CODE BESCHLER
Major Anthropology • Minor Philosophy

• Research Project An Abridged Disability History of The Ohio State University
• Project Description This project explores the history of disability activism and access at The Ohio State University — from its revolutionary roots to its current decline. While emphasizing the value of self-made access, resistance and mutual aid by and for disabled Buckeyes, this project explores how and why institutions change their approach to accessibility. This work presents the progression of disability movements at Ohio State and argues for moving beyond compliance towards embracing collective care, liberatory access and disability justice.

MEREDITH CLAY
Major History • Minors History of Art and French

• Research Project From Legislation to Legacy: Women Shaping Higher Education
• Project Description Though Title IX marked a huge turning point for gender equity in higher education, true progress required more than just legislation. This project explores the key women at The Ohio State University, the University of Minnesota and West Virginia University who championed institutions, policies and networks that pushed beyond legal requirements to create lasting change. Through oral histories, archival research and statistical analysis, this study highlights the individuals that fought to support women in these male-dominated institutions, helping mitigate sexual harassment and establish mentorship programs that could empower future generations. 

SHELBY HANTHORN
Major Psychology • Minor Human Development and Family Science

• Research Project Suspended Futures: The Impact of Exclusionary Discipline Policies in Education 
• Project Description There’s a prevailing “get tough” mentality in school discipline, often centered around zero-tolerance policies. These policies disproportionately effect marginalized students, interrupting their education and exacerbating opportunity gaps. Hanthorn's research aims to understand the outcomes of these approaches and begin to consider how we can reframe these policies to prioritize social and behavioral development alongside academic achievement, safeguarding students from the repercussions of this system.

MENTOR

Johanna Sellman
GAH Faculty Fellow
Associate professor | Near Asian and South Asian Languages and Cultures
Sellman's research interests include contemporary Arabic and francophone literature, migration literature, gender studies, visual cultures of North Africa and the Middle East, and Arabic literature and theater in the Nordic Countries. She teaches courses in Arabic language and literature, comparative literature, contemporary Arab cultures, and translation studies.

JAIDEN DAVIS
Major African and African American Studies • Minors Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies and Public Health

• Project Title Rest or Resilience?: An Analysis of the Implications of Black Resilience Neoliberalism and Neoliberal Practices on Health Outcomes and Rest Opportunities within Black Communities
• Project Description This project analyzed how health outcomes and rest opportunities within Black communities are dependent upon neoliberal political attitudes and behaviors. Committed to engaging with the most vulnerable Black populations, this project conducted quantitative and qualitative studies grounded within intersectional analyses to radically envision more restful and freeing futures.

JACK FEDERINKO
Major Dance • Minor Integrative Approaches to Health and Wellness

• Project Title Capturing the Cool: Exploring Dance Notation Strategies for African Diasporic Aesthetics of Dance
• Project Description This project explored the adaptation of dance notation to accurately represent African Diasporic aesthetics of dance — addressing the historical exclusion of Black artists from proper preservation and documentation. Focusing on West African dance notation with secondary research on Tap and Afro-Contemporary styles, this research aimed to showcase the evolution of dance notation towards a more inclusive and equitable practice, fostering a dance language that aligns with the concept of "Freedom Dreaming."

ESTHER QUAYE
Major Human Development and Family Science (Concentration: Integrated Studies)

• Project Title Community Engagement as Crucial Support for Children of Incarcerated Parents and Their Families
• Project Description Ecological systems theory emphasizes a child's development within a network of relationships influenced by various environmental levels. Parental incarceration impacts micro (family), meso (community), exo (social services) and macro (societal) levels, shaping development and opportunities. This project aimed to examine local resources for children affected by parental incarceration guided by existing academic research on their effectiveness. 

