Graduate Student
Black Queer and Trans Anthropocenes
Apr. 6, 2023—Cameron Clark is a 2022-23 Graduate Student Fellow from the Department of English. The Anthropocene has come to define a corpus of accumulated threats to species life, ranging from global warming and climate change; to environmental toxicity and pollution; to extinctions, loss of biodiversity, and the subsequent collapse of various ecosystems across the planet. Yet,...
A Philosophy of Class in the Twenty-First Century
Apr. 3, 2023—Emerson Bodde is a 2022-23 Graduate Student Fellow from the Department of Philosophy My research works within the overlap between social and political philosophy, which study normative and descriptive arguments and concepts pertaining to collective human engagement, and the history of philosophy, which organizes research by contextualizing philosophical arguments in terms of their social, political,...
Narrative Nomads: Resistance in the 21st-century African Hispanophone (Equatorial Guinea and the Western Sahara)
Mar. 29, 2023—Caroline Colquhoun is a 2022-23 Graduate Student Fellow from the Department of Spanish and Portuguese For many, the phrase “Spanish Empire” calls up notions of Spain’s colonies in the Americas and the Caribbean—places that were decolonized by the end of the 19th century. In Africa, however, Spain’s imperial influence lingered far longer. Equatorial Guinea and...
Vital Infrastructures: The Affects, Power, and Environments of Infrastructural Media
Mar. 9, 2023—Maren Loveland is a 2022-2023 “Mending and Transforming” Graduate Student Fellow In a 1939 issue of the Daily Worker, a headline reads, “‘Uncle Sam,’ Producer of Vital Films.’” As the brief article explains, in 1939, the United States government began distributing state-produced films to the general public, who could watch federal cinema at their local...
Transamazonic Bondage: Violence, Networks, and Race (Brazil, 1688-1798)
Mar. 2, 2023—Alexandre Pelegrino is a 2022-23 Graduate Student Fellow from the Department of History. It is beyond question that the enslavement of Indigenous Americans played a decisive role in the formation of colonial societies in the Americas. Yet, most people assume that it was a practice confined to the early moments of colonization. In other words, Indigenous...
The Trans in “Just Transition”
Feb. 9, 2023—Nicholas Reich is a 2022-23 “Mending and Transforming” Graduate Student Fellow. How to “transition” to a world that isn’t fuel dependent? Maybe this was always a utopic question. Fuel scholar Heidi C. M. Scott explains, “We can’t even see oil because we look through oil glasses…we are, ourselves, petroleum products.” Toothbrushes, lip balms, sex toys, the...
Creating a More Equitable and Environmentally Friendly Food System in the U.S.
Nov. 2, 2022—Alex Korsunsky is a 2022-23 “Mending and Transforming” Graduate Student Fellow. Most Americans are at least broadly aware of the problems with our food system: it is environmentally unsustainable, economically unviable for small farmers, and built on a system of racialized labor exploitation, with most of the hardest and most poorly paid work performed by...
Exploring the Religious and Spiritual Complexity of Black Activism in the U.S.
Sep. 13, 2022—Martina Schaefer is a 2022-23 Graduate Student Fellow from the Department of History. Upon entering graduate school, I was not quite clear what aspects of U.S. history I wanted to examine in my dissertation project. I had various ideas and knew that I wanted to learn more about the Black radical tradition. For my first-year...
Thinking in Language
Apr. 25, 2022—Meet Laura Carter-Stone, a 2021-2022 RPW Center Environments Graduate Student Fellow. She is a PhD student in the Teaching, Learning, and Diversity program at Peabody College. Her research explores how the performing arts–especially the art of dramatic improvisation–can create emotionally engaging and collaborative language and literacy learning environments. What is your research about and why does...
Expanding the Renaissance
Apr. 18, 2022—Willnide Lindor is the 2021-2022 Elizabeth E. Fleming Fellow from the Department of English. Her research interests include: Renaissance Lyric Poetry and Drama, Early Modern Race Studies, Gender and Sexuality, and Postcolonial Theory. What is your research about and why does it matter? My current research explores nuanced depictions of blackness through the intersection of...