shane has served as a first year advisor with the Gallatin School of Individualized Study and worked with the Social Science Research Council as a research consultant.

Jessie Morgan-Owens
Department of English
"Black and White: Photographic Writing in the Abolition"
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Jessie Morgan-Owens is completing her Ph.D at New York University in American Literature. Her dissertation, “Black and White: Photographic Writing in the Literature of Abolition,” studies the influence of photography in the campaign to abolish slavery in the US. She was awarded a Dean's Dissertation Completion Fellowship for 2008-2009 and will join the Humanities Initiative at NYU next year as an Honorary Fellow. Her essay on daguerreotypes in American abolitionism will appear in Imagining Transatlantic Slavery, which will be released in late 2008. She has begun research for her next project that will trace the intervention of literary authority in historical and contemporary writing about photography. In addition to her academic work in photography, Jessie shoots professionally for magazines with her partner James Owens. They also have begun work on two photographic projects: an exhibit on the nature of networks in the art community, which began production in November 2007, and a book on how readers visualize literary images photographically. Morgan & Owens were named one of 30 emerging photographers to watch in 2008 by Photo District News.

Beatrice Sica
Department of Italian Studies
"‘Magical Italy’: The Italian Fantastic, French Surrealism, and the Debate over Italian National Identity in the Fascist Period."
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Beatrice Sica received her “laurea” in Modern and Contemporary Italian Literature from the University of Pisa. In Pisa she also obtained the “diploma” of the Scuola Normale Superiore. She has published various articles in particular on twentieth century Italian literature. She is the editor of Ruggero Jacobbi, L’Italia simbolista, foreward by Anna Dolfi (Trento: La Finestra, 2003) and Ruggero Jacobbi e la Francia. Poesie e traduzioni, foreward by Andrea Camilleri (Firenze: Società Editrice Fiorentina, 2004). She is also the author of Poesia surrealista italiana (Genova: San Marco Dei Giustiniani, 2007). Beatrice is currently working on her PhD dissertation entitled “‘Magical Italy’: The Italian Fantastic, French Surrealism, and the Debate over Italian National Identity in the Fascist Period.”

Jennifer Zwarich
Department of Cinema Studies
"From Document to Directive: Motion Picture Production in the US Government, 1901-1942"
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Jennifer Zwarich received a B.A. from Stanford and an M.A. from New York University where she is currently completing a Ph.D. in Cinema Studies. For work on her (in progress) dissertation on the history of US government-sponsored documentary films between 1901 and 1940 she was recently awarded the graduate school’s Dean’s Dissertation Fellowship and was named an Honorary Fellow to the Humanities Initiative.