Olivia Dick will begin with her digital ethnographic work exploring ideas of nostalgia as manifested through music, focusing on the way our sense of time is shaped by algorithmic streaming services like Spotify.

Taking a very different interest in our perception of time, Michelle Coppola shares her work writing and directing a film project that captures an intimate portrait of a relationship responding to an attachment to a past promise.

From the psychological to the pharmacological, Robert Lam-Burns explores a connection between global psychedelic drug cultures and political quietism with former pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong.

Taking our sense of immersion to the aquatic, Ehani Schneiderman turns our attention to the ocean. Through the embodied material explorations of her scuba practice, as well as more traditional humanistic research methods, Ehani examines conservation discourse to inquire why we seem unable to talk about saving the seas without talking about saving ourselves.

Approaching Sufi mysticism through modern technology for today's viewer, Zahra will discuss a video game and virtual reality project that creates an emotional experience of 14th century Sindhi poetry. She will also introduce an upcoming project about femininity in public spaces in Pakistan.

Nancy Wei will share analysis from a currently ongoing project that reports a journalistic piece through a video game format. Nancy asks whether it is possible to present a news story as a game, and in doing so asks how the field of journalism may grapple with new technologies going forward. It is a slightly broader version of this question that cuts across all these talks, to ask how we as humans, and our technologies are always in a co-constitutive process of mutual shaping and formation.

Nancy Wei will share analysis from a currently ongoing project that reports a journalistic piece through a video game format. Nancy asks whether it is possible to present a news story as a game, and in doing so asks how the field of journalism may grapple with new technologies going forward. It is a slightly broader version of this question that cuts across all these talks, to ask how we as humans, and our technologies are always in a co-constitutive process of mutual shaping and formation.

How do histories of colonization impact the spiritual and religious lives of queer, indigenous, Latin American women?

Decoding Lorraine O' Grady's Art Is...

The Kingdom’s Modernities: How do the Saudi reform movements manifest “modernity” as heterogeneous structures of historical consciousness? 

How do the binaries of masculine and feminine impact gender hierarchy within contemporary Sufi ritual?

How can we rethink and mend social patterns through a material dimension? 

Nancy Wei will share analysis from a currently ongoing project that reports a journalistic piece through a video game format. Nancy asks whether it is possible to present a news story as a game, and in doing so asks how the field of journalism may grapple with new technologies going forward. It is a slightly broader version of this question that cuts across all these talks, to ask how we as humans, and our technologies are always in a co-constitutive process of mutual shaping and formation.

How can we create a deeper understanding between the generations while at the same time helping those around us heal from the depression brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic? 

I would like to acknowledge the two professors who helped me launch and further this project: Professor Adam Brown and Professor William Hirst. I would like to dedicate this project to my grandfather John Rand (1921-2011) and Shirley Herz (1925-2013). I would like to acknowledge my parents Theodore Damiecki and Eliza Rand for raising me and teaching me the importance of compassion towards others.

During a pandemic, how do I settle my grief and anger with the world so I can be more open to showing up for family?

Thank you to Professor Rachel Heiman and my Ethnographic Writing Workshop classmates who fostered a safe space for these pieces to be written, and to my family who inspired them.

Can Alzheimer's offer insight into the ways we navigate the tension between memory and the self?

After my grandmother’s diagnosis at the beginning of the pandemic, my need to answer this question became far more pressing. Through a series of explorations into memory, I began an investigation into how we remember and the ways we try to cope with knowing we don’t know. 

Support for Project:

Parsons – Visual Literacy (Michael Sainato), Lang – Journalism and Design Capstone (Andrew Meier, Photojournalism and Urban Crisis (Lauren Walsh), Art and Journalism (Anjali Khosla) 

Special Thanks:

to my family, i love you and the way you let me share slices of our world. always.   

to my yiayia, i will never stop collecting your stones. 

σ' αγαπώ…

This presentation investigates the geographical and cultural history of New York by taking the form of a moving train. I focus on gentrification, class, and bodies of color moving and being moved. With an introspective lens, I question what it means to develop and belong or be exiled from a space.

My project is a critique of the “American Dream” and the lasting effects of tremendous intergenerational and societal pressure to achieve capitalist success. I want to leave you with doubts concerning a neoliberal society that applauds foreigners for performing exploitative labor and facing uncertain legal status in a new country.

Acknowledgments:  I would like to express a special thank you to my family and ancestors who have supported me throughout this entire process of healing and processing. Me gustaría expresar un agradecimiento especial a mi familia y a mis antepasados que me han apoyado durante todo este proceso de curación y procesamiento.

What is the categorical status of loneliness as it exists within twenty-first century quarantine? 

My assertion is that loneliness within quarantine is a new type within the taxonomy of loneliness. Due to facets of digital communication and the collective experience of the pandemic, our current loneliness is  a new one. 

Thank you to Professor Helen Rubinstein in the First-Year Writing Program, along with everyone in  Writing the Essay 3 during Spring 2021.

Nancy Wei will share analysis from a currently ongoing project that reports a journalistic piece through a video game format. Nancy asks whether it is possible to present a news story as a game, and in doing so asks how the field of journalism may grapple with new technologies going forward. It is a slightly broader version of this question that cuts across all these talks, to ask how we as humans, and our technologies are always in a co-constitutive process of mutual shaping and formation.

How can we use theory to help us identify real-world cultural phenomena and how structural violence is created? 

Lee Brando & Amol Patel - Thank you both for supporting and inspiring me to do this work!

In the face of rising food inequality driven by volatile financial markets, unequal development, and lags in global supply chains, how can food sovereignty serve as a foundational stepping stone towards an alternative, democratic food system?

The point of this presentation is to consider why it is so necessary to consider the role food sovereignty plays in our future and examine ways to dismantle our reliance on the capital marketplaces through expanding food autonomy in our immediate areas. My goal with this project is to re-define self-sufficiency and collectivity using local food production and distribution systems.

Thank you to Debasmita, Prof. Ying Chen & Clara Mattei for their encouragement and suggestions, my friends in the Lang and NSSR community who earnestly listened and gave me insightful feedback. 

What are the economic circumstances that lead to disproportionately high rates of military enlistment for American Samoans?

Course: UGLB 2110: [Dis]Order and [In]Justice 

Thank you to Professor Corinna Mullin for helping me develop this research and to my beautiful family for inspiring me.  

How do multiracial Asian Americans (MRAAs) create identity, community, and belonging?

Special thanks to Anna Musser and Cynthia Meyersburg, for believing in and encouraging my academic potential as a student and researcher. Dedicated with love to the multiracial Asian American community.

Oftentimes, academia is considered to be the gold standard of objectivity, with published works influencing the perception and understanding of what is culture (and therefore uncultured) of the world of published articles and global society at large. Through dissecting how the culture and people of Somalia are portrayed from early anthropology till now, we can connect modern misconceptions and stereotypes that condition cultural anthropology to narrativize Somalis in a colonial framework as well as highlight Somali anthropologists and artists actively taking part in the narration of our own history.

Thank yous to the Somali community both diasporic and at homeland

Nancy Wei will share analysis from a currently ongoing project that reports a journalistic piece through a video game format. Nancy asks whether it is possible to present a news story as a game, and in doing so asks how the field of journalism may grapple with new technologies going forward. It is a slightly broader version of this question that cuts across all these talks, to ask how we as humans, and our technologies are always in a co-constitutive process of mutual shaping and formation.