AMADEA VILLANUEVA
Major Drawing and Painting

• Project Title Latine Representation as Social Change both in the Past and Present Artworld
• Project Description The representation of Latine portraiture serves as the initial step toward social and political change by inserting Latine bodies into conversations around identity and systemic oppression in relation to social and economic spheres of life. Latine artists redefine, reimagine and reintegrate Latine visibility into history. This project explored the creation of Latine portraiture as Villanueva delved into crafting portraits rooted in her Mexican heritage. These portraits were be showcased at the Urban Art Space, a local art gallery in Columbus, Ohio.

CLOVIS WESTLUND
Majors Public Management, Leadership and Policy (Specialization: Education Policy) • Sociology (Specialization: Criminology, Law and Society)

• Project Title Un/Deschooling: Legacies of Contradiction in Alternatives to Mainstream, Public Education
• Project Description Pulling from the disciplines of philosophy, history, sociology, and education studies, Westlund's research explored the origins and contemporary state of the unschooling movement in the United States. Foundationally, this research focused on conceptions of education that are explicitly non-public because of some pedagogical or ideological aim. 

ANGELA CIAROCHI
Majors Dance • Communications

• Project Title Dance Like a Man?: Investigating Masculine Aesthetics in Contemporary Dance through Archival Analysis and Embodied Practice
• Project Description Ciarochi's research explored aesthetics of masculinity in contemporary dance through qualitative, archival and embodied research on contemporary choreographers Ted Shawn, José Limón and Abby Zbikowski over the last century. Her study approached the thematic of Archival Imaginations by using existing dance archives for historical insights, working with contemporary dancers as resources and repositories of knowledge themselves, and considering her bodily archive and the kinesthetic (body-based) knowledge her embodied practice brought to reconceptualizations of archival practices informed by dance methodologies.

LAUREN DAHLER 
Majors International Relations, Diplomacy • Public Management • Minors History and French

• Project Title Dialogue and Beadwork as Archive of Community Peacebuilding: A Case Study in Northern Uganda 
• Project Description Community peacebuilding processes are integral to societal transition after violence and community destabilization. In the Lango sub-region of northern Uganda, a group of women healing from past violence attend weekly peace circles. The peace circles are a joint effort between the Ugandan-based non-profit Passion Aid Foundation Africa (PAF Africa) and the U.S.-based non-profit Little Friends For Peace (LFFP). Upon invitation into the peace circle space by the participants and organizations, Dahler conducted a participant observation of the dialogue and beadwork that occurs during each circle. 

EMILY LAY
Major Music (Performance Track)

• Project Title History Keeping in Music and Dance Presented at Pow Wows
• Project Description Lay's project showed how history-keeping practices within music and dance and how their presentation at Pow Wows acts as archives through lived tradition. Lay's research methods were community centered through conducting interviews to show the significance of the lived traditions presented within music and dance practices that are often presented at Pow Wows. While these traditions are not exclusive only to Pow Wow performance, they are traditions that one could encounter in this setting. Lay worked with many people who perform both inside and outside the context of Pow Wows to gather multiple different histories and viewpoint on the traditions that they participate in and present.

CAMERON LOGAR
Major Biochemistry • Minors Spanish • Andean and Amazonian Studies

• Project Title The Details in the Devils: Plural Meanings in Diablada Performance and Archival Presentation
• Project Description This research project was an in-depth study of the Diablada Carnival performances seen throughout the Andes, specifically in the matter of their origins and the meanings carried by the clothing, performances and greater position within local and national society. Although there are diverse meanings in all of these, archival structures — such as those found in the "Dancing With Devils: Latin American Mask Traditions" exhibition — often impose a particular reading on their records.

RHEANNA VELASQUEZ
Major Neuroscience (Molecular/Cellular) • Minor English

• Project Title Perspectives on Hospice and Palliative Care
• Project Description Over 70% of U.S. adults lack knowledge of palliative care (Flieger et al., 2020). Recognizing existing gaps in community knowledge, this project seeks to investigate when, where and how knowledge about palliative and hospice care is communicated. By interrogating how various social, cultural and structural factors impact perceptions, discourse and potential decisions in managing illness, this work aimed to identify facilitators and barriers to care and eventually inform recommendations for improving access to quality and personalized care.

