Undergraduate Honors Theses and Student papers

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10161/6

Duke migrated to an electronic-only system for theses between 2006 and 2010. As such, theses completed between 2006 and 2010 may not be part of this system, and those completed before 2006 are not hosted here except for a small number that have been digitized.

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Access status: Open Access ,
Developing and Validating Methods of Assessing Retinal Function of Genetically Modified Zebrafish using Electroretinography (ERG) and Optokinetic Responses (OKR)
(2025) Nolt, Juliet
Loss of photoreceptor function in the retina leads to diminished vision and eventual blindness. Retinitis pigmentosa (RP) is the most common inherited disease of the retina, affecting about 1 in 5,000 people worldwide. Although mutations of the eyes shut homolog (EYS) and KIAA1549 are a common cause of RP, they were only recently discovered and characterized in humans. As a result, much novel research is needed to describe the precise biological role of EYS and KIAA1549, their interactions, and implication in disease. These specific proteins are of interest because our lab hypothesizes that they interact in photoreceptors. Unfortunately, common mammalian models such as rodents lack EYS, so our lab has developed novel EYS knockout (KO) and KIAA1549 KO zebrafish to mimic the disease progression of RP in humans. Successful characterization of EYS KO and KIAA1549 KO zebrafish will help us better understand the function of these genes and act as a baseline for future researchers to assess the performance of potential genetic treatments developed in zebrafish. To investigate the retinal function of these zebrafish, we will use electroretinograms (ERGs), a clinical test that measures the retina's electrical activation rates in response to light stimulation. ERGs for use on zebrafish are not widely-available, thus we have developed our own system. Next, we investigated the functional vision of the EYS KO zebrafish using a visual-behavioral task. The optokinetic response (OKR) in zebrafish is a stereotyped instinct of the eye to track whole-field motion, and its presence under variable conditions can be used to discern functional vision differences between zebrafish populations. We have developed and validated an OKR system and pioneered a standardized method of assessing the presence of eye saccades in video data. By characterizing these new EYS KO zebrafish and KIAA1549 KO zebrafish, greater knowledge on the mechanism of disorder for RP will be developed. This can provide key insights for novel, clinical gene therapy interventions. Since KIAA1549 is present in mouse, visual behavioral assays have also been developed and validated to evaluate the functional vision of WT mice and KIAA1549 KO mice.
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Embodying the Revolution: Female Sent-Down Youth on the Yunnan Frontier, 1969-1980
(2026-04-16) Lu, Karina
This thesis examines the Chinese Rustication Movement—the mass sending of urban youth to the countryside for labor and “reeducation” between 1968–1980—through the life of Wei Guo, a Shanghai middle-school graduate sent to the Yunnan Production and Construction Corps in 1969. Drawing on oral history interviews, published memoir collections, provincial investigation reports, and contemporaneous press, it offers an embodied microhistory of rustication. Chapter One follows Wei’s migration and adjustment to Yunnan, arguing that the frontier functioned as a material test of the state’s equality project, where terrain, disease, labor, and climate often overwhelmed Maoist claims about socialist sameness. Chapter Two traces Wei’s rise into Iron Woman roles, showing that the same gender model that legitimized women’s entry into male-coded labor also exposed them to bodily harm, surveillance, and sexual vulnerability. Chapter Three follows Wei’s return to Shanghai and her retrospective narration decades later, arguing that her turn to cosmological frameworks such as fate marks a rejection of revolutionary narratives that her lived experience had already falsified. The thesis argues that the Rustication Movement was lived most forcefully on and through the body, and that the body is where the movement’s contradictions come most clearly into view. In doing so, it intervenes in a historiography long shaped by state-centered frameworks in both English- and Chinese-language scholarship. By centering grassroots oral history from Yunnan and women’s retrospective narration, the study highlights three under-examined dimensions of rustication: the body as a site of historical knowledge, the ecological specificity of place, and the return of cosmological modes of meaning-making after the failure of revolutionary promises. Policies articulated as gender-neutral were lived in deeply gendered ways, producing both genuine openings and lasting bodily costs. At the ground level, lived experience challenged—and even inverted—party aims to transform the frontier, promote gender equality, and eliminate superstitious beliefs.
