Michael Holland

Michael Holland earned his law degree from Yale and his bachelor's degree, with a major in anthropology, from The University of Texas at Austin. 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 Nations 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.

Julie Knutson

Julie Knutson received an MSc in Political Sociology from the London School of Economics and Political Science in 2005. In addition, she holds a BA in cultural studies and history from New York University. Currently, she teaches middle school in the Houston-area.

Inspired by references to the so-called "Southern Underground Railroad" uncovered while participating in a National Endowment for the Humanities summer seminar on the abolitionist movement, Ms. Knutson will examine the mid-19th century movement of former slaves into Mexico. Use of UT's libraries and repositories will help develop a sense of the political, social, and cultural landscapes of 19th century Texas and Mexico in which these fledgling communities were formed, enabling a partial reconstruction of the lives and stories of the estimated 5,000-6,000 ex-slaves who ventured into Mexico. Ultimately, Knutson hopes to gather enough information to write a book of young adult historical fiction on the topic, sharing this little-known story — which touches upon issues of borders and boundaries, as well as on the formation of alliances and communities that transcend racial and linguistic lines — with a broader audience.

James Kraft

James Kraft received his Ph.D. in philosophy of religion at Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, in 2000. He also received both his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees at GTU. Dr. Kraft now works at Huston-Tillotson University in 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. He is currently working on applying a relatively new epistemology called contextualism to issues of religious diversity. Contextualism argues that the ability to assert knowledge changes in different contexts.

Amie Maciszewski

Dr. Amie Maciszewski is a sitarist (who sings), ethnomusicologist, and Hindustani music educator. She trained initially in India under the late Professor Suresh Misra, where she stood first in her B.Mus. batch and went on to earn the M.Mus. degree. She earned a Ph.D. in ethnomusicology from The University of Texas at Austin in 1998. An activist scholar, she has published several articles in journals and books and has produced three films documenting her research with courtesan musicians in India. Maciszewski has also performed throughout North America, India, Europe, and Japan and has taught in North America since 1986. She recently was selected for the Texas Commission on the Arts Touring Roster for 2008-10.

Broadly defined, Maciszewski’s research involves musical advocacy on behalf of the music and musicians of North India and Pakistan. This advocacy has two main dimensions: developing community initiatives and engagement among local and regional populations related to Hindustani music education and documenting her work with socially marginalized women musicians in North India. She will be researching methods of making Hindustani music more accessible and engaging for wider audiences and ways to connect her Indian music performance, teaching, and directing with social entrepreneurship and philanthropy. She also hopes to co-author an article with Dr. Regula Qureshi of the University of Alberta for publication and conference presentation on the subject of “Women and Their Work: Social Relations, Musical Production, and Agency among North Indian Courtesans (working title).”

Alison Moore

Alison Moore holds an MFA in Fiction from Warren Wilson College and has published several works of poetry and short fiction. Her most recent book, The Middle of Elsewhere, was published in 2006. Moore is a former recipient of the Dobie/Paisano Fellowship from The University of Texas at Austin for her work on an historical novel about the Orphan Trains of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. She is currently touring the state as a Humanities Texas scholar, presenting a multi-media program entitled “Riders on the Orphan Train” and gathering new materials from the families of survivors.

Between 1854 and 1929, 250,000 orphans and unwanted children were “placed out” in every state in America from New York through what became known as Orphan Trains. During her tenure as Research Associate, Moore intends to continue her research on this chapter in United States history by exploring the development of rail routes in Texas that determined the dispersal of orphans throughout the state. She will also explore the factors that lead to Texas’ decision to reach out to the state of New York in order to participate in the Orphan Train program, as well as the impact of the migration on both the children who were sent to Texas and their new communities.

Aaron Reisfield

Aaron Reisfield received a Bachelor of Science degree from Rutgers University, and subsequently studied plant taxonomy at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, with research funded in part by the Edgar Anderson Memorial Fellowship in Ethnobotany. His various fieldwork included general plant collecting throughout montane Mexico while emphasizing Salvia (Lamiaceae), as well as ethnobotanical and ethnopharmacological studies among the Mazatec People of Oaxaca. His Masters thesis consisted of a review of New World salvias with particular focus upon taxa related to the enigmatic species Salvia divinorum. Mr . Reisfield subsequently published the foundational paper on the botany of this so-called 'diviner's sage' (www.sagewisdom.org/reisfield.html), now well publicized as a potent drug plant and subject of legal, ethical, and commercial controversy.

In Austin, Mr. Reisfield initially split his time between two primary interests—Nature (plants) and art (mostly music), eventually focusing upon an area of overlap between these two lines of inquiry—plant perfumes. He became involved in the essential oil trade, founded and developed a local retail apothecary specializing in aromatics, hosted national courses in medical aromatherapy, researched aromatic plants on the UT campus as a Visiting Scholar in Botany, and developed a project consisting of the acquisition and organization of a broad range of plant perfumes to comprise a reference library for artistic and intellectual investigation. Outreach for this project has included occasional demonstrations, open houses during Austin's 'Studio East Tour,' and a series of 'aroma salons' by which a small group of invitees congregate to sample and discuss a range of aromatic expressions from plants.

Mr. Reisfield's current work involves research for a philosophical novel concerning the relationship of humanity to the Natural World, uniquely assessed by exploring Nature's molecular expressions. The subject of the book is perfume, especially that emitted by plants—a messaging system with no close rival in it's capacity to convey information about the Natural World. As a Research Associate with the Humanities Institute he will gain access to various powerful academic databases that have proved critical for the research.

Nancy Rosenau

Dr. Nancy Rosenau holds a doctoral degree in Counselor Education from Western Michigan University and a Master of Arts in Developmental Psychology from Oakland University. She is currently the Executive Director for EveryChild, Inc., a local non-profit that is dedicated to supporting family life for children with developmental disabilities by creating a system of family-based alternatives to the institutions in which many currently live.

Rosenau is particularly interested in exploring the assumptions that underlie public policies that support institutional life for children with developmental disabilities instead of family life. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention has established a public health objective that calls for the elimination of congregate, or group, care for children with developmental disabilities under age 17 by 2010. Yet the Medicaid long-term care system spends millions of dollars maintaining congregate care for children and has established a “consumer choice” policy that requires such settings be offered for parental choice. These policies stand in stark contrast to a uniform public policy (known as “permanency”) for children served in child welfare systems in which prioritization of family life is mandated by federal law. Thus, “best interest” becomes an external professionalized decision in the child welfare system while it remains a parental decision in the disability system. Arguably, the rationale for congregate care is that it benefits the child by delivering specialized care and treatment, yet there appears to be no readily available body of literature that provides evidence of this benefit.

In light of this policy discrepancy, Rosenau’s project will research the following questions: What is the history and philosophy that underpins the federal mandate that prioritizes family life for children in child welfare systems, but not in disability systems? What explains the lack of evidence of the benefit of congregate care for children with developmental disabilities? What assumptions impact public policy differences between child welfare and disability services? By the end of her term as Research Associate, she hopes to produce a white paper that could be used to inform public policy.