Purdue Libraries and School of Information Studies News

2011 Library Scholars Grant recipients announced

April 6th, 2011

The Library Scholars Grant Program was established in 1985 by the 50th anniversary gift of members of the Class of 1935, and the class has been continuously supportive of this fund for the past 26 years. This program supports access to unique collections of information around the world for untenured and recently tenured Purdue faculty in all disciplines, from the West Lafayette, Calumet, Fort Wayne, IUPUI, and North Central campuses. The grants cover the expenses associated with the cost of transportation, lodging, meals and fees charged by the library or other collection owner.

Recipients for this year will be recognized at a luncheon on Wed., Apr. 13. Last year’s recipients will also make presentation about how the grant helped their research.

ROBIN ADAMS, assistant professor of engineering education, was awarded $4,960 to study a unique case of how a complex and novel design project evolved over time and across perspectives. The Apollo Lunar Module was crucial in achieving the unimagined goal of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely back to earth. It is also a historically and theoretically unique case of design iteration — there was no precedent for imagining space travel or the moon environment, this was a high-risk single unit design project with no room for error or public criticism, but with a high payoff potential, and the process involved navigating distributed teams, competing constraints, and emergent goals and rapid technological advances. The goal of this project is to analyze archival work documents at the University of Houston Library, in partnership with the Johnson Space Center, to understand the drivers and processes by which the Apollo Lunar Module design project evolved.

“Learning from the past can guide how we prepare future designers as well as contribute to the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the lunar landing and Purdue’s global history of space travel.”

AHMED IDRISSI ALAMI, assistant professor in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, teaches Arabic language and culture. Alami’s research focuses on the issue of tradition and modernity in the Arab world. In his current research work, he investigates the interaction between the region of the Maghreb, Morocco in particular, and the West/Europe. He has been awarded $5,000 to access governmental and religious documents and unpublished manuscripts in the National Library in Rabat and the Qaraween Library in Fes, both located in Morocco. Some of these texts are primary texts concerning travel to European nations and describe engagement with governments and their representatives in European cities. Other works he will review include commentaries, newspaper articles and religious fatwas concerning the issues and tensions articulated above.

“This grant has made a difference in my research. It would be instrumental to the completion of my project. Thank you.”

REBECCA BRYANT, assistant professor of dance, was awarded $1,765 to conduct research at the Jerome Robbins Dance Division of the New York Public Library. The NYPL’s collection is the most comprehensive archive in the world devoted to the documentation of dance, and its materials must be studied on the premises. Bryant’s research project consists of viewing recordings of improvisational dance performances and collecting data on the performers’ use of space (level, shape, groupings and landmarks) and time (tempo, duration, rhythm and repetition). This project is part of her ongoing investigation into the differences between improvised and pre-determined choreography as manifested in performance.

“Of particular interest to my research are a set of 29 performance DVDs from multiple years of Improvisation Festival/NY,” says Bryant.  “These discs contain a unique and comprehensive representation of performance by renowned improvisers, and offer the opportunity to examine the formal qualities of these ephemeral events.”

MOHAMMED ERRIHANI, assistant professor in the Department of English and Philosophy (Calumet campus), is an applied linguist specializing in language policy and second language learning and teaching. He was awarded $4,250 to travel to Morocco to research the role that language “academies” and government agencies play in the implementation process of top-down language decisions. He will also investigate these agencies’ efforts at reviving, standardizing and promoting Berber, the indigenous language of North Africa in light of the 2003 language policy that requires all school-aged children to learn Berber, regardless of their linguistic or ethnic background.

“I am excited and grateful for the opportunity to conduct research in Morocco, especially in light of the pro-democracy movements currently sweeping North Africa and what they might imply in terms of sociolinguistic changes.”

KENDALL LEON, assistant professor in the Department of English, whose research interests lay at the intersections between Chicana rhetoric, community and professional writing studies, was awarded $2,751 to research the archival collections of one of the first Chicana feminist organizations, the Comisión Femenil Mexicana Nacional (CFMN), housed at the UC Santa Barbara’s California Ethnic and Minority Archives Special Collections. To gain a broader and more accurate understanding of the scope and internal workings of the organization, Professor Leon will also study the archival collection of the CFMN’s well-known chapter organization, Comisión Femenil de Los Angeles, housed at UCLA’s Chicano Studies Research Center library. Through studying the internal and programmatic documents of the organization, she will investigate the way that Chicana identity helped build and shape an organization and its practices; at the same time, the way that being an organization shaped the emergence of Chicana identity.

“While the CFMN’s leaders are well known as activists, academics, government and public officials; and their testimonies, newsletter articles and activist writings are anthologized and referenced in Chicana studies, little is known of the internal workings of this organization,” Leon says. “Doing this archival research allows me to analyze Chicana practice in the nuances and mundane details of the organization and in their act of archiving.”

JEFFREY TURCO, assistant professor of German, is a specialist in medieval German and Scandinavian literature that also focuses on the modern reception of medieval culture. He was awarded $5,000 to support research at the Deutsche film Aktiengesellschaft (DEFA) Film Library at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and at the DEFA-Stiftung in Berlin. He is investigating the image of the Middle Ages in the popular culture of the former East Germany, particularly the tension between official disinterest and popular fascination that surrounds the idea of the Middle Ages under East German state socialism.

“Modern audiences have always reinvented the Middle Ages to suit their own needs. This is a rare opportunity to see that process of reinvention in progress, not only in scarce and unreleased films, but also in production notes, promotional materials, directors’ notebooks and collections of contemporary reviews.”

Turco is also editing a volume of essays on medieval Icelandic literature, New Norse Studies, forthcoming in the Islandica series from Cornell University Press.