This annual conference features outstanding Cornell senior student research in various humanities fields, student panel discussions, and oral presentations of student papers with postdoctoral and faculty respondents. The day will consist of brief presentations (approximately 10 minutes each) followed by Q&A, organized into panels based on common themes. Q&A and panels will be moderated by Professor Verity Platt, (Director, Humanities Scholars Program), and Drs. Paulo Lorca Fuentealba and Kyhl Stephen, (Postdoctoral Associates, Humanities Scholars Program). Join in and pose your questions to the student presenters! 

The event is sponsored by the College of Arts & Sciences Humanities Scholars Program (HSP) housed at the Society for the Humanities and will include senior presenters from HSP and across humanities departments.

Breakfast and lunch will be served. A reception will be held from 4:00 - 5:00pm at the A.D. White House following the conference.

Free and open to the public.

Conference Program

Breakfast will be available in the A.D. White House dining room from 9:00 – 10:45 AM.

Panels will be moderated by Prof. Verity Platt (Director, Humanities Scholars Program), Dr. Paulo Lorca Fuentealba (Postdoctoral Associate, Humanities Scholars Program), and Dr. Kyhl Stephen (Postdoctoral Associate, Humanities Scholars Program).

9:30 AM – 10:30 AM

Contested Sovereignties – Guerlac Room

Ameya Kamani (Government) — The Liberatory Prison?: The Repercussions of Post-World War II Anti-Colonial Upheaval on the Genealogy of American Prison Abolition

Maria Lima Valdez (Africana Studies) — The Need for Violence in Decolonization: No Liberation Without Force

Alexis Ahn (History) — “Exterminate the Tribe, Preserve the Individual”: New York State’s Indian Policy & Indigenous Resilience, 1888-1925

Grounds of Memory – Room 109

Kate Sullivan (History) — Soil of Eternal Secession: Virginia’s Confederate Cemeteries as Sites of Southern Civil War Memory

Ashley Koca (College Scholar) — ‘Here Lies the Heretic’: Re-Evaluating Iconoclasm at the Shrine of ‘Abd al-Samad

Alex Bentley (Anthropology and Archaeology) — An Archaeological Assessment of the Impacts of Roman Colonialism and Violence on the Ancient “Indigenous” Peoples of Scotland

Educational Currents – Room 110

Nnenna Ochuru (History and American Studies) — The Nexus of Aspiration and Compromise: Educational Leadership, Philanthropy, and Racial Uplift at the Piney Woods School during the Jim Crow Era

Jimmy Cawley (Government) — Funding Success: The Impact of COVID-19 Relief Funds on Public School Student Graduation Rates

10:45 AM – 11:45 AM

Echoing Poetics – Guerlac Room

Sarah Stephenson (Classics) — Mutinous Pastoral: Slavery and the Pastoral Genre in Vergil’s Eclogues and Ariana Benson’s Black Pastoral

Hanako Yamasaki (Comparative Literature) — Speaking Muteness: Languages of the Atomic Bomb

Aidan Goldberg (Literatures in English) — Acceptance (Poetry)

Sia Gu (Comparative Literature) — (Re)turning Home: Narratives of Belonging in Indigenous Short Stories

Economic Nationhoods – Room 110

Emily Hong (German Studies) — Indexing Inflation: Tracing Social and Cultural Aftereffects of Germany’s Hyperinflation in Weimar Media

Rafaela Uzan (German Studies) — “From ‘world champion of murder’ to ‘world champion of remembrance?: memory, guilt and the question of national belonging in contemporary Germany

Michelle Song (CAPS and Government) — Citizen by Consumption: Economic Nationalism and China’s Domestic Champions

11:45 AM – 12:30 PM

Lunch Break

Lunch will be available in the A.D. White House dining room from 11:45 AM – 12:30 PM.

