Vanessa L. Davis is a historian and education policy analyst interested in higher education, civil rights, democracy, civic engagement, and social justice movements. She is a native Texan who returned to the state after earning her Ph.D. in 20th Century U.S. History at Vanderbilt University and teaching briefly in Missouri. Dr. Davis recently left teaching and began a new career as a Program Director with the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. She serves on the Board of Directors for Capital Area Reach Out and Read and is also an avid photographer and cyclist.

Dr. Davis is using her Research Associateship to explore the evolution of higher education curriculum in the United States. She is particularly interested in understanding how classical liberal arts curriculum and vocational/technical curriculum developed throughout American history. One of the things that Dr. Davis hopes to understand is the tensions between humanities-based liberal arts education and technical/vocational education in the United States. By studying the ways in which these sometimes competing philosophies have been impacted by changes in American political, economic, social, and cultural history, she hopes to better understand the current status and relationship of both types of curricula in Texas and the possible policy implications of that relationship in the increasingly complex climate of higher education funding. Dr. Davis plans on completing at least one scholarly article during her associateship as well as presenting her work to her colleagues at the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.

Papa Diallo is currently a full-time student at Huston-Tillotson University in Austin, Texas. He is a graduating senior who will complete his Bachelor of Science in Criminal Justice in May 2008. He currently holds the highest Grade Point Average (GPA) in his major. In addition, Mr. Diallo works as a Resettlement Specialist with Caritas of Austin, a non-profit agency which serves the working poor, persons who are unemployed, homeless, near-homeless and/or documented refugees in Austin/Travis County. In this position, he serves as an advocate for refugee populations. Mr. Diallo is a 2007 United Negro College Fund (UNCF) scholar, a recipient of the Richie-Jennings Memorial Scholarship, and was awarded a United Church of Christ-Avery Arthington scholarship for the current academic year. His future goals include preparing for a career as an attorney. Mr. Diallo was born in the West African nation of Senegal, and resides in Austin with his wife and two children. He is a recreational coach for his son’s soccer team, and has volunteered with agencies such as Refugees Services of Texas.

Mr. Diallo is using his associateship to participate in the Texas After Violence Project (TAVP), a non-profit organization devoted to studying the effects of capital punishment in Texas. He is planning to conduct a series of oral history interviews with people most directly affected by the death penalty, and participate in creating public archives and exploring models of transformative justice.

Barbara Hannon is an Austin attorney with a PhD from the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill and a UT law degree. She has taught social science at the undergraduate and graduate levels, participated in university interdisciplinary programs and worked extensively in litigation on the court’s side of the practice. She is a current member of the State Bar of Texas Committee on Professionalism.

Her project concerns the emerging and wide ranging movement to reform the practice of law, as seen within the larger context of society. Specifically, in 2007–08 she will be researching the essential role of conflict in law practice against the backdrop of the definition, perception and functions of conflict as interpreted by other disciplines and in other settings.

Michael Holland earned his law degree from Yale and his bachelor's degree, with a major in anthropology, from the University of Texas. He was recently appointed by the UT School of Law's Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice as a Visiting Researcher and Scholar.

During his year as a Research Associate, Holland will be working principally on two projects. The first is a law journal article that focuses on the "language" of civil rights and civil right movements. For Western legal and political systems, he will argue, the language of civil rights is Christianity. Using American Indians' struggles for civil rights as an example, he will show that groups unable to "speak Christian" or translate their rights movements to fit within that framework suffer as a result of the language barrier. Additionally, he will contend that the consequences extend beyond American Indians and beyond the American system.

The second project focuses on the recent political unrest within the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. The unrest stems from the Cherokee Nation’s recent disenfranchisement of descendants of the Cherokee Freedmen – former African slaves, owned by Cherokee citizens, who themselves gained Cherokee citizenship following the Civil War. Taking the form of either a documentary film or a law journal article, the project will examine the legal, social, and political history of Indian-Black-White relations that have led to the current climate within the Cherokee Nation. The project also will explore the ways in which the actions of the Cherokee Nation might influence broader discussions concerning our commitment to sovereignty for all American Indian tribes and tribal nations.

James Kraft received his Ph.D. in philosophy of religion at Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley California in 2000. He received his MA also at GTU and his BA at Graduate Theological Union. Dr. Kraft now works at Huston-Tillotson University on the East side of Austin. Within philosophy of religion, Dr. Kraft's main areas of research are in religious epistemology and issues related to religion and violence. More specifically, he is pursuing the following two questions: Does religious disagreement among epistemic peers tend to reduce the confidence each has in the beliefs espoused? Does religious diversity seriously considered tend to lead to religious tolerance? He defends positions that answer both questions in the affirmative.

Katherine Durham Oldmixon, a poet, salsa dancer, photographer and supporter of arts and cultures on campus and in the community serves on the board of Texas Folklife and as the current president of Austin Poetry Society, a chapter of Poetry Society of Texas. She is also the Director of the Writing Program and Associate Professor of English at Huston-Tillotson University in east Austin. Recipient of many awards, her poetry, which has been translated into Spanish and Italian, appears in various literary magazines and anthologies, including multiple years of di-vêrse’-city, the anthology of the Austin International Poetry Festival, and in the 2008 Texas Poetry Calendar, for which she also provided the cover art.

Dr. Oldmixon is using her Research Associateship to connect the richly talented poets of the Austin community organization she leads this year with the academic resources available to poets and scholars of poetry in the University libraries. She will share articles and books on poetry with vibrant local poetry communities through the Austin Poetry Society newsletter, edited by Robert Elzy Cogswell. Dr. Oldmixon will also use her associateship to produce poetry prompts and exercises based on resources in the Harry Ransom Center holdings that can facilitate curriculum development on her campus and discussions and workshops with poets and writers in the larger community.