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JeMiah Baht Israel, History
Unburying the Past: The Commemoration, Preservation, and Historical Recovery of African American Life and Death

My dissertation examines the preservation of African American burial grounds as critical sites of historical recovery and identity formation, focusing specifically on Cincinnati’s Union Baptist Cemetery and United American Cemetery. By blending methodologies from public history, archaeology, and African American Studies, my research explores how Black cemeteries serve as repositories of cultural memory, contested spaces of racial injustice, and sites of reclamation. It interrogates the systemic neglect and erasure of Black burial sites and highlights silences in both archives and public narratives. Through archival research and oral histories, I examine descendant communities’ efforts to preserve and interpret these sacred spaces. I argue that interdisciplinary approaches to cemetery preservation and interpretation can not only reconstitute African American lives but also establish model public history practices.

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Harshavardhan Bhat, Taft Research Center 
Maḷḷæ

This project explores the death of seasonalities and politics of a global story of rain, at a time of breakdown. It takes into consideration concerns of an abolitional meteorology, exploring the archives of global climatic logistics and its accounting categories, in unpacking stories of race, tropical meteorology and decarceration. 

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Stephen Bryant, School of Public & International Affairs
Identity, Emotions, and Leaving: Everyday Experiences and Drifting Away from the Islamic State (IS)

Leaving the Islamic State (IS) is often presented as religiously or economically motivated. However, limited scholarly work engages former IS members or local actors familiar with former IS members to understand their motivations for leaving IS. By interviewing local actors, I assess the influence of everyday experiences and emotions on decisions to risk leaving IS. I compare the data from these interviews with narratives of former IS members published in books and online platforms. I argue, within the context of Turkey, former IS members’ decisions to leave IS are linked to shifts in individual priorities due to changes in their personal lives, and accepting the risk that comes with leaving is influenced by people’s emotions, often emotions regarding their potential future outside of IS.

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Tony Chemero, Philosophy

Embodiment

Embodied cognitive science has grown in popularity and prominence and has been taken up in neighboring academic fields. It seemed to me that embodied cognitive science was on sound footing. For the last few years, however, that seems to have changed, at least on blogs and what used to be called Twitter. First, it was suggested that the so-called replication crisis in psychology had hit embodied cognitive science especially hard. Then the widespread advent of virtual reality both in empirical research and in commerce seemed to some to indicate that they real body and the real world were inessential to the having experiences. Most recently, the successes of large language models and other artificial intelligence, which seem not to be embodied, has caused some to question the role of the body in intelligence.

This book is a response to these challenges, all of which are easily dismissed once one understands embodiment correctly. Most basically, embodiment is not about how the body influences our experience but is rather about how experience is partly constituted by the body. To say that the mind is essentially embodied is to say that the only things that have minds are alive, control their own movement, and are inseparably enmeshed in social, cultural, and technological contexts. The chapters of this book spell out the concept of embodiment in detail and affirm that, despite the challenges described above, the mind is essentially embodied.

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Alexandra Dantzer, Taft Research Center
Awake in the World: Insomnia and the Arts of Living in Belgrade

My book manuscript explores how the elusiveness of sleep shapes people’s daily time management. I draw on over 20 months of ethnographic fieldwork with self-described insomniacs in Belgrade, whom I refer to as “non-normative sleepers.” Through interviews, focus groups, sleep diaries, sound mapping, and decoding of sleep and time-management app data, I trace how they struggle with (a)synchrony in a city where foreign capital and authoritarian rule restructure the rhythms of life. Through rest, stillness, and wakefulness, they navigate “new” rhythms and challenge the medical and capitalist logics that define a “good night’s sleep” and a healthy life. I demonstrate that insomnia, in this light, is not simply a disorder, but rather, a quiet rebellion and an insurgent mode of being against regimes of productivity and biomedical control. I argue that being out of sync is a symptom of a specific form of body-mind colonization, which I explore at the intersection of urban and technological environments, therapeutic and labor institutions, and everyday routines. 

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Ingrid Gonzalez, Romance and Arabic Languages & Literatures 
Identity: An Analysis of "Por los Valles de Arena Dorada"

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Junghyun Lee, Mathematical Sciences
Mathematical Modeling of PER Protein Dimerization in the Mammalian Circadian Clock

Circadian rhythms are 24-hour periodic biological processes within an organism, driven by an endogenous internal clock. When the circadian rhythm gets interrupted, the results can be catastrophic, causing a number of diseases. In the mammalian cells, the phosphorylation profile of clock protein PER is known to introduce a critical time cue to the circadian rhythm. Recent findings suggest that dimerization of PER is required for its excessive phosphorylation (i.e., hyperphosphorylation), which raises the question on the role of PER dimerization in the circadian clock. This research aims to build a mathematical model on the mammalian circadian clock that is intended to answer this question. The model is expected to provide insights to treating and predicting disorders due to a malfunction in the circadian clock. 

