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# Created User IP address Application Date CUID Email Name Honors or Independent Study Project Title Project Supervisor Funding Amount Budget Statement of Research Plan Operations
12 Tue, 10/01/2024 - 14:57 Anonymous 128.84.127.60 10/1/24 5307017 rss352@cornell.edu Rachel Sulciner HIST 4001 Surveillance as a Condition For “Safety”: How the 1960’s and 1970’s Created a Model for the State’s Powers to Watch Citizens Julily Kohler-Hausmann 820 Travel too/from/within NYC 350
stay in nyc (one night) 300
Copy fees 150
Museum of the city of new york ticket 20		 In 1985, a federal court found that the surveillance methods used by The New York City Police Department’s Bureau of Special Services and Investigations (BOSSI) were unconstitutional. BOSSI was born (under a different name) in 1912, tasked with the mission to investigate the status of legal and illegal aliens in New York City. Throughout the following four decades, the Bureau’s objective transformed, becoming a facet of the NYPD’s efforts to combat political dissent. BOSSI conducted investigations as directed by the Police Commissioner and the Chief of Detectives, with agents operating in plain clothes, unbeknownst to the subjects they were recording. BOSSI agents surveilled major protests against the war in Vietnam and police brutality, to smaller disputes surrounding raising the tax on hot dogs or celebrations for successful NASA missions.

In 1971, members of the Black Panther Party in New York City, known as the
Panther 21, were tried for conspiracy to blow up department stores and police stations. After only 90 minutes of jury deliberation, they were acquitted of all charges. The trial exposed the extent in which the NYPD had infiltrated the Panthers, but also, other civic organizations and advocacy groups. Following the trial, Barabara Handschu, alongside 15 other plaintiffs, filed a class-action lawsuit against the City of New York, its Police
Commissioner, and the Intelligence Division of the New York City Police Department. This lawsuit, and its failures to regulate the NYPDis a focus of my thesis.

Through my project, I hope to explore whether or not legal activism was effective during this period. Visiting the Southern District of New York Court, The NYC Municipal Archive, and The City of New York Museum, will allow me to gather information regarding whether it would have been possible to create change through political/social activism during this period without the surveillance of BOSSI. The archival materials are expansive, and largely located in New York City, not yet digitized. They are integral to my thesis.
11 Mon, 09/30/2024 - 19:26 Anonymous 128.84.127.60 9/30/24 5301017 rss352@cornell.edu Rachel Sulciner HIST 4001, first semester of Honors thesis Surveillance as a Condition For “Safety”: How the 1960’s and 1970’s Created a Model for the State’s Powers to Watch Citizens Julily Kohler-Hausmann 700 Travel to/from NYC 250
stay in nyc 250
transport within the city (subways) 30
potential copy fees 150
Museum of the city of new york ticket 14		 In 1985, a federal court found that the surveillance methods used by The New York City Police Department’s Bureau of Special Services and Investigations (BOSSI) were unconstitutional. BOSSI was born (under a different name) in 1912, tasked with the mission to investigate the status of legal and illegal aliens in New York City. Throughout the following four decades, the Bureau’s objective transformed, becoming a facet of the NYPD’s efforts to combat political dissent. BOSSI conducted investigations as directed by the Police Commissioner and the Chief of Detectives, with agents operating in plain clothes, unbeknownst to the subjects they were recording. BOSSI agents surveilled major protests against the war in Vietnam and police brutality, to smaller disputes surrounding raising the tax on hot dogs or celebrations for successful NASA missions.

In 1971, members of the Black Panther Party in New York City, known as the
Panther 21, were tried for conspiracy to blow up department stores and police stations. After only 90 minutes of jury deliberation, they were acquitted of all charges. The trial exposed the extent in which the NYPD had infiltrated the Panthers, but also, other civic organizations and advocacy groups. Following the trial, Barabara Handschu, alongside 15 other plaintiffs, filed a class-action lawsuit against the City of New York, its Police
Commissioner, and the Intelligence Division of the New York City Police Department. This lawsuit, and its failures to regulate the NYPDis a focus of my thesis.

