Research News

•  FYI RESEARCH: Anthropologist faces tough decision
after Sept. 11
•  Neuroscientist wins grant to study genetics

FYI RESEARCH: Anthropologist faces tough decision after Sept. 11

On Sept. 14, 2001, Julie Flowerday, a Carolina alumnus and assistant research associate in anthropology, had a decision to make. Her photography exhibition, Hunza in Treble Vision: 1930s and 1990s, was scheduled to open that day in Pakistan to an audience including residents of the communities on which the exhibit was based. "When the Sept. 11 event occurred," Flowerday says, "it created a sense of apprehension. There had been a lot of tourists in this area, but that day it was as if everybody just disappeared." Should she continue with the highly publicized opening or close it down and leave the country with the many other non-national visitors?

The show documented the changing landscape of communities in the Hunza Valley in Pakistan through photographs taken in the 1930s by Lt. Col. David L. R. Lorimer, a social scientist and Army officer in the Political Department, British Colonial India, and through Flowerday's own photographs, taken of the same locations in the 1990s. It was the culmination of research that began with Flowerday's curiosity about a locked metal filing cabinet labeled "Hunza" at the library in the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies. Inside it were 240 glass lantern slides that Lorimer had taken in the Hunza Valley between 1934 and 1935.

Flowerday became intrigued with trying to understand what the photographs were about and took the slides back to Hunza, which is 80 miles south of the Chinese border. "I just wanted to see what was there," she says. But when she began to take her own photographs, she noticed many changes in the landscape, such as new buildings and cars. That observation prompted her to ask how people understand the changes that they are a part of and how that influences the way people understand themselves.

To develop her Treble Vision exhibit, Flowerday organized the photographs into three groups. Lorimer's slides comprised "single vision." "Double vision" paired his images with those re-photographed by Flowerday in the 1990s. Juxtaposed with these two was "treble vision" -- new developments on the landscape under the state of Pakistan.

Flowerday interviewed members of the communities in Hunza to record their interpretations of both Lorimer's photographs and her own. Through these interviews, Flowerday found that "power controls, influences and deflects our vision." The set of photographs printed here reflects that finding.

Another set of photographs features "Kharum Bat," a boulder in the Hunza Valley. It was supposedly the site of a showdown between a ruler and his prime minister and was considered a sacred site. In 1992 it was being destroyed in order to sell the material or build a hotel or shop.

A 12-year-old boy gave Flowerday a story he had written about the boulder. In his story, he said that there was a boulder whose name he did not know, but he knew that it belonged to ancient times. Flowerday says that the boulder had no meaning for him because the power associated with it was from a different era. "But what he did know was where the mosques were, he did know the politics of the day, he did know things that were part of his own future." He associates power with the mosques and current political parties, not a myth about a boulder.

"We're living at a speed of life that's difficult to recognize," Flowerday says. "We can't always take the time to reevaluate and reflect on what is going on around us. We have to somehow absorb the changes that are happening." She says that the purpose of her exhibition was to "transfer to the people of Hunza an account that documented their passage from a territory under British Colonial India to a constituency in a nation-state."

On Sept. 14, Flowerday and her Pakistani colleagues made the decision to continue with the exhibition although the atmosphere was tense. Many preparations had been made, and there was more than an opening ceremony at stake. Mir Ghazanfar Khan, heir of the last official ruler of Hunza, was the chief speaker. Radio and news coverage welcomed the public to take part. Food and entertainment had been arranged. For Flowerday, closing down the exhibition and withdrawing from the community would have meant that the event and its consequences were more important than the recognition it would give to the community and the people about whom it was created.

But what was there to celebrate? With news of possible military strikes, tourists had vanished, and special guests from outside the community were absent. In spite of this, she says, "Canopies went up, photographs were hung, food was prepared, performers arrived." And they waited.

After several hours, Flowerday's hope was dwindling. Then, Mir Ghanzanfar Khan arrived.

"We had a wonderful spontaneous event that had a totally different character than the one that had been planned. But I think the spirit of not being defeated was there," she says.

Flowerday will continue her work returning resources to the Hunza community. She is writing a book and creating a video, again using materials from the 1930s and 1990s. She also proposes to return to Hunza to document the disappearing life of local musicians. She believes that what she has found in her study, that memory and understanding of one's culture are dependent on power, is essential for all communities to examine.

"I think that by doing this again and again," she says, "we'll get to sense that change occurs within people, that it's we who interpret what is happening around us. We can discover something about reflection and about how we want to reinvest and take responsibility for what we want in our future."

Hunza in Treble Vision: 1930s and 1990s was sponsored by the Mary Duke Biddle Foundation, the Aga Khan Culture Service in Pakistan and the University of London. Julie Flowerday participates in The Carolina Speakers program; for information see www.unc.edu/depts/uncspeak/

Provided by Research and Graduate Studies
Editor: Neil Caudle
Writer: Mary Alice Scott

Neuroscientist wins grant to study genetics

Larysa H. Pevny, assistant professor of genetics in the School of Medicine and a member of the UNC Neuroscience Center, has won a five-year federal grant to advance her laboratory's studies of a trio of genes involved in regulating neural stem cells. These genes (the SOXB1 subfamily) are thought crucial to neural stem cells giving rise to the central nervous system.

Pevny received her doctorate in genetics from Columbia University. She has identified one of the first known molecular mechanisms in neural stem cell regulation. Eventually, results from her work will be applied to transplantation therapy in animal models of human neurodegenerative diseases.

"Only through a thorough understanding of the cellular and molecular mechanisms will researchers be able to efficiently direct stem cell differentiation into specific cell types needed for transplantation," Pevny said.

The nearly $1 million grant from the National Institute of Mental Health provides $200,000 for each of four years and $175,000 in the fifth year.

The UNC Neuroscience Center is an interdepartmental research center. Its mission is to promote neuroscience research with specific emphases on brain development, neurogenetics and neurological disease. The goal of its research working groups is to make breakthroughs in key areas that are most likely to impact the neurological and psychiatric disorders that are so devastating to individuals and their families.
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