MENTOR

MICHELLE WIBBLESMAN | Associate Professor, Spanish and Portuguese
Wibbelsman specializes in the expressive culture of indigenous peoples of the Andean highlands. Her work in Andean Ecuador since 1995 has focused on symbolic and semiotic analytical approaches to indigenous performance, ritual practices and politics. She is the author of Ritual Encounters: Otavalan Modern and Mythic Community, and faculty; curator of the Andean and Amazonian Cultural Artifact Collection at Ohio State; and director of the OSU Andean Music Ensemble. She is also lead co-PI of the K’acha Willaykuna Andean and Amazonian Indigenous Arts and Humanities Collaboration.

DANIEL ADAMSON
Major History

• Project Title Education and Sovereignty: The Carlisle Indian Industrial School and Indigenous People's Resistance, 1879-1892
• Project Description By the time Richard Henry Pratt founded the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in 1979, residential schools were well-established in the United States and North America as assimilationist institutions. In some respects, Carlisle retained elements of older residential schools, including their emphasis on teaching English language skills and spreading Christian religious teachings to Indigenous students and communities. While Pratt’s model of residential school administration and assimilation were hailed as visionary by white politicians and government leaders in his own time, the residential schools were part of a large-scale, settler-colonial program, intended to not only obtain Indigenous people’s territories but to replace their languages, cultural practices, social bonds and lifeways.

KARA KOMARNITSKY
Major Dance

• Project Title Embodied Practices for Re-Imagining Our Relationship with Nature
• Project Description Intellectually understanding our physical interdependence with the environment around us is different from actually living in that understanding. Our ability to live differently in our relationship with the environment begins with imagining new ways of perceiving it. This research project developed three different practices for accessing our physical awareness of interconnection with the ecosystems around us and recognizing our relationships with ecosystems where we may not traditionally look for them. Through movement, presence, and intention, we may discover new ways of being and support for our human and non-human communities

CORBIN LANKER
Major Earth Systems Sciences, Oceanographic and Marine Sciences

• Project Title Ohio Farmers: Struggles, Communities, Experiences
• Project Description The soul of this project was learning about the lives of Ohio farmers. To do so, Lanker went into the homes and barns of three Ohio farmers and interviewed them about their lives, their communities and how farming is changing under their feet. The interviews were edited to create films that provide a snapshot into the lives of these Ohio farmers.

ELIZABETH LEVINE
Major Political Science • Minors Spanish and Italian

• Project Title What's the Beef with Beef?
• Project Description Levine's research explored the implications that domestic and international beef production industries have on environmental issues including greenhouse gas emissions, water contamination and deforestation. The beef industry generates high amounts of greenhouse gasses at nearly every stage of the production process, especially in comparison to most other foods on the market. Through this project, Levine learned the data behind this industry’s position as a top greenhouse gas emitter.

EVA SCHERRER
Majors History • Political Science • Minors Theatre • Spanish

• Project Title The Banana Republic of Colombia
• Project Description The brands we encounter in the grocery store may seem harmless enough, but few are aware of the nefarious pasts associated with these household names. The United Fruit Company, now known as Chiquita Banana, has worked hard to silence the voices of the hundreds of laborers they massacred in 1928, but their stories persist nonetheless. This project sought to uplift these voices and understand the mechanisms that operated to suppress them.

ARVCÚKEN NOQUISI
Majors Moving Image Production • Sonic Arts

• Project Title Oh-vtvlvketv, To Go Further: Indigenous Communal Approaches to Counteracting Institutional Neglect
• Project Description In the face of alarmingly declining Indigenous student population numbers, "Oh-vtvlvketv, To Go Further" documents internal attempts by students to strengthen the Native community at The Ohio State University, and their assertions of self-determination and rejection of Ohio State's imposed extinction. Noquisi utilized this project to center around the actions taken by the Native American and Indigenous Peoples Cohort (NAIPC) in the 2021-22 school year to reinforce their presence at Ohio State. Noquisi further participated in efforts to strengthen community by compiling Indigenous resources and leadership guidance into an online drive shared among Indigenous students.