Through my project, I hope to explore whether or not legal activism was effective during this period. Visiting the Southern District of New York Court, The NYC Municipal Archive, and The City of New York Museum, will allow me to gather information regarding whether it would have been possible to create change through political/social activism during this period without the surveillance of BOSSI. The archival materials are expansive, and largely located in New York City, not yet digitized. They are integral to my thesis.
10 Thu, 11/16/2023 - 14:16 Anonymous 128.84.126.29 11/13/2023 5139423 aso34@cornell.edu Axaraly Ortiz Fall '23 DISPLACEMENT AND DISPOSSESSION: TOURISTIC DEVELOPMENT & NEOLIBERAL REFORMS IN THE PACIFIC COAST OF MEXICO Professor Craib 1000 $700 for the round-trip flight to Puerto Vallarta Mexico from Chicago (transportation). Jan 3 to Jan 14.

$300 for a little bit over a week in PVR while I do research. This is for housing. Jan 3 to Jan 14.		 My research will focus on the displacement and dispossession of communities caused by tourism development and neoliberal reforms along the Pacific Coast of Mexico. Specifically, I will be examining the activities of Grupo Vidanta, a conglomerate Mexican and multinational resort company, as well as state-led tourist programs such as Pueblo Magicos, and how both entities expropriate or exploit land for profit. I will approach this research using theoretical frameworks such as neoliberalism, liberalism, neocolonialism, and capitalism to help explain the expropriation of land and labor exploitation of campesinos and indigenous groups on the Pacific coast of Mexico.

To conduct this research, I plan to travel to Nuevo Vallarta, Puerto Vallarta, and Sayulita. My fieldwork will entail oral histories and archival research work, and I have a list of people who have been displaced due to gentrification or land usurpation who I would like to interview. I will also speak to individuals who work in the tourist industry to get their perspective on how much these places have changed over the past twenty years. Additionally, I may visit museums and speak to curators to gather more information.
9 Tue, 11/14/2023 - 10:12 Anonymous 68.175.129.47 11/14/2023 5130837 md753@cornell.edu Mayanka Dhingra Honors Thesis 2023-2024 Ceylon, Cowpox, and Controversy: British Vaccination Projects in Ceylon and Debates Around the Jennerian Development Suman Seth $1,000-$2,000 The primary need is to fund a plane ticket to London (and whatever else possible) in order to access the materials in the National Archives pertaining to a key question of the project with limited information elsewhere (see bottom statement of research plan for exact archival needs). Airbnbs look realistic within this budget, and I'm happy to pay for my own meals.
This project centers on British vaccination projects in colonial Ceylon in the early nineteenth century. While dominant narratives surrounding the propagation of the smallpox vaccine construe the adoption of this development in celebratory terms of success, other sources tell a different story: one of local resistance and curative uncertainty. Projected back to England where debates raged on between medical practitioners internally and with a dubious public, this history offers insights into medical exportation and experimentation in the imperial context. The first chapter will complicate narratives of Ceylon as the shining standard of the vaccine’s efficacy and aim to answer questions about why medical practitioners so aggressively took up cow-pox’s spread on this island. It will also identify key questions in vaccine discourse at this stage as they were tested in Ceylon. The second chapter will place this story in the broader context of debates about the vaccine back in England where vaccination wouldn’t become widespread for decades. A critical question for this project is not only why Medical Superintendent Thomas Christie was so deeply invested in vaccinating the island of Ceylon, but also how he obtained the swift approval of an overhaul of smallpox policy on that island until that point. This question is especially important considering the monetary rewards involved for those who demonstrated a commitment to the vaccine mission. Legislative records of acts in Ceylon available on online display a gap. While the establishment of smallpox hospitals is denoted in 1800, vaccination is not mentioned until 1820. Some sources make no mention of vaccination at all. Christie, presumably taking commands from higher up, would have had to obtain approval or directions from his superiors in order to carry out his nine-step vaccination plan. Little is available on Christie and Ceylon government orders on online databases. The National Archives; however, contain two collections of particular interest to this project: Colonial Office and Predecessors: Ceylon, Entry Books (1794-1872) and Office of the Commander in Chief: Monthly Returns to the Adjutant General (1754-1866). The Wellcome Collection Library in London also is home to the personal materials of Jenner, the Minutes of the medical Committee of the Royal Jennerian Society, and the Minutes of the Board of Directors of the Royal Jennerian Society.
8 Mon, 05/15/2023 - 18:02 Anonymous 128.84.126.37 5/15/22 5212754 hml73@cornell.edu Halle Livermore 2023, completed honors thesis Trans-Saharan Trade to 1400, continuing economic research during the AU 2063 Program in Accra, Ghana Sandra Greene 1,000 Total cost of the program: $8240-- flight $2,000, Cornell summer tuition and office of global learning costs-- $6,240.
Additional costs while abroad~~ $400 (meals, books,
excursions).

