How do pervasive architectures of surveillance function as mechanisms of control by structuring visibility unevenly?

This project treats New York City as an archive, examining how surveillance collapses the boundary between public and private, becoming a pervasive sociopolitical condition causing uneven conditions of visibility and control.

Thank you to everyone who was willing to share their experiences with me for this project.This project was made possible by Professor Lori Grinker’s Spring 2025 course “Transmedia”.

How do state and university responses to student activism reveal the conditional nature of democracy, free speech, and education in the United States?

This project was created thanks to Ryan Gustafson's Spring '25 First Year Seminar: Democracy and Higher Education: Radical Theories of Social Justice. 

Special Thank You to Brian Dudley and the BAFA advising team

How do outwardly apolitical subcultures, such as football Ultras, mutate into crucial catalysts of revolutionary mobilization?

With the support of past courses, namely, Art After Apartheid, Sociology of Social Movements, Power and Domination in the Middle East, and Violent Protest: Forms and Functions 

I especially honor the martyrs of the revolution, and commend the enduring legacy of Ultras Ahlawy and Ultras White Knights in solidarity, as they carry their struggle into the beautiful game.

What are the rhetorical and structural roles that peripheral adolescent characters play in major political scenes and conversations in Dostoevsky’s final three novels?

Dostoevsky II: Infinite Justice, taught by Val Vinokur

I would like to thank Val for his ongoing support of my ever-increasing interest in Russian literature and my lovely friends for listening to my incessant Dostoevsky references and somehow still deciding to stick around.

How does weight act as a system of oppression? 

Critical Phenomenology, taught by Ryan Gustafson 

I’d like to thank Professor Ryan Gustafson for his ongoing support and all of the inspiring women in my life whose stories helped this project come to be.

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 does documentary praxis and grassroots engagement with the communities of the Amazon Rainforest illustrate the mechanics of collectiveness? Can the role of the director be reimagined as a shared locus of power, belonging to the territory?

I thank the reFloresta Movement and the young activists of the Lower Tapajós for all the teaching, listening, exchange and guidance into this fight. 

How do U.S. police departments' international training programs in the Middle East reflect and perpetuate colonial-era models of policing and military control, and in what ways do these programs contribute to the continuation of imperialist structures in the region?

Support: CRS: Middle East in the World taught by Corinna Mullin

I want to thank the Police Reform Organizing Project for furthering my knowledge on the NYPD's practices, and Professor Corinna Mullin for giving me the tools to make this possible.

How did colonial legislation prime a post-colonial India to conflate queerness with criminality?

Socio-legal Studies and Historical Sociology taught by Jack Jin Gary Lee 

Queering Things taught by Antonio Sanchez 

Spaces of Struggle: Racial Capitalism and the Politics of Care taught by Ujju Agarwal

I thank professors Gary Lee and Antonio Sanchez for their invaluable support, and the Queer Archive for Memory, Reflection and Activism (QAMRA) for providing the resources to make this possible.

How can we bridge the gap between two valid forms of medicine - Western psychotherapy and Traditional Chinese Medicine - and why should we? How can we restructure the approach to mental health to be able to provide the most effective form of therapeutic treatment?

WTEII: The Problem of the Body by Helen Rubinstein- this project was my final for their class.

Thank you to Helen Rubinstein for your unconditional support and encouragement for this project. It would not be where it is today without your assistance and guidance.

Queering Correspondence: A Re-Examination of Ray Johnson’s New York Correspondence School

How did Ray Johnson’s New York Correspondance School challenge traditional avenues of dissemination and exchange of artwork in the 1960s and 70s?

Support for project: Made in conjunction with Visual Studies Capstone course in the Spring of 2024.

Thank yous: Thank you to the Ray Johnson Estate for their hospitality and gracious support of my project.

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.

Case Fulton BAMA: Liberal Arts '27 / Fashion Studies '28 (@casefultonn) is a second year student from Los Angeles California following the Bachelors/Masters Fashion Studies program. Their undergraduate degree (Class of 2027) concentrates on the rich history of visual arts in the United States, and their MA (2028) on curation and historical perspectives regarding fashion. Their work outside of school centers within the Broadway/Off-Broadway community; fabricating costumes and managing wardrobe. Their project, Fashion’s Feminist Fabric: From Schiaparelli to Today, asks where all the women are in high levels of the industry? They would like to thank their fellow panelists, Brita Servaes, Jennifer Riegal, Professor Amanda Bellows, Skirball Center, Diane Von Furstenberg Foundation, Eric Winterling Costume Shop, and their family.

How does performance for the camera and the family archive investigate the visual language Texas uses to project an identity?

Texas: a state of myth and endless contradiction. This project investigates the friction between personal identity and a rigid political landscape using family history to dismantle the "mythic ideal." Through visual/cultural research, I’ll show understanding of this state and the tensions that define the self and the American experience.

I am making work, through using traditional documentary practices, self-portraiture, and the archive, that examine the diminishing, falsified culture, state of Texas and its effects on identity politics. Through a visual language rooted in tension between the promises of home vs the trappings of home, nature vs nurture, and memory vs truth, my images embody the complicated relationship of identity as a product of one’s environment. Understanding my family lineage allows me to piece together the narrative of immense change and falsified identity – the rural-loving mask the Texas government wears on its chest. 

This project has been supported by Eugene Lang Opportunity Awards.

Exploring bio-art as a medium that foregrounds collaboration with more-than-human life forms, this presentation proposes a relational, environmental ethic of creation rooted in interdependence and symbiogenesis.

Student Research Award 2025; Design History & Practice Capstone

Immense gratitude to my organic collaborators who make this possible. Eternal thanks to my brilliant late father, whom I miss terribly, and my wonderful, wonderful mother. Your support is everything.

How do we process grief and how do we begin healing, individually and collectively? 

Support for my project: Written for Intermediate Nonfiction with Ricky Tucker

Thank you to Ricky Tucker for giving me the space to write such a deeply personal piece, and to my mom for being so generous in letting me share her life and experiences through this piece.

How does Havana teach us more about ourselves?

Support for my project: Cuba IFP Summer Program 

A special thank you to Gabriel Vignoli, who not only lead the summer program for this project, but also changed the way I think about the world and inspired me to be a better person.

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 find hope through reimagining public safety to truly account for the needs of everyone?

Support for my project: Next Gen Politics YVote Summer Civic Forum

Thank you to Michelle Mason for inviting me to collaborate on the workshop that led to this project, and to my parents for always supporting my educational endeavors.

Will God love me more if I’m a man?

Support for my project: WTEII: Bye, Bye, Bi 

Thank you to my parents, sister, grandmother, and Madi for always praising my never-ending thoughts. And to my professor, Kristi Steinmetz, who supported and inspired me to showcase my work.

How can Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber show us what it means for a tale to be ‘feminist’?

Support for my project: WTEII: The Fairy Tale

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Alex Purdue, Dalia Bermack, and the robust support system of friends I have built for encouraging my writing and supporting my work.

What are the depths of harm caused by Transmedicalism? 

Support for my project: WTEII: Return of The Queer Page

Thank you to Miller Oberman for inspiring me to showcase this work and for being so encouraging throughout my entire writing process. Also, a big thank you to my mother who has always been my biggest supporter and somehow always knows the right words to say.

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.