NYU Torch Fellows to Travel the World

By James Devitt

      The works of Polish novelist and dramatist Witold Gombrowicz, whose life spanned most of the 20th century, reflected the clashes he witnessed—the juxtaposition of scientific and technological progress with the horrors of World War II and its aftermath. His writings broke from convention, resulting in a new narrative form.
       Marta Kaluza, a doctoral candidate in NYU’s Department of Spanish and Portuguese, has set out to map the ideological development of Gombrowicz through his various residences—Argentina, France, Germany, and Poland. She will do so as a recipient of a Torch Prize Fellowship for advanced students in the Graduate School of Arts and Science (GSAS).
       This year’s other Torch Prize Fellowship recipients are Oksana Chefranova, a doctoral candidate in cinema studies at the Tisch School of the Arts, and Yael Zeira, a doctoral candidate in the Wilf Family Department of Politics (GSAS). The fellowships, which include a $22,400 stipend, will take place during the 2009-10 academic year. In addition, the local institutions hosting the fellows each receive a $500 honorarium, recognizing their support of and contribution to each fellow’s research. NYU’s three fellows are part of a program designed to become a national competition for 20 prize fellowships in future years.
       Kaluza, who has already conducted research in Buenos Aires, will continue her research during the upcoming academic year at Cracow’s Czartoryski Museum, Warsaw’s Literary Museum, and Maisons-Laffitte in suburban Paris—all rich depositories of materials on Gombrowicz.
       Chefranova is exploring the artistic life of filmmaker Evgenii Bauer, one of the most prominent directors of pre-revolutionary Russian cinema. In illuminating the relationship between film and other visual arts in Bauer’s work, she will examine the director’s deep involvement with the dance world of the period and his use of several types of dance in his films. Under her Torch Fellowship, Chefranova will be conducting research at Moscow’s Bakhrushin Theatre Museum and the Periodical Collection of the Russian State Library.
       Zeira is examining the differing mobilization practices of armed political groups participating in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in order to understand why such groups will sometimes mobilize support by making ethnic appeals and sometimes by making pleas based on non-ethnic identities. She will conduct field research in Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Amman, Jordan.
       The program is funded by NYU alumnus and Faculty of Arts and Science Board of Overseers member Ronald S. Katz, a partner in the national law firm Manatt, Phelps, and Phillips, and his wife, Elizabeth Roth, partner at GCA Law Partners, LLP. Katz was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship when he graduated from NYU’s University Heights campus in 1967.
       “Ron Katz and Libby Roth are exemplary university citizens,” said GSAS Dean Catharine Stimpson. “Because of them, our best students can contribute in fresh and sophisticated ways to global knowledge and understanding.”
       This year’s finalists were chosen by an interdisciplinary committee of NYU faculty members. The selection of fellows was then made by Stimpson in consultation with an advisory committee composed of Global Distinguished Professor Breyten Breytenbach; Stephen Roach, a GSAS alumnus and chairman of Morgan Stanley in Asia; and Natalie Hahn, a consultant on international educational programming who worked with the United Nations for more than 30 years and now runs her own non-profit agency.