Requesting $1,000 in funding to go toward flight costs. 		I am attending the AU 2063 Cornell Course in Ghana to further my research on precolonial economic history in West Africa that I began in my senior thesis. My thesis explored the commodities such as cereals, gold, textiles, copper, and salt that West African kingdoms produced, demanded, and exchanged to fuel the growth of their polities. I hope to extend the research to consider how the political and economic landscape of West Africa today relies on both production and exchange to thrive. While colonization and neocolonialism have broadly shaped economic disparities in Africa today, what intra-African trade relationships exist to support local economic success? I will complete the course with professor Assié-Lumumba to learn more about economic development efforts, but will also engage with resources at the University of Ghana to learn more about precolonial economics and connections with the Sahara.
7 Fri, 02/03/2023 - 13:17 Anonymous 128.84.124.216 02/3/23 5056311 mrr227@cornell.edu Madeline Rosenberg 2022-23 Honors Thesis My research is on the Better Homes in America campaign (1922-1935) and how the movement imagined U.S. citizenship through the lens of gender, race and sexuality. Prof. Larry Glickman $160 I requested scans of files relevant to my research from the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum in West Branch, Iowa. I received an invoice from an archivist at the end of the scanning process, and the scanning totaled to $160. I have been able to access most of the sources for my Honors Thesis through Cornell Library and interlibrary loans, as many of the relevant materials have already been digitized.

To access sources such as letters from Herbert Hoover and government-related files about the Better Homes White House conference, I needed to request them from the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum. I decided early on in my research that the best use of my time would be to not to travel to Iowa, but rather to request scans of materials relevant to my research. After several months of emailing back and forth with an archivist, I've finally received all the materials I requested.

Regarding the details of my project, I've attached a preliminary abstract:

I am researching the Better Homes in America campaign (1922-1935) led by a partnership between the women’s magazine The Delineator, Herbert Hoover as U.S. Secretary of Commerce and national civic organizations. By examining government records, newspaper and magazine articles, and other prescriptive sources, I explore why and how the federal government endorsed private efforts that advocated for single-family home ownership across the U.S., while tracing how this campaign envisions the ideal, reproductive American family life. Ultimately, I argue that Better Homes in America was more than a housing and home economics campaign. The campaign also represents a project of social control that envisioned the model citizen through intervention in home ownership and improvement.