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The Short-Lived Marriage Between Feminism and Fascism: The Rise and Fall of the Richardson-Era Women’s Section of the British Union of Fascists
(2026-04-17) Curtin, Elizabeth
This thesis engages in an intellectual history of Feminism and Fascism in interwar Great Britain through the case study of the Women’s Section of the British Union of Fascists (BUF) from 1933 through 1934. Tracing the dialogue between interwar feminists and fascists through newspapers, pamphlets, posters, books, manifestos, and internal memos, this thesis analyzes the Women’s Section brief yet relevant practice of ‘feminist fascism’ under the leadership of Mary Richardson. Chapter I interrogates motherhood as a device toward female political agency from the Victorian Era to equal franchise in 1928, recasting first-wave and interwar Feminism as capacious movements encompassing various complementary and opposing feminisms. Chapter II contextualizes the empowerment of the Richardson Women’s Section within the broader success of the BUF in 1934, depicting Richardson’s popular ideological orientation of the Women’s Section as derived from a patchwork of interwar feminisms. Chapter III frames the end of the Richardson Women’s Section as an intentional result of Oswald Mosley’s internal purges after the Olympia rally, contending that the destruction of the Richardson Women’s Section marked the end of ‘feminist fascism’ and ushered in a ‘feminine fascism’ that defined the Women’s Section until 1940. This thesis argues that the Richardson Women’s Section embodied a ‘feminist fascism’ until the fallout of the Olympia Rally subordinated the Women’s Section under a new ideology of ‘feminine fascism’. Intervening into the scholarly debates on the BUF Women’s Section, this thesis claims that the Richardson tenure represented a unique manifestation of the Women’s Section because it engaged and incorporated key tenets of interwar Feminism. Additionally, this thesis argues that Mosley intentionally disempowered the Richardson Women’s Section because of its practice of ‘feminist fascism’.
Access status: Open Access ,
Reimagining the White Coat: Constructing the Contemporary Physician
(2026-04-22) Ouhaj, Nadia
This thesis examines how contemporary public opinion of medical professionals shapes professional identity formation and expectations among aspiring physicians in the United States. Drawing on Charles Cooley’s Looking Glass Self, Erving Goffman’s Presentation of Self, and Social Identity Theory, this paper investigates how pre-medical and medical students internalize, negotiate, and perform professional identities within a post-pandemic environment amid eroding public trust, digital visibility, and contradictory societal expectations. Using a qualitative-priority mixed-methods design, the study combines twelve in-depth semi-structured interviews with premedical students and a Qualtrics survey of 57 pre-medical and medical students across multiple U.S. institutions. Interview data was analyzed through inductive thematic analysis, with survey data used for methodological triangulation. Five themes emerged: (1) the effortless performance, wherein students feel compelled to project seamless success; (2) the internalization of contradictory public expectations, balancing clinical expertise and humanistic warmth; (3) the paradox of digital visibility, where media both inspires and distorts professional aspirations; (4) the negotiation between authenticity and professional conformity; and (5) structural inequalities in belonging shaped by race, gender, class, and cultural capital. Findings suggest that aspiring physicians actively interpret and reshape public narratives, constructing professional selves through ongoing impression management and identity negotiation. These insights have implications for medical education and healthcare institutions in cultivating a physician workforce capable of navigating the expectations of the past, present, and future.
Access status: Open Access ,
Selective Storytelling: Race and Gender Bias in Media Coverage During the 2024 NCAA Basketball Tournament
(2026-04) Wallace, Kennedy
This thesis investigates the media coverage of the men’s and women’s Final Four teams during the 2024 National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I basketball tournament. While women’s sports, especially basketball, have seen a rise in popularity over the last few years, media coverage has not reflected that change. Existing research suggests that coverage often utilizes language that reinforces gender and/or racial stereotypes to maximize audience engagement. While prior research has investigated differential media coverage by race and ethnicity for both male and female athletes, very few studies examine the difference in media coverage of men’s and women’s basketball. Collegiate athletes’ experiences are also rarely analyzed from a sociological perspective. Thus, I aim to address these gaps by conducting a qualitative content analysis of 66 Entertainment and Sports Programming Network (ESPN) articles from two weeks prior to and following the 2024 tournament to analyze the framing of each team, their star players, and their experiences in the tournament. I find evidence of narratives that reinforce gender, race, and ethnicity stereotypes related to the disparity in coverage of men’s and women’s basketball, the prevalence of storylines, the representation of star players, and the role of rivalries in sports. Through this thesis, I address how media can prioritize equality by better representing diverse groups of athletes in and beyond the collegiate sports space.
