Alexandra Aguirre
Between the Fantastic and the Absurd: Andrei Sinyavsky and Soviet Literary Censorship explores Sinyavsky’s works of fiction from the 1950s and 60s in the context of Soviet censorship. Sinyavsky, using the pseudonym Abram Tertz, created works of fantastic realism that were denied publication because they challenged the orthodoxies of socialist realism, and could only be published abroad. The essay explores the significance of Sinyavsky’s trial and conviction for “anti-Soviet agitation,” as a result of his “slanderous” publications outside the Soviet geography and jurisdiction. (Professor Yasha Klots, Russian and Slavic Studies)
Nishanth Araveti
Bookshelves & Brain Enhancement: The Capability Approach in Cognitive Enhancement explores the societal implications of neuroenhancers, focusing on issues of accessibility and inequality to pharmaceutical and technological cognitive enhancements. Through the lens of the capability approach, which evaluates humans’ sense of well-being, this paper argues that these modern tools are extensions of historical cognitive aids like libraries. Critiquing the treatment-enhancement divide, it advocates for a different understanding of enhanced cognition – one that seeks to understand it as a means to an end, not as an end itself. (Professor Kyle Ferguson, Philosophy)
Juda Ato
Epistemic Injustice in the Bronx explores how marginalized communities are denied resources and platforms for expression. This work draws on philosophical insights from Miranda Fricker and others to analyze the impacts of this injustice. By studying local organizations like the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition, this project highlights community-driven solutions to empower residents and amplify their voices in decision-making processes that shape their lives. (Professor Daniel Harris, Philosophy)
Kanishka Awasthi
Marginalized Gender Identities, Surveillance of Queerness in India interrogates how colonial-era surveillance, coercion and criminalization transformed pre-colonial gender expressions. In turn, the binary that colonialism produced has continuing effects in the contemporary neocolonial moment. Special focus is on the alienation of LGBTQ+ and Hijra sexually (non-conforming) identities to each other both in India and in the United States. (Professor Deborah Tolman, Women and Gender Studies)
Arlo Banta
Cinema and the Mechanical Reproduction of the Ecological Subject examines the unique relationship (and responsibilities) between the motion picture camera and the natural world. By synthesizing realist film theory with the frameworks developed in the fields of environmental ethics and aesthetics, we can elucidate the moral implications of cinematic efforts to “capture nature.” While many of the extant models for environmental aesthetics may appear to preclude the possibility of substantive environmental appreciation through filmed media, from those same models, we can derive new filmmaking strategies which might engender a deeper knowledge of and appreciation for our imperiled ecosystem. (Professor Kyle Ferguson, Philosophy)
Gabriela Barahona
The Public Library: Social Capital and Democratic Potentiality explores the idea, history and current status of public libraries. It views public libraries not only as an institution with a mission to cultivate and accumulate knowledge but a space with indispensable social, civic, and reparative functions. (Professor Lazaro Lima, Africana, Puerto Rican, and Latino Studies)
Daniel Cronin
Imperial Plunder: The Untold Story of the Monuments Men in Asia sheds light on a lesser-known chapter of the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives Section (MFAA) of the United States Army, familiarly known as the Monuments Men. While the fact that the MFAA recovered over five million looted cultural artifacts in Europe is well known, their efforts in Asia remain largely overlooked. This project investigates the work of the MFAA’s Asia division, exploring why it struggled to recover much of the art looted by Imperial Japan and analyzing the lasting impact of this failure on cultural heritage and regional relations. (Professor Benjamin Hett, History)
Candela Cubria-Franco
Autonomous and/or Committed: Capitalism, Adorno, and Socially Engaged Art examines the evolving relationship between art, politics, and capitalism through Theodor W. Adorno’s critiques of politically committed art and the separation of aesthetics from praxis. Utilizing the autonomist framework of immaterial labor, it explores how capitalism has transformed, creating new tensions between autonomy and utility in socially engaged art. By revisiting 20th-century theories on art and politics and analyzing the socioeconomic shifts since the 1970s, the study proposes a reimagined understanding of autonomy for socially engaged practices in today’s art world. (Robyn Marasco, Political Science)
Kai de la Cruz
“Niggas Got a Right to be Dissatisfied”: On the Black Grievances Behind the 1968 New York City Teachers’ Strike explores the split between the non-violent mass movement for black civil rights and the emergence of black liberation movements. It uses ethnic and labor studies to analyze schools as sites of racial contestation beyond traditional integrationist narratives. This project rejects the conflation of adjacency to whiteness with progress, asserting that black activists’ political responsibility to black children can and should be fulfilled in predominately black spaces. (Professor Alhaji Conteh, Africana, Puerto Rican, and Latino Studies)
Rose Foley
‘To Turn Deprivation Into Plentitude, and Shame Into History’: How The Lesbian Herstory Archives Functions as a Queer Counterpublic” focuses on the Lesbian Herstory Archives, established in the mid 1970s in New York City. It demonstrates how, over its history, the Lesbian Herstory Archives has allowed new counter-discourses on queerness to emerge and circulate among its members and visitors. It theorizes that, through its organization of physical space, its unique archival principles and involvement of lesbians in the processes of historical production, the Lesbian Herstory Archives functions as a queer counterpublic. (Professor Eduardo Contreras, History)
Luanna Garcia
Graffiti, Legality and Hegemony explores the origins of tagging culture in New York City, its eventual criminalization of graffiti in the 1980s, and the emergence of legally sanctioned spaces such as Wynwood Walls, a Miami museum for street art. This paper distinguishes between the intentions of graffiti and protest art and examines the value of both today. (Professor Rupal Oza, Women and Gender Studies)