I plan to answer in my project: What factors led the Department of Commerce to adopt this campaign in the early 1920s? How does the campaign envision the home as a racialized and gendered space, considering both architectural aesthetics and homemaking labor dynamics? What was the legacy of the Better Homes campaign, given that this movement offers an early example of the government’s endorsement of the single-family home as a unique source of national stability?
6 Thu, 12/08/2022 - 13:15 Anonymous 128.84.125.174 December 9, 2022 5026153 zz258@cornell.edu Zhiyuan Zhou History Honors Program, Fall Semester Institutionalization, Ideologization, and Governmentalization of Chinese Medicine in Southeast Asia, with A Focus on British Malaya and the Philippines, 1929-1945 Mara (Yue) Du $925 $90 for food (3 days)
$30 for New York City subway
$150 for cab transportation
$120 for a round trip bus ticket between Ithaca and New York City
$525 for housing (3 days) in Westchester, New York
$10 for printing materials 		How do professionals, through institutional, ideological, and governmental power, justify their knowledge and profession? In this research, I focus on a very specific group of transnational knowledge producers: medical doctors who practice Chinese medicine in British Malaya and the Philippines, who offered two models of institutional building. I argue that through processes I call institutionalization, ideologization and governmentalization, doctors of Chinese medicine in British Malaya and the Philippines successfully validated, and even expanded the influence of, Chinese medicine by maneuvering the transnational political landscape between Southeast Asian colonial governments and the Chinese Nationalist government from 1929 to 1945. As I would like to ascertain the connection between the Rockefeller Foundation and medical doctors of Chinese medicine in Southeast Asia, I propose a three-day research trip at the Rockefeller Archive Center in Westchester, New York in mid-January 2023. Since weather conditions may vary, it is possible that I will delay my visit to early February. The final product of this research will be a history honors thesis submitted in April 2023.

In the first chapter of my thesis, I argue that by building medical organizations which published journals and facilitated collective action, doctors of Chinese medicine expanded their audience group and laid an institutional infrastructure of their maneuvering of transnational politics for the survival of their profession. While those based in British Malaya adopted a bottom-up approach by building their organizations from scratch, those in the Philippines were more reliant on the National Medical Institute in China, and their approach can be characterized as top-down. This difference in institutional building led to differential survivability of these organizations in the postcolonial period. In my second chapter, I focus on the way these doctors, by appropriating the rhetoric of “National Medicine” in China, connected their medical work to a non-territorial form of Chinese nationalism and protected themselves from the attack from colonial governments and practitioners of biomedicine. Finally, in my last chapter, I highlight how these doctors navigated the subtle politics between the Chinese Nationalist government’s aim of expanding its influence internationally and Southeast Asian colonial governments’ concern over local Chinese population backed by an offshore government. In this way, they made Chinese medicine a government-regulatable discipline with guidelines of education, examination, and licensing. Their efforts, although severely disrupted by WWII in Southeast Asia (1942-1945), had profound implications for the state management of Chinese medicine in post-colonial Southeast Asia. While the top-down model in the Philippines left little traces in the postcolonial period, the bottom-up model in British Malaya paved the way for official recognition and management of Chinese medicine in certain parts of the colony after independence, such as today’s Singapore.

The final product of this research will be a history honors thesis, which will be submitted in April 2023. To complete my second chapter (“nationalism”) and third chapter (“transnational politics”), I plan to look into the role of the Rockefeller Foundation as a mediating philanthropical institution between the Nationalist Government of China and colonial powers in Asia, including Britain, France, and Japan. In the first half of the 20th century, the Rockefeller Foundation carried out multiple medical programs in China, building hospitals, facilitating biomedical labs, and managing medical aids. A significant portion of the materials produced by the agents of the Rockefeller Foundation and their communications with medical doctors in Asia are preserved at the Rockefeller Archive Center in Westchester, New York. By researching in the Foundation’s archives, I would like to ascertain two issues: (1) whether doctors who practiced Chinese medicine in Southeast Asia used the Rockefeller Foundation’s transnational medical programs to bolster their own influence in Southeast Asia and to get access to the Nationalist Government in China; and (2) if the former hypothetical link is established, whether these doctors collaborated with the Rockefeller Foundation in sending medical aids to China during WWII in East Asia (1937-45) and Southeast Asia (1942-45).