Access status: Open Access ,
The Faithful and The Fruitful: How Religion Motivates Fertility Attitudes and Behavior in Catholic Women
(2026-04-20) Pylant, Alexa
Continuing a 20-year downward trend, the US fertility rate dropped to a historic low in 2025: 1.6 births per woman (CDC 2026). Researchers have documented various socioeconomic factors that impact fertility, but religion’s role in declining fertility remains largely unexplored. Previous research has quantitatively demonstrated that religiosity is positively associated with fertility, however, there is lack of qualitative research that examines how religion influences personal motivations regarding having children. I examine the ways in which Catholic religious identities and experiences influence reproductive decision-making, and attitudes towards childbearing. Through in-depth interviews with 20 Catholic women aged 25 to 78, I investigate how Catholic women interpret their religion, and how religion influence their perspectives about having children. My aim is understanding how Catholic faith interacts with other personal identities such as location, culture, age, and gender to shape childbearing and fertility attitudes. By conducting my qualitative analysis, I find that Catholic faith functions less as a strict determinant of fertility behavior, but rather a dynamic framework where women actively negotiate religious ideals alongside personal, relational and broader constraints.
Access status: Open Access ,
Privileged and Brown: Renegotiating South Asian American Subjectivity by Mobilizing Cultural Capital from the Margins
(2025-04-11) Parameswaran, Meghna
Access status: Open Access ,
Practicing Care: Against Organized Abandonment in Raleigh-Durham
(2026) Nadeem, Alveena
This thesis examines how formal and informal networks of care persist in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, within contemporary conditions of racialized disinvestment, university expansion, and technological concentration. It begins with what the Care Collective describes as the crisis of care, which emerges through what Ruth Wilson Gilmore calls organized abandonment: the uneven withdrawal of resources, infrastructures, and institutional support from communities. As infrastructures meant to support life are unevenly withdrawn, communities are left to absorb the work of care themselves. The crisis is not that care disappears, but that it persists under constraint—becoming both vital and insufficient. Drawing on ethnographic engagement, interviews, and lived participation, this project documents emergent care infrastructures—including community fridges, mutual aid networks, community schools, and student organizing—as they take shape in real time. I demonstrate how care is not a coherent alternative system, but an ongoing, imperfect practice shaped by constraint, contradiction, and collective resistance. The argument unfolds in three parts: 1. Part One: Utopia Under Constraints argues that the promise of care lies in its capacity to imagine more just worlds, even as these ideals are negotiated within uncaring infrastructures. 2. Part Two: Technology and The Limits of Connection shows how institutional and technological systems reproduce disconnection, limiting care while claiming to enable it. 3. Part Three: Practicing Solidarity Under Risk contends that care requires an ongoing practice of solidarity—one that embraces risk, discomfort, and contradiction rather than avoiding them.
Access status: Open Access ,
Assessing Decision-Making Confidence in the Presence of Data Uncertainty
(2025-04-16) Wadekar, Adway
Assumptions are made liberally in statistical analyses, but violations to them are rarely tested. When they are, little attention is paid to whether or not the downstream decision is changed and by how much. We show that once an analyst specifies a notion of making an actionable decision based on what they observe from their modeling pipeline, there is a duality with having confidence in that decision given the assumptions made in said modeling pipeline. In particular, we illustrate how analysts can specify a "confidence in decision'' (CID) metric by which they can assess how violations to an assumption can result in loss in correctness, and therefore in confidence. We show that a variety of these CID metrics are possible, and propose a visualization framework that allows data analysts to cohesively and easily test how deviations from modeling assumptions could impact not just estimates of particular quantities, but also how they may or may not result in lost confidence in decision making, depending on what the analyst prioritizes. Two assumptions of interest that are commonly violated, through which we illustrate the CID procedure, are measurement error and missing not at random data. Two common settings in which decisions need to be made that are illustrated are political polling and public health interventions.