TABITHA WILLIS
Majors Medical Anthropology • Biology

• Project Title Breeding Mistrust: How the Scars of Medical Apartheid Perpetuate Environmental Racism
• Project Description Harriet A. Washington’s 2007 release, Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present, was a ground-breaking stepping stone in history as it was the first extensive collection of the exploitation and experimentation of African Americans, from slavery to present day. Willis' project sought to further explore how medical apartheid has shaped African American communities today and contributed to the environmental racism we see in Black communities throughout the United States.

MENTOR

MARGARET FLINN (French and Italian) | Flinn’s research focuses on film, art and politics as intersecting cultural discourses. Her first book, The Social Architecture of French Cinema 1929-39, (Liverpool University Press, 2014), examines the construction, representation and experience of cinematographic spaces and places in documentary and realist fiction film. She is currently completing a book on director Olivier Assayas that places Assayas’s internationally well-known “techno-thrillers” in dialogue with his domestic dramas and considers the ensemble of Assayas’s œuvre in the light of current theories of cosmopolitanism.  

ELIZABETH BATEMAN
Major Political Science • Minors Human Rights • Civic Engagement

• Project Title Food Access Reimagined in Response to COVID-19
• Project Description By conducting one-on-one interviews and volunteering weekly at a local food pantry, Bateman documented how NGOs, such as the Near Northside Emergency Material Assistance Program (NNEMAP) — a nonprofit social service agency distributing food and other resources to residents of Columbus, Ohio — have continued to emphasize holistic wellness rather than just focusing on mitigating hunger. With the added pressures of the COVID-19 pandemic, NNEMAP has been forced to reimagine their usual food delivery system and the ways in which they interact with their customers. My research details these unique struggles. 

MIA CAI CARIELLO
Major Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies • Minors Asian American Studies • Studio Art • Human Rights

• Project Title Activism or Advocacy?
• Project Description Anti-rape activism has been a consistent presence at Ohio State since at least the 1970’s. While anti-rape activism has been the source for several great improvements to campus — such as the lights and emergency call boxes on the Oval and partnership with SARNCO’s trauma-informed advocates — there is still a lot of work to do. Through analyzing and contextualizing the experiences of two alumna, Ella Lewie and Molly Pierano, with the data collected for the Reclaiming Our Histories Project, Cariello identified key themes and obstacles to anti-rape activism at Ohio State and anti-rape activism beyond the university setting.

THALIYAH COOLS-LARTIGUE
Major Dance

• Project Title Caribbean Dance: Identity, History and Mobility
• Project Description Cools-Lartigue's paternal ancestry within the Lesser Antilles Island of Dominica shaped her curiosity in how the history and mobility of Caribbean dance has affected Caribbean identity. Historically, cultural dance anthropologists have generalized these embodied tendencies to the Greater Antilles Caribbean geographical region, neglecting the multifaceted and valuable existence of the Lesser Antilles identity. Cools-Lartigue aimed to explain this narrative through a dance film emphasizing her autoethnographic perspective on cultural heritage and the necessity for cultural rights.

LAURA FINK
Major Medical Anthropology • Minor Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies

• Project Title Transgender Healthcare: A Story of Medicine and Gender Identity
• Project Description Fink's project explored the health disparities that transgender people in the United States experience. The medicalization of their identities, gatekeeping of gender-affirming care and structural erasure have contributed to their disrupted relationship with medicine. Healthcare that respects one’s gender identity is a human right, but this has been denied to transgender people in the past and present. If current health disparities are to be improved, medical professionals must take necessary steps to fix these barriers.

