 | History of Consciousness Graduate Students' Research Travel Fund |
The History of Consciousness Department offers a unique Ph.D. program that operates at the intersection of established and emergent disciplines and fields, acquainting students with leading intellectual trends in the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences.
Our students' intellectual projects are problem based and draw upon diverse theoretical approaches, from fields and disciplines as varied as e.g., human rights, theology, psychoanalysis, environmentalism, music, feminism, disability studies, political history and theory, to name some examples.
Because of the varied nature of their work, our students are often required to travel to carry out research as well as to present at conferences and this fund will provide support for this important aspect of their work.
Below are some examples of the work of our students using travel funds.
Justine Parkin 2nd year PhD student History of Consciousness
| My research builds on current scholarship on indigenous knowledge systems, often positioned as an entirely different world to “Western science”, to consider global, ecological histories of “science” and “natural history” beyond European schools of thought. Having funds early in my program to visit a special archive [Hawaiian and Pacific Archive at University of Hawai’i, Manoa] relevant to my research project was invaluable. Not only did it allow me access to a trove of rare material at a single location but it also introduced me to various sources I wouldn’t have even thought to look for. The experience attuned me to a diverse range of scholarship that has shaped my research ever since. | |
| Gabriel Mindel HistCon PhD Candidate  | My work makes audible the relationships between noise, protest and power. Rather than hearing noise as merely an effect of the struggles between state power and the governed, I argue that noise is at the very heart of what is being struggled over, and how that struggle is enacted. Using travel funds from the department, I traced the intellectual history of a Canadian composer and educator’s concept of “the sacred noise”, that which cannot be silenced or censured, at the Simon Fraser University’s archives in Vancouver. Presenting my research at national and international conferences challenges me to develop my work for a wider public, while building relationships and connections that are essential for my future work as an educator and researcher. These opportunities are crucial when I am completing my degree and beginning my career. | |
| Emre Keser 2nd year PhD student History of Consciousness  | The everyday discrimination against non-normative bodies, subjects, and identities is still a pressing issue, especially in terms of their violent treatment by state institutions. Dehumanizing practices of the state to render certain bodies disposable have been a persistent reality, and they can be historically traced back to the colonial humanizing/civilizing projects that shaped the modern state. My dissertation project focuses on the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century discourses of monsters (ucube, aca’ib, gara’ib) in the Ottoman Empire to chart a colonial/national genealogy of these dehumanizing/monsterizing practices of the modern state. I traveled to four archives in Istanbul, to locate materials for my analysis of the socio-political climate of the time. | |
Phil Conklin HistCon PhD Candidate  | I traveled to analyze 19th-century Tagalog and Spanish language primary sources related to the Cofradía de San José, a peasant religious organization in the Tagalog Philippines that clashed with the Spanish colonial government in 1841, as part of my investigation of Philippine popular movements influenced by religious practices. |