Access status: Open Access ,
Ora sí entiendo por qué: Protest, Politics, and Colombian History in the songs of Pedro J. Ramos
(2025-04-18) Sanchez, Lukas
This thesis seeks to understand how the music of the lawyer and notary Pedro J. Ramos tells the story of Colombian history in the middle of the 20th century. Colombian history from this period is one of bloodshed and political and social turmoil. This thesis couples the existing literature on Colombian politics, economics, agrarian reform, social change, and democracy, with several songs that Pedro J. Ramos wrote during his lifetime, connecting him to a much more expansive political history than exists. Ramos’ political status was never one of fame, but his achievements as a local songwriter telling the story of Colombian life serve simultaneously as a local perspective of Colombian history as well as a more panoramic view of the social happenings in Colombia. For the purposes of this work, I have chosen three subjects: agrarian reform, student protest, and petroleum exploitation. In the first chapter, I contextualize Colombian political systems and the development of agrarian reform policies that shaped future political standoffs. I use Ramos’ Dígame por qué doctor as the song that speaks most closely to the plight of peasant farm workers. In the second chapter, I explore the evolution of student protests in the city of Cali from the 1960s into an explosion of protest in 1971, as well as the enormous show of solidarity from students across the country. I use Ramos’ fiery Ora sí entiendo por qué to connect the experiences of farmers explored in chapter I to students’ revolutionary spirits. Finally, in the third chapter, I diverge from the concept of one single song. I seek to understand Ramos’ complex understanding of his home nation through various songs. I first explore petroleum exploitation by foreign multinational companies how local towns like Ortega fell by the wayside, even with hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil being produced on that land and use the allegorical lyrics in Ramos’ Qué es Macondo to explore this exploitation. I continue by exploring other works that demonstrate Ramos’ love for his country and love for the traditions of his country. Songs may be short in duration but have immeasurable potential to affect those who listen. This work seeks to interweave historical narratives of Colombian politics with one lawyer’s musical understanding of his lived experience.
Access status: Open Access ,
Adverse Childhood Experiences, Positive Childhood Experiences, and Mental Health Outcomes: A Mixed Methods Analysis of 27 Udayan Ghar Children
(2026-04-17) Cutick, Renn
This project aims to examine the relationship between adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and positive childhood experiences (PCEs) in a sample of 27 children in the ghar program of Udayan Care with existing mental health screening data. The children who enter alternative care models such as Udayan often come from backgrounds characterized by traumatic events. Adverse experiences in formative years can have profoundly negative effects on mental health, physical health, and general worldview and behaviors in both the present and future. Udayan’s model centers trauma informed care and mental health support, but more information not only on common mental health challenges and traumas, but also resilience factors and positive experiences in the ghar population is always useful in ensuring it is delivering the most impactful care possible.
Access status: Open Access ,
Little Health Heroes: A Mixed Methods Study on the Feasibility, Fidelity, and Efficacy of a Pilot Health Education Program in Abeokuta, Nigeria
(2026) Bankole, Damilola
This study evaluates the feasibility, fidelity, and efficacy of an arts-based health education program implemented at LawNet International School in Abeokuta, Nigeria. The program integrated creative and interactive teaching methods including music, dance, storytelling, and visual arts to deliver instruction across three core modules: internal illness and prevention, mental health and emotional well-being, and physical health and nutrition. Using a mixed-methods approach, data were collected through some pre- and post-program assessments, unit-based evaluations, post-program satisfaction surveys, observational field notes, and key informant interviews. Findings indicate that the program was feasible within the school setting, as demonstrated by successful completion, high levels of learner engagement, and positive learner-reported satisfaction. Fidelity was maintained at the level of core program components, although adaptations to lesson structure and timing were required due to logistical and contextual constraints. Evidence of efficacy was mixed but promising. Quantitative results suggested patterns of improvement in health knowledge across instructional units, though variability in sample size and assessment structure limited the strength of these conclusions. Qualitative findings provided additional insight, revealing improvements in learners’ emotional awareness and expression, as well as the development of more holistic understandings of health. Health-related behavioral changes were observed but were often context-dependent and not consistently sustained outside the classroom environment, highlighting the influence of structural factors on health-related practices. Overall, this study demonstrates the potential of arts-based approaches to enhance engagement and support multidimensional learning in health education. While findings are context-specific and not generalizable, they offer valuable insights for the design, implementation, and refinement of school-based health interventions in similar settings.
Access status: Open Access ,
Caminando Juntos: A proof-of-concept study of a family psychosocial intervention for Latinx immigrant families in the U.S.