12:30 PM – 1:30 PM

Literature and Transformation – Guerlac Room

Julia Fritsch (Classics) — Nostro tua corpora ferro temptemus!: Performances of Gender and Genre in Ovid’s Caeneus Episode

McKenna Norton (Asian Studies and College Scholar) — Trans/lation: Embodied Translation, Queered Definitions, and Chinese Literature

Parker Piccolo Hill (Literatures in English) — The Evolution of Metamorphosis from Ovid to Calvino to Rushdie: A Literary Transformation

Sabrina Raichoudhury (Asian Studies) — Invisible Threads: Unraveling the Intersectional Narratives of Labor and Womanhood during Chosŏn Korea (1392-1910) Through an Examination of the Needle

Culture, Performance, Voice – Room 109

Tess Lovell (Literatures in English, Performing and Media Arts) — "Attention Must Be Paid": Rejecting Universality and Embracing Alterity in a Black Death of a Salesman

Rebecca Parish (American Studies) — You Are Here: Authenticity, Community, and Our Participation in History in Come from Away

Adedayo Perkovich (Africana Studies) — A Black Woman's Forte

Contested Semantics – Room 110

Natasha Burglechner (Cognitive Science) — Interchangeability and Turn-Taking

Isabella Rubin (Linguistics) — Constructing Reasonableness: Semantic Battles and Pragmatic Meaning in Appellate Courts

Bokai Liu (Linguistics) — Relative clauses in Northern Iroquoian languages

1:45 PM – 2:45 PM

Speaking the Law – Guerlac Room

Amerdeep Passananti (ILR and History) — Sacred Ground, Public Power: Eminent Domain and the First Amendment in Church Land Seizures

Will Long (Government) — The Merits of Attitudinal Models: Explaining U.S. Supreme Court Decision-Making in Anderson, Fischer, and Trump

Yuvraj Tuli (Government) — Guardians or Umpires: A Comparative Overview of the Judicial Response to Jurisdiction Stripping Ouster Clauses in the United States and United Kingdom

Calista Bordador (Government) — Speaking as Publius: The Function of Classical Pseudonymity in The Federalist Papers

Navigating Art Collections – Room 109

Leah Han (College Scholar) — A Study of the Contemporary Art Market in Ithaca, New York

Cristina Kiefaber (Classics) — What is Classics?: An Investigation of How the Patricia M. Stewart Gallery for Ancient Art Educates and Engages Visitors with the Field of Classics

Colette Jarrell (Government) — Les Murs ont La Parole: Re-Exhibiting the Posters of May 1968

Remy Kageyama (Archaeology) — Death and Rebirth: An Object Biography for an Egyptian Grain Mummy

Climate Reckonings – Room 110

William Remoundos (Government) — Crossing the Line: How RPS Policies Drive Renewable Energy Development in Neighboring States

Alex Bohler (Archaeology) — Flooded History: Understanding the Threats of Climate Change to New York's Coastal Archaeology

Anna Rose Marion (Anthropology and Environment & Sustainability) — Life Within the Seaweed Value Chain: Lessons For A Low-Carbon World Amid New Frontiers

Carlin Reyen (Literatures in English) — Evidencing Ecocide: Narrative, Indigeneity, and the Environmental Crisis

3:00 PM – 4:00 PM

Sanctioned Bodies, Gendered Rules – Guerlac Room

Ria Sodhi (Government and Economics) — Motherhood by Mandate: Economic Stratification After Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization

Devyn Bryant (Anthropology) — Gay Men Have Sex, Lesbians Have Talk, and if They're Christian, They'll Settle for Celibacy: the Role of Sublimation in Gay Christian Celibacy

Sky Knox (Africana Studies) — Re-examining American Football: The Performance and Preservation of American Masculinity

Diasporic Echoes – Room 109

Ori Ben Yossef (Mathematics and Computer Science) — The Life and Advocacy of Yaakov Lisser

Alice Roberts (Comparative Literature) — Mourning in the Diaspora: The Multidimensional Jewish-Moroccan Lament

State Politics – Room 110

Jacobi Kandel (American Studies) — Against the Tide: A Case Study on New York’s 19th Congressional District on the 2024 Election

Rachel Sulciner (History) — Surveillance as a Condition for “Safety:” The Resilience of the New York Police Department’s Domestic Spy Unit

Aheed Karim (Near Eastern Studies) — Bridging the Divide: The Frontier Corps, Local Communities, and the Challenges of Nation-Building in Balochistan

4:00 PM – 5:00 PM

Reception in the A.D. White House dining room