Sophia Guelke
Tubercular Artists: The Romantic Fascination with Tuberculosis and the Modern Starving Artist investigates the work and legacy of John Keats and tracks how he became the archetype of the tubercular poet. Re-examining Keats’ portrayal of the sublime as an experience tied closely to illness reveals the complex relationship between suffering, beauty, and “artistic transcendence.” This essay aims to investigate both how Keats shaped the trope of the starving artist and the inaccuracies and mythologies around his death that contributed to the archetype. (Professor Gavin Hollis, English)
Sanjana Hussain
Undocumented Citizens: Multigenerational Punishments in Mixed-Status Households examines the impacts of immigration policies in the United States on citizen children of mixed-status families. It argues that U.S. immigration policies induce a distinct form of multigenerational punishment where the repercussions of undocumented status extend beyond the immediate individuals and onto their U.S. citizen children. (Professor Leah Christiani, Political Science)
Bridget Li
Counterterrorism in the Age of Neoliberal Urbanism explores the expansion of surveillance and policing by the New York Police Department after 9/11. Focus is on the realm of exception that security—particularly counterterrorism—occupies in an era of urban governance dominated by neoliberalism and austerity thinking. The paper argues that this expansion, seen in interventions such as the unconstitutional surveillance of Muslim communities, soldiers in subway stations, and defensive architecture, is unjust and fundamentally anti-urban. (Professor Owen Gutfreund, Urban Policy and Planning)
Brendan O’Connell
Maus and the Aesthetic of Trauma explores how Art Spiegelman’s seminal graphic novel Maus uses the medium of comics to represent historical atrocity. The paper analyzes how Spiegelman's graphic form layers discourse and artifice to facilitate a greater understanding of historical narratives relative to more indexical forms of documentation, such as war photography. (Professor Sandra Shapshay, Philosophy)
Esther Omolola
Reclaiming Visibility: Manifestations of the Oppositional Gaze in Social Media explores how Black women use social media platforms like TikTok and YouTube to reclaim their agency and challenge mainstream notions of Black womanhood. This research draws on the concepts of the oppositional gaze and Black feminist epistemology to argue that social media platforms provide Black women with powerful tools for collective resistance, empowerment, and cultural transformation. (Professor Kelly Nims, English)
Artem Pankin
Climate Ambition Meets Urban Aspiration: Green Tech and Urban Growth in New York City examines the discursive linkages between green tech and urban growth in recent policy documents focused on climate action. It demonstrates how new urban responses to climate change reflect capitalist dynamics, prioritizing the economic development of cities in order to extract profit from land over all other concerns. (Professor Lily Pollans, Urban Policy and Planning)
Elena Paraponiaris
Ray, Engel, Truffaut and the Postwar “Film of Tomorrow” examines Nicholas Ray’s Bigger than Life (1956), Morris Engel’s Little Fugitive (1953), and François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows (1959) through the lens of the latter’s “film of tomorrow,” Truffaut's polemical call for a more personal and socially-aware French cinema that would follow the direction taken by American studio and independent filmmaking. This study considers the directors’ synthesis of content and composition in the pursuit of an equally personal and socially reflective cinema. (Professor Sam Di Iorio, Romance Languages)
Jinglin Peng
Model Minority Myth and Tiger Mom: Perception or Prevalence? explores the public perception of the Asian "Tiger Mom" and its ties with the Model Minority Myth. The paper suggests that the prevalence and efficacy of "tiger parenting" in Asian American families, especially in Chinese American households, is different from public perception. The project calls into question internalized beliefs adopted by Asian Americans. (Professor Marcia Liu, Asian American Studies)
Shounak Reza
The Exclusionary Nature of Turkish Nationalism as Reflected in The Bastard of Istanbul and The Club focuses on how the Turkish nation-state, like any other nation-state, is based on imaginary constructs, including the idea of homogeneity. By close reading a novel and a Netflix series, this paper analyzes how monolithic identities are constructed in nation-states, with little attention paid to the fact that identities are more fluid and complicated than what is permitted by the idea of the nation. (Professor Robyn Marasco, Political Science)
Renee Ricevuto
Girls Who Murder: The Ironic Prima Donna in Opera and Pop Music explores violent representations of girlhood and femininity in both operatic and popular music. Focusing on the coloratura soprano during the eighteenth century and Romantic era, the research highlights figures like the Queen of the Night and Lucia di Lammermoor, then examines them alongside modern singers such as Sabrina Carpenter. The paper's central premise explores how the ironic gender performance Sabrina embodies in her music can be used to restage and reinterpret these operatic heroines. (Professor Catherine Coppola, Music)
Shagg Solarz
Emergent Lesbian Politics: the mid-20th Century explores the genesis of Lesbian identity and subculture in the 1950s through 1980s, tracing the transition from the homophile movement of the McCarthy era to post-Stonewall second-wave feminist organizing. While the homophile movement was a civil rights front invested in respectability, the second-wave feminist movement reconciled with conditions which alienated women from cultural, political and economic power, allowing working-class Lesbians to inform emerging Lesbian politics, constituting the framework for the new Lesbian liberation front. (Professor Megan Hicks, Anthropology)
Isabella Youssef
Propaganda and Media Censorship: the Armenian Genocide explores the historical and cultural memory of the Armenian genocide, and focuses on how Turkish propaganda has attempted historically and currently to censor the incident. The essay aims to affirm the importance of reconciliation efforts done at the government level to foster generational healing, awareness, and the prevention of continued acts of discrimination. (Professor Benjamin Hett, History)