Caitlin Keller

While many know the wicked sea witch Ursula from Disney’s The Little Mermaid, few understand that she was based on the drag queen Divine. Ursula is only one of a myriad of representations of queerness in children’s media. My project explores the evolution of queer representation in children’s media and the role it plays in transforming mainstream cultural norms, working as a tool to socialize children. From the demonization of queer characteristics resulting in queer-coded villains to same-sex kisses on animated television shows of the 21st century, queer representation in […]

Stephanie Ancheta

Synchronous gamma wave brain oscillations, which oscillate at a frequency of 40 Hz, underlie healthy cognitive functioning and are disrupted in Alzheimer’s Disease, leading researchers to explore sensory stimuli delivered at 40 Hz as a potential therapy to resynchronize neuronal firing and thus slow cognitive decline. However, the stroboscopic nature of 40 Hz lighting makes it an unlikely treatment for humans. This project hopes to overcome the challenges posed by stroboscopic 40 Hz white-light by testing the efficacy of a novel invisible spectral flicker (ISF) light system, which masks the […]

Lauren Anastasia

What are the purposes, possibilities, and limitations of the traditional gallery space? Through understanding who has been excluded from the gallery, we aim to rethink what an exhibition space can and should be. Through our research, we will stage our own space on campus that subverts gallery conventions. We will present an alternative functionality, proposing that the gallery space should offer tangible assets to its community. Our work is a collaborative art project situated in the history of service labor, endurance art performances, gallery culture, and the history of subversive […]

Cassandra Branch

Films are cultural timestamps constructed to reflect the interests and beliefs of their audiences. The 1960s revolutionized the United States in more ways than one, and movies were not exempt from these changing tides. Over the course of the decade, sex work became a normalized narrative convention of several films, including Butterfield 8, Breakfast at Tiffany‚Äôs, and Walk on the Wild Side. This research project will seek to contextualize and explain this change in the cultural zeitgeist by examining the sociopolitical policy surrounding sex work at that time, in tandem […]

Helen Halliwell

This project analyzes the origins, uses, and effects of attention in the work of 19th-century poet John Clare in order to illuminate the nature of the relationship between poet and place. I will analyze his poetry for habits of attention not only in his acts of observation, but in the poetic techniques he uses to describe what he sees, and thus translate his heightened sense of attention. By approaching his body of work through the lens of the poetics of attention and his focus on his immediate surroundings, I aim […]

Alina Çelik

This project explores the transfer of knowledge within familial systems. In 2014, a traditionalist administration took power in Turkey. This marked a change in the socio-cultural environment and created an opportunity for stories to be altered and values to shift. What stories are shifted or lost in the transfer of knowledge across generations? Queerness has always been present, but how has its existence been impacted by the dominant culture in Turkey? What were queer stories like in Turkey before the political push to an Islamic state, and how have they […]