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Eduardo Martinez, Philosophy
Civic Approaches to Governing Diversity

Many scholars and public commentators express concerns about the performance and stability of democratic institutions in light of polarization and entrenched social conflict. Some even suggest that we are currently experiencing the “twilight of democracy” whereby democratic and self-governance practices deteriorate, giving rise to either unstable political orders or authoritarian-driven ones. This project explores a cluster of responses to these concerns that focus on how decentralized and nesting governance structures, alongside civic innovation and organization, could better manage and leverage the value of diversity for democracy. In light of the interdependence between institutional design and civic action, this project will process and engage with research from multiple strands of political philosophy/theory and social science that focus on each of these kinds of interventions and provide action guidance that is sensitive to their interaction. 

This project consists of three distinct papers: the first paper, “Democracy’s Attention Problem,” concerns democratic performance and resilience, specifically the civic attention monopoly and its relationship to the monocentric order of institutions that it reinforces; a second paper, “Civic Policymaking,” takes up concerns about the twin dangers of unresponsive policymaking on the one hand, and intractable or stability-threatening forms of civic participation on the other; and a third, solo-authored paper, “Democratic Learning and Civic Advocacy,” argues that citizens engaging in advocacy through social movements can, and should, contribute to democratic learning.

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Holly McGee, Africana Studies
Race Work, Memory, and the Troubles Between Us: Kivie Kaplan and the NAACP 

Black and Jewish communities have consistently interacted with one another- whether in moments of cooperation or conflict- throughout the twentieth century, most especially and strategically during the Civil Rights Movement. Social and political controversies, however, have conspired to separate the two groups. Since the 1970s, Blacks and Jews have drifted further apart, creating social and political rifts seemingly impossible to overcome. Race Work attempts to address this phenomenon by asking a series of questions aimed at bridging the divides between these marginalized, activist communities by exploring such concerns as the extent to which the removal of Kaplan from his contributions to the NAACP (and larger civil rights struggle) is a manifestation of the larger areas of contention between Jews and Black Americans; the ways in which Kaplan understood the underlying rifts that brought these groups into more overt conflict; and how Kaplan’s position in the NAACP affected Black members and their perception of respective roles (and rights) in the larger civil rights struggle during that period. Ultimately, the work is concerned with uncovering the historical and social conditions that moved Jews in America and African Americans towards different approaches to civil rights, and the ways in which the two communities can re-develop authentic relationships today.

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Ana Maria Molina, Romance and Arabic Languages & Literatures
New Theater and Contemporary Collective Creation in Colombia: Dialogue with a Method that Reveals Arm Conflict and State Violence in Colombia´s Last Century

This project explores the methodology of collective creation from its beginning in The New Theater to the last decade. It takes into account the characteristics and social contexts that took place in the movement of New Theater and the relations between El Teatro Experimental de Cali with El Teatro La Candelaria. It explores the connections between the representations of state violence in the New Theater, and the contemporary representations of it, considering three historical moments: “The massacre of the bananas” (1928), “La Violencia” (1948-1956), and the “Falsos positivos” (false positives) (2000). It ponders Brecht´s theory of the estrangement and the concept of Modernity/Coloniality and Cruel Modernity, as well as it embraces two approaches: an academic approach and a creative one.

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Carlos Munoz-Serna, Philosophy
A Philosophical Study of Nostalgia

This project studies nostalgia’s standard model, which identifies three key components: cognitive (autobiographical memory), conative (the desire to return to a past time or place), and a negative or ambivalent affective element. I contend that this model falls short, as it fails to capture the complex phenomenology of nostalgia and its role in personal psychological well-being and group dynamics. Rather than merely adjusting the components, I challenge the cognitive theory of emotions that underlies the standard model. Through an interdisciplinary approach that combines qualitative research with a philosophical approach, I argue that nostalgia is an embodied experience that enables us to regain a sense of familiarity, belonging, and security by revisiting memories where we felt most at home.

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Saani Rawat, Economics
The Effect of Cutting Local Road Tax Levies on House Values

We investigate the economic impact of cutting taxes that fund maintenance of local roads. Using Ohio Secretary of State data, we design a quasi-experiment to study city-level referendums introduced to renew local road taxes, which are typically levied via property taxes. We compare housing sale prices between similar cities that narrowly pass or fail road tax levies and use satellite images to fine-tune an Artificial Intelligence (AI) model for classifying road quality. For cities that cut their renewal tax levies, we estimate the amount of drop in road maintenance funds. Our results show that cities which decide to cut local road taxes have lower funds for road maintenance, poorer road quality and suffer an average decrease in housing prices of $15,350 (9%) over 10 years relative to cities that renewed funding. Heterogeneity analysis reveals differential decline in urban and rural areas and for expensive homes relative to their cheaper counterparts.