GABRIELLE FRICK
Majors Sociology • Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies

• Project Title Experiences of Children of Incarcerated Parents 
• Project Description The United States makes up less than 5% of the world’s population, but has 20% of the world’s incarcerated individuals. The impact of mass incarceration reaches beyond the individuals actually incarcerated: In the United States, 2.7 million children (1 in 28) currently have an incarcerated parent. Frick's research centered the voices of children of incarcerated parents by exploring information about their experiences from their own perspectives, particularly regarding experiences of stigmatization, with a focus on identity, concealability and disclosure.

OWEN MORRISH
Majors Migration Studies • Romance Language Studies

• Project Title Creating Immersion: Pedagogical Practices for the Linguistic Integration of Adult Refugees in the United States
• Project Description Morrish's research examined pedagogical practices used to support the linguistic integration of adult refugees in their new communities and proposed several innovative new lesson plans. 

ALEJANDRA SCHWARZ
Majors Russian • Spanish

• Project Title Challenges and Benefits of Social Media in a Censored Nation
• Project Description During Soviet times, authors distributed their works through very creative means to reach broader audiences and to bypass censorship. Coming from Venezuela, where censorship has been on the rise during my lifetime, Schwarz was inspired to take a look into how Venezuelans approach obtaining information, how they measure the reliability of the information they consume, especially with the rise of “fake news”, and how have they’ve taken advantage of social media in order to circumvent government-backed restrictions.

PATRICK SEROOGY
Majors Political Science • Economics • Minor Public Policy

• Project Title Punishment and Restoration: Structural Outcomes of Mass Incarceration Between America and Rwanda
• Project Description This project was a comparative study of outcomes between two incarceration systems, one in the United States and the other in Rwanda. American mass incarceration, based in retributive justice, entails poor outcomes of human dignity for individuals leaving prison. Rwandan “mass incarceration,” specifically involving perpetrators of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, entails comparatively better outcomes of dignity post-prison. There are ironic lessons to glean from the Rwandan restorative justice model for the American retributive justice model.

ANNA TAYLOR
Major | Honors Linguistics • Minors German • French • Speech and Hearing Sciences

• Project Title The Seneca Language and Bilingual Road Signs
• Project Description The Seneca language, or the Language of the People of the Great Hills, is the traditional language of the Seneca Nation of Indians and the Tonawanda Band of Seneca, though it currently faces a dwindling fluent-speaker population (Delgado N.d.). This has heightened the urgency of the revitalization programs for Seneca as part of the global language crisis currently facing minority languages around the world that are in similar danger of disappearing. Taylor's research explored bilingual Seneca signs as public displays of heritage and included interviews with members of the Seneca community.

JARET WATERS
Majors | Spanish • Business • Minors | Portuguese • Geography • Economics

• Project Title The 21st Century Slave Quarters: The (de)Construction of Space in Brazil's Domestic Work Industry
• Project Description The well-renowned Brazilian activist Preta Rara has garnered international attention for affirming that “a senzala moderna é o quartinho de empregada” (translation: the modern-day slave quarters are the maid’s quarters), due to the racist, classist and gendered history of domestic work in the country. Waters' research aimed to determine what other spaces are used to confine maids, nannies and other domestic workers to a subordinate position in modern-day Brazil.

MENTORS

PUJA BATRA-WELLS (GAH) | Puja Batra-Wells has a PhD in Comparative Studies and an MA in Popular Culture. Her areas of expertise include folklore, critical theory, popular culture and food studies. She is the co-editor of a volume on the intersections between folklore and economics, The Folklorist in the Marketplace. 

AMY SHUMAN (English) | Amy Shuman is an award-winning scholar and teacher who has authored articles and books on conversational narrative, literacy, politics, food customs, feminist theory and critical theory. Her latest book, co-authored with Carol Boomer, is Political Asylum Deceptions: The Culture of Suspicion.