The purpose of this archival trip is threefold. First, few works of scholarship on Chinese medicine have focused on the potential existence of links between transnational medical networks (in my case, the Rockefeller Foundation’s programs in Asia) and networks of Chinese medicine outside of China. An examination of this subtopic will enrich our understanding of the dynamics among transnational medical networks in the second quarter of the 20th century. Second, scholars often portray the Rockefeller Foundation as a champion of biomedical enterprises in Asia, particularly in China. Yet, few have looked at the Foundation from the perspective of non-biomedical healing systems and asked whether the Foundation stepped into these fields. It is possible that at the Rockefeller Archive Center, I may find evidence that highlight the collaboration between doctors of Chinese medicine in Southeast Asia and agents of the Rockefeller Foundation in China in terms of managing medical aids to China’s war effort against Japan. Third, studying the Foundation’s archives may facilitate our understanding of the relationship between doctors of Chinese medicine in Southeast Asia and medical officials in the Chinese government. In the 1920s and 1930s. a significant number of biomedical doctors in China were trained through programs sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation. Many of them, after graduation, entered the Chinese government in Nanjing, secured positions in the Department/Agency of Public Health, and used their connections with the Rockefeller Foundation to facilitate their work. Therefore, when doctors of Chinese medicine in British Malaya and the Philippines contacted Chinese medical officials to draw support for the preservation of Chinese medicine in Southeast Asia, their communications might end up in the Rockefeller archive.
5 Wed, 10/26/2022 - 10:31 Anonymous 98.5.44.195 10/23/22 5236739 mn429@cornell.edu Mehria Nessar 2022 Afghan Heritage N/A $420 $420 - to be retroactively applied towards the costs of the New York Conference on Asian Studies held at Syracuse University on October 7th and 8th, 2022.

I presented my research paper at the NYCAS conference. The following is a breakdown of the costs:

Conference Registration Fee:$50
Hotel Stay: $228
Transportation: Uber Fees $30 + $61 + $12 + $21 = $124
Meals: $20
Total = (rounded down from $422) $420

If needed, I can submit the conference program and receipts for the items above. 		Heritage Preservation & Afghan National Identity:
A Counter-Narrative to Essentializing and Homogenizing
Discourses of Afghanyat (Afghan-ness)

Context: It is said by the likes of G.A. Clark that identity is “written on the wind” and therefore ephemeral and devoid of essence. I certainly do not contest the fact that identity is a product of sociality and, therefore, a constructed phenomenon. What I wish to unsettle is the notion that discourses of national identity unfailingly suffer from the error of essentialism. What I mean by this is simply that unified national identities are not inherently essentialist. In fact, national identity may be defined by heterogeneity and the amalgamation of disparate forms. Nancy Dupree, an American-Afghan historian, asserts that “despite pride of origin, despite episodes of friction, despite plays for power, despite self-serving ethnocentric panegyrics by individuals, a sense of belonging, of being Afghan, is evident among the population at large” (978). Indeed, Afghan identity has always been a hyphenated identity. An identity claimed by all. A prefix to ethnic designations and religious identifiers. By extension, the Afghan heritage is a material manifestation of cultural variability. Thus, if identity is written on the wind, then I assert that in the Afghan context, transient identities are also written upon the land, carved into stone to shape statues, erected as minarets, and buried as shards of poetry in the soil. Afghanyat is synonymous with multiformity. What happens when attempts are made to sand off the projections of this unevenness? What happens when a “zone of intercommunication” becomes the echo chamber for one voice? What happens when archeologists buy into the narrative presented by that singular voice?