(2026-04) Ford, Emily
Introduction. Latinx immigrants in the United States face many structural-level stressors, including access to healthcare and anti-immigrant policies, as well as acculturative stressors. All of these stressors can impact how the family functions, which can then impact mental health outcomes. Few family-level interventions have been developed to provide skills for coping and allow all family members to join together. Caminando Juntos, a culturally-adapted psychosocial intervention, aims to fill this gap for Latinx families. Methods. Caminando Juntos was adapted for Latinx immigrant families from an intervention called Coping Together through active participation and input from the Latinx community. A small, proof-of-concept study of Caminando Juntos was conducted in the summer of 2025 in the South Side of Milwaukee. Four participating families (six caregivers and four children) attended the eight-session intervention and completed both pre-post assessments to measure changes in family well-being and post-session surveys to assess perceptions of the intervention content. This data was analyzed to understand acceptability of the culturally adapted intervention and initial reported changes in family well-being from baseline to endline. Results. All of the intervention sessions and individual activities were rated as highly acceptable by participants, including both culturally-adapted (average rating of 4.78/5) and non-culturally-adapted activities (average rating of 4.69/5). Perceived family well-being changes were highly variable by family and individual, with some families showing improvements, some showing variation by measure and reporter, and some showing declines in perceived functioning. Discussion. High ratings on all of the intervention sessions and activities suggest that the intervention was acceptable in this sample and appropriate for larger-scale implementation, which could provide more nuanced views into the acceptability of specific sessions or activities. The varied perceptions of family well-being at baseline and endline do not align with expected increases in perceived family well-being across families, raising concerns about mixed effects of the intervention, large influences of external stressors, and validity of the measures. Next steps include analysis of available qualitative data to better contextualize results and identify if quantitative results match how participants describe the changes following the intervention in their own words.
Access status: Open Access ,
Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practices of Secondary School Students Regarding HPV and HPV-Related Cancer Prevention in Urubamba, Cusco, Peru
(2026-04-17) Seneshen, Kate
Human papillomavirus (HPV) is a major cause of preventable cancers and remains a significant public health concern in low-resource settings where adolescents have limited access to preventive services such as vaccination. In rural Peru, little is known about adolescents’ knowledge, attitudes, and practices (KAP) surrounding HPV, despite being the primary age group targeted for vaccination. This study assessed HPV-related KAP among secondary school students in Urubamba, Cusco, and examined how these domains varied by sociodemographic characteristics, resource access, and prior HPV awareness. A cross-sectional survey of 120 students aged 12–18 years from one public and one private school was conducted using a KAP instrument. Knowledge scores (0–38), attitude scores (0–11), practice score (0-1), and total KAP scores (0–50) were summarized descriptively and compared across demographic groups using non-parametric and chi-square tests. Knowledge levels were moderate (median 19/38) but showed major gaps in understanding non-vaginal transmission routes and non-cervical cancers. Attitudes were mixed (median 5/11) with limited confidence in vaccine safety. Only one-third (33%) of students had been vaccinated. Vaccination prevalence was higher among girls (53% vs. 20%). Students at the private school and those with greater resource and medical access demonstrated higher KAP. Prior HPV awareness was strongly associated with higher KAP. These findings reveal gaps in HPV awareness and vaccination in rural Andean adolescents and highlight the need for school-based education, stronger parental engagement, and improved access to vaccination services.
Access status: Open Access ,
Incentivizing Corporate Accountability in Market-Driven Epidemics: Examining the Role of Corporate Strategy, Marketing, and Responsibility in Shaping Global Health Outcomes, Using Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy as a Case Study
(2026-04-16) Chhabra, Vaya
INTRODUCTION: Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) has emerged as a public health concern among individuals exposed to repetitive head impacts (RHIs), with 97% of cases in those with known exposure, football players. CTE fits the definition of a market-driven epidemic (MDE), in which a profitable product causes widespread harm while corporate incentives delay recognition and mitigation. Similar patterns have been documented in tobacco, opioids, and sugar-sweetened beverages. While literature examines neuropathology, legal battles, and individual outcomes, no study has analyzed the mechanisms driving delayed mitigation or identified interventions that could have shortened that delay. This thesis asks: (1) how did the NFL respond to evidence linking football to neurological harm, and what factors shaped that response? and (2) what mechanisms could align corporate self-interest with public health to enable earlier, more substantive harm reduction? METHODS: Using thematic coding of peer-reviewed literature, investigative journalism, and legal filings, the NFL’s response was mapped across five MDE phases: market development, evidence of harm, corporate resistance, mitigation, and market adaptation. Key milestones included suspicion and confirmation of harm, internal awareness versus public acknowledgment, the mitigation tipping point, and intervals between each. Building on this case study, a part of the methodology involved developing a framework for earlier corporate responses to emerging harm. FINDINGS: CTE follows classic MDE patterns, including corporate resistance strategies such as denial, funded counter-research, and influence over harm-reduction policy. External legal, financial, and public pressures eventually drove mitigation, including rule and equipment changes. Concussions per game declined 35% between 2015 and 2024. However, 85 years elapsed between initial suspicion (1928) and the mitigation tipping point (2013), with nearly two decades between internal awareness and action. Delayed mitigation produced compounding harms: elevated neurodegenerative disease and disability among players, over $1 billion in litigation costs, loss of liability insurance, and declining youth participation. Leadership accountability remained limited, raising broader ethical concerns. CONCLUSIONS: CTE demonstrates how profit-driven systems delay harm mitigation through predictable strategies of denial and uncertainty. A structured framework for earlier response could have prevented substantial harm. Despite progress, gaps in diagnosis, monitoring, and cultural norms persist, emphasizing the need for systemic reform.