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Justin Reed, English
The Hidden Heart

The Hidden Heart is a novel that follows Imogen, a cartographer in a Boston ravaged by climate change. When her parents, Elara and Lucas, mysteriously disappear, they leave behind a single clue: an article about a decades-old act of ecoterrorism that sparked a series of water wars in the Colorado River Basin. After an agent from a privatized security firm reveals that Elara and Lucas are implicated in this crime, Imogen embarks on a perilous journey with her technology-obsessed nonbinary teenager, Alix, seeking answers. Accompanying the novel is a critical essay, “A Research Paper by Any Other Name: Storytelling, Argumentation, and Citizenship,” which argues that integrating creative writing into first-year composition can foreground marginalized voices and foster active citizenship.

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Bilgen Turkay, School of Public & International Affairs
The Impact of NGOs and International Organizations: A Comparative Analysis of the Syrian and Ukrainian Refugee Crises

Millions have been forced to leave their home countries due to civil wars and international conflicts. Since the Syrian civil war began, over 14 million Syrians have sought refuge elsewhere. With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, nearly 6.5 million Ukrainians have crossed into other countries. Despite different political contexts, both crises forced governments to act immediately, collaborating with NGOs and international organizations. This dissertation focuses on Germany, Canada, and the U.S., using qualitative interviews and quantitative social media analysis to explore how NGOs and international organizations responded to these crises and the factors shaping their decision-making strategies. By contributing to the comparative politics field, it highlights the complexities of refugee protection and humanitarian response strategies.

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Felicia Zamora, English 
El Cielo En Nuestros Ojos :: Ecological Inamorata Pulse

This book-length hybrid text of vignettes, microessays, docupoems, images, and scientific data/graphs uses “undulations” (Zuihitsu vignettes/poetic fragmentation) in the voice of a future Latina researcher investigating the collapse of human civilization from climate disaster in 2098. This book uniquely explores Latinx experience and futurity in the time of climate disaster, examining the disproportionate ways climate change/environmental decline impacts Latinx communities and peoples at the beginning of the 21st century. Poems, data, and ephemera trace contemporary environmental issues and historical trends leading to human destruction of viable living on the Earth. Poems use imaginative means and critical fabulation to incorporate ancient Mesoamerican knowledge, older ways of knowing, and magic as modalities of survival of Latinx people to adapt after the state of collapse. 

The work evolves the epic form by using a term I call “undulations” or fragments of thought, research, images, incantation, data, and voice as the key modality of the writing. Associative and disparate undulations allow for the form of the docupoem to resemble that of a crumbling humanity and society. The key component is research- speaking with and gathering thoughts from various scientists, scholars, artists, and thinkers to gain specific context and knowledge of how climate disaster impacts Latinx communities now. These conversations will be the entire pulse of the work. With this project, I seek to honor past, present and future poetics and histories of impact of climate change to my communities.

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Saskia Ziemacki, Asian, East European, and German Studies
“Playing Authority”: Das Experiment – Transcultural Adaptations and Remakes

What does it mean to “play authority”? In my dissertation I am investigating this question in analyzing the adaptations of the Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE). My analytical gaze focusses on the topic of power and how it is not just held but performed. I am interested how adaptations of the SPE depict/narrate this idea of performative authority by examining the recurring tropes across different media and cultures. 

The SPE, conducted in August 1971 by Philip Zimbardo aimed to explore how people react to roles of power and obedience within a simulated prison. Alongside Stanley Milgram’s earlier Obedience Experiment (1961), the SPE must be interpreted within the historical context of growing unrest in 1960s/70s America. A climate in which experiments foregrounded themes of systemic power, obedience, and institutional control – issues that remain politically urgent today. Since the early 2000s, the SPE has been adapted across different media, such as feature films (Das Experiment 2001; The Experiment 2010), novels, documentaries, television series, and games like Prison Architect. These adaptations resonate with cultural reflections on state violence in the United States and Germany, from Abu Ghraib to Stasi surveillance. 

They mobilize tropes like the “mad scientist” figure who transgresses ethical boundaries; symbols of authority such as uniforms and numbers. Power is shown through mechanisms of control, punishment, and psychological manipulation, echoing the Foucauldian disciplinary systems and Bentham’s Panopticon. 
The dissertation is situated at the intersection of adaptation theory, performance and performativity theory, media theory, surveillance studies, and cultural studies.