This project aims to reconcile constructivist notions of identity formation (as posited by Matthew Liebman), Afghan national heterogeneity, and the discourses around heritage preservation. What I am resisting is the notion that a mixed or polymorphous identity implies the irreconcilability of notions surrounding heritage and its preservation. Such a position is best represented by the following passage in Reinhart Bernbeck’s “Heritage Politics: Learning from Mullah Omar,” where he states:

"Afghanistan is often called a ‘buffer state’ (e.g., Rubin 1995:18-21), as it was the arbitrary creation of a ‘no-empire's land’ between the czarist territories and British India. It is more appropriate to call this political entity a ‘negative state’ or a ‘nonnation,’ in which a number of regions with unconnected histories were assembled in order not to belong. The history of this geographically random configuration is simply a ‘no-man’s-land nationalism.’ By employing nation-based heritage concepts, Western discourse produces the fiction of a nation-state in order to give the impression that the Taliban have robbed ‘the Afghans’ of their identity, setting up at the same time a boundary between ‘Afghans’ and the Taliban as non-Afghan, extraterritorial group located outside of social space (Matsuura 2001:12). Imagery, memory, and history are based on national unity from an inextricable web of linkages that are mobilized to reaffirm the fictive unity of a nation constructed hitherto through imperialist practices. Archeologists such as Kohl and Wright subscribe to these ideas, hoping that ‘civic nationalism takes root, [so that] Afghans should be made aware and proud of the incredibly rich archeological remains of all periods and cultures interred in the Afghan soil’ (2006:251). Such scholarly disclosure promotes an identity-based relation to past remains. Others have warned against the effects of exactly this process, as it once again turns monuments into ‘targets of negative attention’ (Golden 2004:199)."

While I do appreciate Bernbeck’s attempt to unsettle the universalization of heritage and the politics surrounding its management, through my exploration, I will explain the ways in which Afghan people have adopted the politics of preservation not as a way to connect to some distant past but rather to resist present homogenization and genocidal aims of the Talib regime. While it is true that the Taliban mustn’t be characterized as non-Afghans, it is also true that their brand of kulturpolitic is also fueled by political and ethnic aims of domination and essentialization of a heterogeneous Afghan identity. Similarly, I object to prescriptive notions that define what the Afghan public ought to value or be proud of. Certainly, it was not the devaluing of heritage on the part of the Afghan public that led to the destruction of the buddhas but rather a regime’s blatant disregard for public opinion. In reality, native sources from the local inhabitants of Bamyan valley denote national grief over the destruction of their landscape. As Dupree puts it, “many may be weak in their knowledge of history, but the Bamiyan Buddhas were treasured by all. Some described their feelings after the destruction as equal to what they might feel on losing a beloved grandfather” (968). Indeed, destruction of any sort is found objectionable by the Afghan public who have suffered great losses over the past century. Therefore, my project intervenes in western discourses surrounding Afghan identity and heritage to offer a logic of preservation based on a rejection of destruction and a celebration of landscape and heritage heterogeneity. While the buddhas did not represent any linkage to a modern cultural group, they stood for something far greater: the longue durée of Afghan history that negates totalizing and Islamatizing narratives of the present.

Present Implications: The collapse of the Afghan government in 2021 and the forcible reinstatement of the Taliban present the risk of a co-opted national identity and history as well as the deterioration of the structures set in place for the protection of heritage i.e. the Afghan National Museum, the Afghan Institute of Archaeology established in the 1960s and 70s which has already been shut down, the Kabul Univerity Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, the Afghan National Archive, and international collaborators/donors. Diversifying conceptions of national identity and heritage serve to promote global advocacy for the representation of Afghan public interests, which is currently under siege by the Talib/Pashtun ethnic and religious puritanical minority. Furthermore, emphasizing heterogeneity will also have ethical implications for cultivating notions of collective healing across the diverse Afghan diaspora.

Questions: How does a discussion of Afghan heritage and identity unsettle essentialist notions of national homogeneity? What are the current implications of political non-representation and lack of public interest advocacy in decisions about Afghan heritage? What must the international archaeological community consider when engaging in discussions of heritage preservation in the Afghan context; what do Afghans have to offer archeologists with an interest in Afghanistan?

Materials:
Three major academic discourses: Bernbeck’s notions of non-distinctive Afghan identity, Dupree’s notion of distinctive Afghan identity, and Liebman’s arguments around essentialism/constructivism.

Primary research - visits to the Afghan National Museum by local contact (May 25th and Oct. 6th, 2022)
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