Faculty Fellows Program
2000-2001 FellowsSusan Bandes, The Role of Emotion in Death Penalty Cases
As a continuation of her earlier work on the role of emotion in law-including the recently published anthology, The Passions of Law, for which she served as editor-Bandes focused during her fellowship year on emotion in death penalty cases. For her community connection piece, Bandes brought her work to the professional legal community by creating and hosting a daylong seminar on the emotional impacts experienced, but not often discussed, by capital defenders. The seminar featured Robert Hirschhorn, a nationally known jury consultant, who discussed with the twenty-five seminar participants the emotional stresses experienced by capital defenders in the process of jury selection and mounting a defense.
Carol Cyganowski, History of Chicago Drama
Cyganowski began work on a history of Chicago drama, a first-time effort to trace the legacies of Chicago's contemporary urban dramatic vitality. Focusing on playwrights and plays, theatre companies and ensembles, the project integrates movements usually absent from standard treatments, including 19th century theatre, WPA, ethnic theatre, community theatre, gay and lesbian theatre, and playwright workshops. Combining the resources of her Humanities Center fellowship with the American Studies program, for which she acts as director, Cyganowski developed a quarter-long series of events on Chicago Theatre. The Humanities Center sponsored two events in this series: "Burlesque in Chicago," a presentation by Theatre School faculty member Rachel Shteir from her forthcoming book, Grit, Glamour, and the Grind: A History of Strip Tease and "Origins of Gay and Lesbian Theatre in Chicago," a panel discussion with founders of gay and lesbian theatre in Chicago, including David Zak of Bailiwick Theatre, Rich Paul of Lionheart, Byron Stewart of A Real Read, and Susan Lersch of Speak its Name.
Notable features of this series:
- opening of the Chicago Playwrights Manuscripts Collection at the DePaul University Library, Special Collections, which featured readings by playwrights included in the collection;
- Rachel Shteir's work on burlesque profiled in the May 18 edition of the Chicago Reader;
- gay and lesbian theatre panel filmed by Chicago Access Network for its Community Partners series, representing an important opportunity for key players to construct the heretofore undocumented history of the gay and lesbian theatre movement.
DeAngelis worked during his fellowship to complete a book for the University of Minnesota Press on art cinema exhibition strategies. His research focused on institutional, social, demographic, technological, cultural and industrial factors that impact the history of art cinema theaters and exhibition practices in Chicago from the 1960s to the present. DeAngelis developed and hosted a forum, "Visualizing Art Cinema History in Chicago," which featured Milos Stehlik, founder of Facets Multimedia and film commentator for WBEZ public radio; Richard Stern, owner of the vintage art house Wilmette Theater; and David Sikich, former film booker for the Three Penny Cinema, and now a film distributor. The program was filmed by Chicago Access Network for its Community Partners series.
Roger Graves, Situated Literacy: Writing in Support of Social Change
Graves' goal for his research project was to identify, document, and interpret the ways in which small non-profit agencies understand and represent themselves effectively to funding agencies and to the public. This research informed his community connection piece, a free daylong grant writing workshop for Chicago area non-profit agencies. Workshop leaders discussed the basics of grant writing, and attendees drafted summary statements for proposal development. The workshop hosted a capacity audience of sixty-five participants representing over fifty non-profit agencies. In light of the overwhelming response to this workshop (we unfortunately had to turn some away because of space restrictions), and the comments made by the participants, most of whom represent small grassroots organizations serving minority populations, it is clear that this kind of outreach taps into a huge community need. Future plans include:
- a follow-up workshop for those who participated in the first workshop, in which Graves will work with participants on revising proposals drafts and moving their projects to the next stage of development;
- the creation of the DePaul Community Writing Project, which will provide essential grant writing and document-production services to grassroots community service organizations, including grant writing workshops, student internships, and research into writing processes and practices at non-profit organizations.
Stanford's community connection piece went hand-in-hand with her research. During her fellowship year, she wrote about the creative writing workshops that she conducts for women inmates at Cook County jail and about the value of such humanities-based initiatives to incarcerated populations. Central to this evaluation was an analysis of the poems and stories that have come out of these workshops, many of which Stanford has helped to publish. Convinced that writing is powerful tool for giving voice to those who are often silenced, she also began to develop a community based writing workshop, Talk Out/Write Out!, for formerly incarcerated women and girls and their friends. The program has at its center creative writing, and will include a mentoring component between the women and girls. Stanford also played a key role in planning the Humanities Center's autumn 2000 conference: "Locked Away: Critiquing the American Prison System through Story and Text," and acted a panel moderator. Notable features of her work:
- publication of workshop writings in past and upcoming issues of Real Conditions, a publication affiliated with the Center for Youth and Society, College of Education, University of Illinois at Chicago;
- Talk Out/Write Out! workshop will bring together faculty from the University of Illinois School of Education, Northwestern Law School's Legal Clinic, Northeastern University, and DePaul's School of Education, Women's Studies Program, Community Mental Health Program and School for New Learning;
- plans for a series of six-week creative writing workshops in local residential houses to build a core group, which will assist in recruiting other women for the Talk Out/Write Out! workshop.
Turner worked to complete a chapter of his current book project, Religion, Music, and Identity in Black New Orleans. The book explores the history and contemporary significance of the popular religious traditions and identities celebrated in the second lines, the jazz street parades of black New Orleans. The chapter, "In Rhythm with the Spirit," traces the history of the Mardi Gras Indians, Voodoo, jazz funerals, and specific Black Catholic and Spiritual churches in New Orleans. Turner brought his work to a public audience with an evening of New Orleans jazz and culture, which featured Chief Darryl Montana, Mardi Gras Chief of the Yellow Pocahontas tribe. Montana discussed the community building goals that underlie his participation in the traditions of the Yellow Pocahontas tribe, and described the enormous commitment that goes into creating the elaborate costumes that are the hallmark of the Mardi Gras Indian. Features of the program:
- a live performance of traditional New Orleans jazz;
- audience participation, in which students in attendance enacted the ritualized "battle" that occurs when two Indian tribes meet during a street parade.