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Recent Benenson Award Recipients
The Edward H. Benenson Awards in the Arts are given annually to undergraduate students to broaden their educational and professional objectives in the Arts. The awards are made on a competitive basis for the most outstanding project proposals and are determined by a special committee appointed by the Dean of Trinity College. The 2007 Benenson Awardees are:
Michael Ayers, a 2007 Graduate of Duke University from Cullowhee, North Carolina, will participate in a 10-month acting internship with the B Street Theater in Sacramento, California. Thanks to a Benenson Award, he will continue Dance and Voice lessons for the year and will attain an Actors Equity Association membership card at the end of the internship.
Daniel Bischoff of Scottsdale, class of 2007, will attend a summer program at the Accademia dell’Arte Arezzo in Arezzo, Italy. He will use the Benenson Award funds to work on improvisation, voice and movement skills, and further study the mask and how it relates to the discipline of theater.
Alessa Colaianni from San Juan, Puerto Rico graduates in 2007 and will enroll in an intensive two-week training course at The Second City in Chicago. This comedy organization offers conservatory training in improvisational techniques as well as comedy writing. She will use the experience to help bring premium-quality sketch comedy to Duke University next year through Inside Joke. Sarah Dickens of Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina, graduates in May 2007. She travels to Phnom Pehn for her project, “Witnessing the Cambodian Genocide in Cambodia’s Visual Culture.” She will study visual expressions of the culture of trauma, and how visual culture helps create and sustain collective memory as a process of healing.
Rebekah Fergusson, a 2007 Graduate of Duke University from Charlotte, North Carolina, will use the Benenson Award to film a Documentary on the Pick-up Soccer Culture of Brazil. It will be a visual piece centered on Brazilian youth who re-enact the highlights of games they’ve seen on television.
Jessica Figueroa of Woodbridge, Virginia, graduating in December 2007, travels to Japan to continue exploration of that visual culture. In “Go Go Tokyo,” her adventures will be documented as she attempts to achieve various sorts of minor fame using the alter ego of a person of great importance. A photographic exhibit at Duke University will follow.
Jinson “Patricia” Kim from Fairfax, Virginia, graduates in May 2007. Creative writing meets digital photography in her project, “Family as People: Renovating Stereotypes within the Home.” She will create a body of work about her family, exploring the many ways they serve each other and share unconditional love. The finished piece will be a photographic portfolio in the form of a book.
Talya Lieberman, a May 2007 graduate of Duke University, has applied for an internship at the Eastern Music Festival. Building on her minor in Music, she will use the Benenson Award funds to prepare for Graduate School in Music. She will attend the International Trumpet Guild Conference, study at the Mendez Brass Institute, and take trumpet lessons all summer.
Brian McGinn of Palo Alto, Calif., will use his Benenson Award funds to make a feature-length documentary, “Home of Magic,” about Thomas Midgley. Midgley rocked the scientific world by leading in the discovery of Ethyl gasoline and inventing Freon in three days, but died of polio at age 55.
Anita Pai will graduate from Duke University in May of 2008. She uses the Benenson Award to produce a piece called, “A Maiden Voyage: Artistic and Theoretical Explorations of Bharatanatyam Choreography.” The classical Indian dance form is native to the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. After extensive study of the form, Pai will choreograph a Bharatanatyam dance while studying at the Kala Nivedanam School in Nashville, Tennessee.
Daniel Riley, a May, 2008 graduate from Manhattan Beach, California, is going to spend the summer working in New York City as an unpaid intern at Radar magazine and working on his English creative thesis, a book of 12 short stories. In addition, the Benenson Award makes it possible for him to pursue the goal of rewriting and marketing a feature screenplay done with a co-writer last summer.
Summer Robins of Douglasville, Georgia plans to use the Benenson Award funds to study commercial and concert dance at the esteemed Edge Performing Arts Center in Los Angeles, California.
Clare Sackler from Greenwich, Connecticut graduates in May, 2007 and will shoot and edit “Cine/Film,” a parallel documentary portrait of two recently graduated women starting their professional lives in very different film industries. The second sequence of the documentary will be Clare’s personal experience as she moves to Los Angeles to begin work in films.
Erica Sherman, a May 2007 graduate of Duke University, combines her talent for photography with her training as an architect. She will use Benenson Award funds to travel to England and France and produce “Flyers, Spires and the Quest for Illumination: A Photographic Investigation of Gothic Architecture.”
Sarah Weber of Woodward, Iowa, graduates in May, 2007. This summer, the Benenson Award will make it possible for her to rewrite and edit some of the stories she’s produced throughout her undergraduate career at Duke University. The stories will be compiled into a collection of twenty of the best, available in August.
Martin Zimmerman is a May 2007 graduate from Rockville, Maryland. His “Dirty War Play” explores the idea of forgiveness, and whether someone who committed crimes against humanity can atone and become a fully human member of society again. He will travel to Argentina, do interviews, and visit the offices of societies for the disappeared, including Las Abuelas de la Plaza de Mayo, mothers and grandmothers of those kidnapped while the Dirty War was at its peak.
Undergraduate Research Support Office and
Pre-Graduate Study Advisingursoffice@duke.edu
Duke University
011 Allen Building, Box 90051
Durham, NC 27708-0051
Phone: 684-6536, fax: 660-0488