David Villani
My research seeks to understand the origins, establishment, and decline of the alliance between the French Communist Party (PCF) and the African Democratic Rally (RDA), the largest union of nationalist parties in French West Africa. The brief alliance, which lasted from 1946 to 1950, coincided with years of radical reconceptualizations about the position of Europe in Africa and Africa in the world. The alliance between the RDA and the PCF is a critical and, to my mind, misunderstood moment in this history. Rather than a momentary marriage of convenience, a […]
Scott Underwood
Bluegrass music is a modern invention, emerging in the 1940s as a synthesis of Black music forms such as work songs, gospel, and blues with white European-descended fiddle tunes and traditional ballads from the British Isles by way of Appalachia. It includes prominent use of the banjo, an African instrument brought by enslaved Blacks, and stresses instrumental virtuosity including improvisational “jamming” derived from Black jazz of the 1920s. Despite these factors, bluegrass has for most of its history been associated with white musicians and white audiences. In the last twenty […]
Cat Stoehr
As a former professional ballet dancer I often felt that my experience was defined less by my role as an artist, and more so by my position as a worker. Ballet is a performance of ease; a masking of the immense physical and mental energy that is poured into it to create a presentation of grace. But it would be a mistake to not consider the modern ballet dancer as a worker. At two extremes, their labor is either bound within tightly managed company structures under union protection, or extremely […]
Johnny Smith
Mass incarceration is a phenomenon well studied among academics and policymakers. Less emphasized is its community-based byproduct: mass probation. Contemporary shifts in cultural attitudes and policy circles increasingly emphasize the need to reduce incarcerated populations. Although releasing people from jails and prisons is a vital step in the right direction, it fundamentally entails adding to the already swelled population under community correctional control. Given the decades-long oscillating landscape, a tension persists among agents pivoting with policy: occupational duality within the probation supervision sector. Johnny’s research interest focuses on this duality—probation […]
Henry Seaborne
All cells have specialized membranes that act as storage vesicles to hold in their essential machinery, sort what comes in and out of their cell, and countless other diverse functions that allow for cell viability. In my lab, we are focused on studying the membranes of the bacteria Caulobacter Crescentus because its unique ability to survive without a component that normally defers cell life or death. My project is working on categorizing how protein composition changes between normal and mutated Caulobacter Crescentus. and whether there’s a mechanism allowing for viability […]
Pedro Rodriguez
My project will study the impact that the pandemic has had on farmworkers. The pandemic demonstrated the contributions from farmworkers are essential to society and the economy. While most middle-class workers were at home quarantined, farmworkers were out working to keep food on the table for others. The pandemic exposed the fundamental contributions that farmworkers make to this country. As a result, they were able to be recognized as “Essential” workers. At the time of the lockdown, “essential workers” were praised and glorified for risking their lives and the lives […]
Selina Pacheco
Childhood family income is a powerful predictor of academic achievement and mental health. Prior research indicates that children in poverty with better academic performance and more depressive symptomatology tend to have higher temporal coupling between lateral frontoparietal network (LFPN; supports executive functions) and Default Mode Network (DMN; supports internally-directed thought) than lower-performing children in poverty, in direct contrast to the pattern observed for children above poverty. Thus, an open question is whether this pattern of connectivity adaptive for children in poverty has maladaptive long-term consequences, particularly for mental health. This […]
Xitlaly Olivera
Over the past decade, the demand for mezcal has increased causing Indigenous communities in Oaxaca to accelerate the levels of production. The global mezcal industry in 2022 it was valued at $338 million USD and it is expected to to increase to $2.1 billion USD by 2030, with a compound annual growth rate of 22.6% (Straits 2022). The consequences of the globalization of mezcal has manifested in the loss of ecosystems, traditional ecological knowledge, and the increase use of pesticides, which are ultimately accelerating the loss of Indigenous cultures in […]
Alton Sturgis
We ask the question if physical rehabilitation for stroke patients in virtual/augmented reality (AR/VR) can supplement the lack of access to physical therapy. The motivation is that there is a waitlist of stroke patients to be seen by a physical therapist after they are discharged from the hospital. Patients often wait for months at home even though the first 6 months after the event of stroke is when they have the highest brain plasticity to recover the most through rehabilitation. This is a blindside of the current medical system which […]
Amar Shah
Software verification is the process of mathematically proving that a software system does what it is intended to do, without any bugs. To do these kinds of proofs, software verification engines generate logical queries and use computational tools called satisfiability modulo theory (SMT) solvers to answer these queries. We are building a new SMT solver that can handle queries containing Algebraic Data Types (ADTs). ADTs are a programming construct classically found in functional programming languages but are increasingly found in all kinds of modern languages (including Rust and even Python!). […]