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Vaccination as Arrival: Trust, Care, and Healthcare Navigation for Latine Families in Durham, NC
(2026-04-16) Muriithi, Grace
The Latine community in North Carolina is one of the fastest-growing demographics in the state, reflecting broader national trends since the start of the 21st century. This increase challenges existing racial demographics in the U.S. South and presents unique opportunities for this community to access various “arrival infrastructures” upon their (im)migration to North Carolina, such as healthcare spaces. Through quantitative surveys and qualitative open-ended interviews, my research looks at how Latine families engage with, make decisions about, and co-create knowledge surrounding vaccines–a particular medical intervention with increased tensions. This project, however, does not seek to just uncover vaccine decision-making. Rather, it unpacks how biomedicine—through the intervention of vaccines—is a process not only of literal linguistic translation but also of cultural translation mediated through infrastructures and the work of public health workers and those they serve. As Latine (im)migrants experience biomedicine, they also encounter linguistic divides that are not only verbal but embedded in cultures and infrastructures. Thus, this work critically examines how language and translation are navigated at both literal and material scales through infrastructures embedded in histories of migration, violence, and exclusion.
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"Inventions of Farewell": The Non-Phenomenality of Death in Modernist Poetics
(2025-03) Stern, Arielle
Writing about death presents us with a phenomenological problem. Death is the experience that expires in its own happening. How, then, are we to write “about death,” without undermining its essence which rests, in part, in its very unknowability, in the fact of it being transcendent to consciousness? This thesis takes up the problematic of death itself—the unexperienced experience—as opposed to the death of the other, grief, or mourning. It explores how death is rendered in modernist, secular poetry which, firstly, is tasked with conceiving of death beyond stabilizing religious frameworks that grant us with a concept of what death could be, and secondly, is interested in the ends of language in grasping and transmitting metaphysical concepts. I outline two different approaches to this problem, each read through one poet: first, Wallace Stevens (American) and second, Yves Bonnefoy (French). I argue that in both cases, transcendence has not gone out of Stevens’ and Bonnefoy’s modern cosmologies. Instead, the phenomenological limit—our rootedness in the ground, in the finite, in our beingness—is what allows for metaphysical possibility, the pull of an elsewhere, of what extends beyond consciousness and our conceptual grasp. My exploration of each poet is formal (for Stevens, his use of the fragment allows for obscurity to run its course, and for Bonnefoy, his turn to prose poems is a marked turn away from the “‘fragmentariness’ that finds its end in death”), and it is conceptual. In my first chapter, I discuss Stevens’ late long poem “The Owl in the Sarcophagus,” where he alerts us to the fact of his inability to render death outside of the imaginative act, allowing the obscure non-phenomenon of death to remain in obscurity (a Blanchotian concept I expand to refer to the obscurity death, not only the obscurity of 'dying'), thus enabling death to be itself. Writing “about” death, we see, is to create an imagined world (a world of images that cannot be externally validated and can only be taken up in the mind) because we cannot grasp death itself. The epistemological bound inherent to our being and earthly finitude is crucial for Stevens, as it is the site, and what makes possible, the imagination and a conception of a time and place outside of our own. Meanwhile, Bonnefoy does not explicitly make death the subject of his final collection of poetry "Ensemble encore," which is the focus of my second chapter. Rather, he engages in what I have termed a writing-toward-death, writing himself into a non-conceptual realm as if to approximate a sense of a realm posterior to consciousness. Bonnefoy simulates occupying the non-concept of death by working to recuperate presences (a concept significant to Bonnefoy as the imagination is significant to Stevens) from his early life that are of a pre-conceptual order, presence being the phenomenon itself, experienced yet unsubordinated by the intellect or distilled for our understanding. Nearing the end of life, he wishes to recover an originary state, perhaps a return to the nothing that is—as Heidegger tells us is crucial to the metaphysical question—the “original revelation.” Presence is also significant for its marking of non-presence, concerned with the Hegelian dialectic of the “here and now” that is essential for Bonnefoy, where Being, immediate and indeterminate, includes the Nothing within it.
