This year, the Tisch Initiative for Creative Research awarded seven students across five departments with grants from our 2020 Graduate Research Fund. Read about the awardees and their projects below!
Laylah Amatullah Barrayn, "Sonic Archives in the Gulf States"
Laylah Amatullah Barrayn (Art and Public Policy) is examining folk songs of the southern Arabian peninsula and their function as historical documents in a project entitled Sonic Archives in the Gulf States. Her specific interest is in the communal and ritual dance of Middle Eastern nations, which she will explore by working with families who practice these traditions in the UAE.
Maya Contreras, "Decolonize the Media"
Maya Contreras (Art and Public Policy) is researching the origins of legacy media’s lack of diversity, representation, and inclusion through the lens of policy. Her project, Decolonize the Media, will be completed in collaboration with Jabril “Is Ali” Muhammad, a graduate student in Performance Studies.
Camilla Dely, "Devising Visual Language in Puppetry"
Camilla Dely (Design for Stage and Film) is a two-time Graduate Fund awardee. This year, she will be continuing her research on puppetry at the intersection of performance and design by attending the 2020 New England Puppetry Intensive on Collaborative Puppet Design and Performance Creation.
Kristen Holfeuer
Kristen Holfeuer (Performance Studies) is investigating devotional spaces, property, and performance in collaboration with Deborah Kapchan, Professor of Anthropology at NYU Abu Dhabi. Through this lens, Kristen will research the politics and poetics of the Sheikh Zayed Mosque in Abu Dhabi.
Daniel Sander, "What Comes After"
Daniel Sander and Sareh Afshar (Performance Studies) will be putting together a one-day symposium on Collaboration and Queer of Color Negativity. This symposium, entitled What Comes After, will draw on the work of their late mentor José Esteban Muñoz, who famously proposed queerness as a futural temporality.
Gregory Swong, "October 26, 1979"
Gregory Swong (Dramatic Writing) is developing a screenplay that focuses on his family’s history and political lineage in South Korea. His project, October 26, 1979, will be developed in collaboration with NYU’s East Asian Studies Department and Columbia University.
Maggie Tallan and Durra King-Fung Leung, "A Perfect Circle"
Maggie Tallan and Durra King-Fung Leung (Graduate Musical Theater Writing) are exploring the realm of circular storytelling across mediums in their project, A Perfect Circle. The pair met during their first year at NYU while working on a class assignment. A 20-minute musical they wrote entitled One Deer surprised them by ending where it began, which led them to their research surrounding the circular structure and its possibilities and limitations.