Undergraduate Research & Scholarships

Maura Adela Cruz

Rising Mexican-American activism during the Chicano Movement and the Farmworker Labor Movement of the 1960s and 70s sparked the Chicanx Literary Renaissance, where many Chicanx authors increasingly portrayed the rhetorical figure of the “Indian” within their texts. Some scholars contend that the literary valorization of Indigeneity was an act of Chicanx political empowerment. Others argue that such portrayals are founded in settler-colonial ideologies and erase living Indigenous peoples. Maura’s research will entail a literary analysis of Luis Valdez’s Actos: El Teatro Campesino and a collection of oral narratives from Indigenous […]

Anaya Crouch

With her project, Anaya aims to create an animated archive of dance moves and cultural nuances of Trinidadian experiences. This region has not been explored through creative means, and Anaya wants to accurately portray a slice of a lived experience that has not yet been grappled with within mainstream media. The project will draw on the theoretical works of Professor Kenyatta Hinkle, Sreyashi Jhumki Basu, and Greg Niemeyer. While using her animations in order to partake in this research, she will travel to Trinidad and Tobago to humbly observe, participate […]

Kevin Cosby

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The global and national turbulence of recent years has resulted in the increased popularity of conspiracy theory as an interpretive lens for world events – prompting both the shift of conspiracy theory from the fringe to the political mainstream and an explosion in conspiracy theory studies. Kevin is researching the connection between conspiracy theory as a social phenomenon and its analogue in literature and pop culture. He seeks to link conspiracy as a political practice with its cultural representation, to better understand the collective myth-making of paranoia. Kevin plans to […]

Henry Nicholson

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Religious conflict in Late Antiquity has been passed down through surviving Christian and pagan polemic and apology: Letters, diatribes, and speeches attacking or defending either religious viewpoint. Henry will examine five essential Christian texts in Greek with an eye to something specific: The literary treatment of pagan mystery religions, faiths supplementary to mainstream belief where adherents were initiated into exclusive cults to particular deities. Through analysis of these texts and travel to essential sites in Greece and Italy, Henry will investigate what these cults can say about Christian-pagan relations and […]