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Circulatory Progress: Anti-Belt and Road Initiative Indigenous Movements in Ecuador
(2024-04-08) Choi, Suzie
In Ecuador, the indigenous Andean philosophy of Sumak Kawsay—living in balance and harmony with people, nature, and all things that make up the world—was incorporated into the 2008 Constitution as an alternative to neoliberal development. However, neoliberal policies continue in Ecuador, especially in projects of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a series of global infrastructure development projects spearheaded by China. In examining this paradoxical context, I adopt decolonizing theory to be in the dialogue with anti-BRI indigenous movements in Ecuador, pursuing a bottom-up approach centered on the movements and their non-linear progress guided by indigenous voices, arguments, and theories. Based on the theory, I argue that the continuation of neoliberal development despite constitutional safeguards is a result of Sumak Kawsay’s entanglements with neoliberal co-optation. Although anti-BRI indigenous movements reframed their vision to be more pragmatic, they faced limitations shortly after their legal victories. However, through pacha, an Andean epistemology that views time as circulatory, I argue that these anti-BRI indigenous movements should not be evaluated individually as “failures” or “limited success.” Moments of triumphs and tribulations interact and influence one another and create progressive outcomes towards Sumak Kawsay in the process. I present moments of empowerment and solidarity to all movements against legacies of colonialism and neoliberalism. Everything we have done is connected. It is meaningful. And it brings “progress” without an end.
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Imperfect Innocence: Navigating Public Scrutiny and Impossible Expectations after Exoneration
(2025-07-25) Wertheimer, Storey
The innocence movement in the United States has gained significant traction since the 1990s, and 3,659 individuals have now been freed after being wrongfully convicted. While many used to see the exoneration day as a person’s happy ending, it is now well-established that exonerees face an array of economic and personal challenges post-release. But beyond these tangible struggles lies a less concrete and less researched challenge: the social pressures of life after incarceration. In my research, I explore how after exonerees are publicly deemed “innocent,” many are expected to meet an impossible standard of resilience and advocacy. Innocence becomes equated with purity and perfection, and as a result, many exonerees edit and package their stories of pain into digestible narratives. Additionally, they are often expected to serve as benefactors within their communities, using financial settlements from the state to provide for others. In both their personal relationships and in the public sphere, many exonerees conceal the trauma of their experiences, which only compounds their isolation as they attempt to rebuild their lives. Central to my thesis is the question of what it means for exonerees to be seen as “perfect victims”—grateful for their release, forgiving of those who wronged them, and willing to use their suffering as a platform for reform. Through interviews with exonerees, lawyers, advocates, and journalists, this research delves into the social and emotional complexities of life after exoneration.
Access status: Open Access ,
We Paint to the Sky: Mural Making and Social Action in Post-Dictatorship Chile
(2025-04-11) Krovitz, Sarine
For over 50 years, the Brigada Ramona Parra, the muralist brigade of the Chilean Communist Youth, has used muralism to spread political ideology, protest the Pinochet dictatorship, and demand justice for dictatorial violence across Chile. The Brigade employs a particular focus on collective and participatory mural-making, bringing communities, schools, strangers, and relatives of the disappeared together to paint. Grounded in intergenerational interviews with current and former brigadistas of the Brigada Ramona Parra, I draw from a body of interdisciplinary theory, including social practice art and social action art therapy, to examine how the Brigade’s collaborative mural-making process aims to activate political, social, and organizational impacts in local communities. I further explore how this participatory process works as an act of trans-generational, political memory-making for murals painted in honor of Chile’s detenidos desaparecidos, thirty years post-dictatorship. Rather than only analyze the Brigade’s murals, this thesis explores the contemporary Brigade’s mural-making process as social action in and of itself.

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