Talks and Panels Abstracts

Mount David Summit 2025 Schedule

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Name	Class Year	Title	Abstract
Aneeza Ahmad	2025	To Be a ‘Good Farmer’: Wabanaki, White, and Somali Bantu Perspectives on Farming in Maine	Maine is home to many farming communities, each with unique ideas about what it means to be a ‘good farmer.’ This thesis studies the ‘good farmer’ for three of those communities, investigating the values and practices of Wabanaki, White, and Somali Bantu farmers. To center the voices of individual farmers, historical research is combined with oral interviews. With an agricultural history uniquely shaped by colonization, immigration, and adaptation to change, Maine is an ideal environment to study the ‘good farmer’ as a contentious term. The findings will contribute to a more culturally sensitive, context-specific understanding of farming in Maine.
Kerrigan Anuszewski	2025	Production as Pedagogy: Directing, Design and Management in the Theater	How do collaborative, creative and organizational processes coalesce within the context of an interactive audience experience? The students on our panel–Kerrigan Anuzsewski ’25 (Set Design), Emma Seitz ’25 (Directing) and Sophie Hafter ’25 (Stage Management), will present and discuss the breadth of their organizational and creative work on the Theater and Dance 2025 productions of The Seagull and Body Awareness, and how preparatory content and engagement with the rehearsal process supported their realized outcomes.
Sierra Aponte Clarke	2025	Conditions Warranting and Restricting Care: Analyzing Crisis Pregnancy Centers	Crisis Pregnancy Centers (CPCs) are unregulated facilities bestowing reproductive health services rooted in anti-abortion ideals. I was previously unaware of their existence, despite CPCs outnumbering abortion clinics three-to-one in the United States, including eleven in Maine and one operating near the Bates campus. Through a content analysis of related online discussion boards, CPC websites, and CPC advertisements, I shed light on the conditions drawing pregnant individuals to seek care, receive care, and value care at Crisis Pregnancy Centers, showing how their proliferation restricts reproductive autonomy.
Ben Auerbach	2025	“Las Locas”: A Case Study of Sexuality as a Means of Resistance and Self-expression	This paper explores how Cuban government policies on same-sex relationships interact with the “New Man” ideology, stressing socialist duty over personal identity. In Cuban socialist ideology, national loyalty is valued above personal desires, such as sexual identity, in its vision of the ideal citizen. This paper explores how the concept of El Hombre Nuevo naturally rejects some degree of individualism, especially as evidenced in several of Reinaldo Arenas’ writings, which highlight the conflict between enforced conformity and personal desires. Homosexuality and El Hombre Nuevo are fundamentally opposed in their core beliefs.
Summer Barnett	2025	The Rhetoric of Politics in Popular Culture	In this panel, students from the Rhetoric, Film, and Screen Studies department will present their theses on politics in popular culture. Topics include: Watchmen and alt-right antiheroes, the rhetoric of Donald Trump, SNL Joke Swap, and #saveourchildren.
Lizi Barrow	2025	Artist Talks by AVC Studio Art Thesis Students	Our studio art seniors will be presenting an artist talk to talk about their 1 year thesis journey in their studios. Here they will talk about their own process to transform their ideas into an art exhibition in the museum through research and making.
Ilyas Bashir	2025	转难为易 “Turning Difficulties Into Ease”	This thesis examines the role of narrative in shaping the public perception of athletes, particularly through the “rags to riches” archetype prevalent in American sports media. Focusing on Chinese boxer Zou Shiming, it explores how his portrayal differs from that of Black American athletes, revealing biases in media representation. Drawing from personal experience as a Somali-American amateur boxer, the study highlights the intersection of race, nationality, and storytelling in sports. Through bilingual analysis, it aims to inspire young Chinese athletes while challenging dominant narratives that limit the complexity of minority athletes’ identities and aspirations.
Izzy Beck	2025	Politics Department Honors Thesis Panel	This presentation encompasses the work of three honors Politics theses: (1) The development of constitutional ideas such that they become the majority perspective of the Supreme Court, as examined through a case study of the theory of the unitary executive presidency; (2) The political and constitutional implications of presidential executive orders and memoranda through case studies on healthcare and immigration actions throughout the presidencies of Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden; and (3) Changes in sub-state nationalist political parties’ campaign rhetoric from 2016 to 2024 in Galicia, Spain, including the substantial reframing of the relationship between nationalism and non-nationalist issues.
Ella Beiser	2025	Tacones Rebeldes: Resistencia Queer y la Desestabilización de la Dictadura en las Producciones Artísticas de Lemebel	This thesis is situated at the height of the AIDS epidemic in Chile 13 years into Pinochet’s military dictatorship. It examines the written and performance work by Pedro Lemebel who thought extensively about connections between colonialism, hyper masculine rhetoric and the oppression of queer people in Chile. This thesis aims to answer the question of how the performance and the written work of Lemebel were able to undermine the ultra-masculine rhetoric of the dictatorship and erode the heteronormative facade that the regime projected. I will argue that Lemebel’s work exposes the chasm between the narrative propagated by the dictatorship and the widely known truth that Chile is far too queer and radical to conform to the control of a military regime.
Charlotte Bernhard	2028	Gender, Power, and Politics	The students in this panel explore an innovative group project designed to deepen student understanding of contentious political and social debates surrounding gender, power, and politics. Through the structured analysis of conservative arguments found in Project 2025, students critically engage with perspectives opposing gender equity, reproductive justice and education. By identifying rhetorical strategies, logical flaws, and evidence gaps in these arguments, students develop research-based counterarguments and present them in accessible formats.
Tia Billimoria	2027	Gender, Power, and Politics	The students in this panel explore an innovative group project designed to deepen student understanding of contentious political and social debates surrounding gender, power, and politics. Through the structured analysis of conservative arguments found in Project 2025, students critically engage with perspectives opposing gender equity, reproductive justice and education. By identifying rhetorical strategies, logical flaws, and evidence gaps in these arguments, students develop research-based counterarguments and present them in accessible formats.
Megan Billings	2026	Reconsidering Bates’s History	What does it mean for a college to be founded by abolitionists and funded by cotton produced by enslaved people? One way to answer this question is to look at some of the sources related to the founding of the college. Another way is to examine the ways that college has told its own history in books, student theses, and admissions materials. This panel will report on some of our findings, both in terms of the evidence we have found and in terms of the silences that remain. In the evidence and the silences are clues to Bates College’s history and to why that history matters.
Rosalie Brown	2027	Forging Meaning: Recreating Ancient Greek Metalwork in a Modern Blacksmith Shop	How do we access the past? One way to bridge the wide gap between ancient and contemporary societies is to study everyday life and common objects. I spent a semester making ancient Greek implements such as strigils (curved objects for scraping and collecting oil from the skin) and fibulas (brooches used to hold women’s garments) in the New England School of Metalwork. I will present my research and the objects I made during my semester devoted to experiential archaeology.
Lola Buczkowski	2025	Embodied Dialogues: Perspectives on Collaboration and Choreographic Practice	Three dance majors discuss their recent and ongoing choreographic research, considering their projects as important sites to address dance-making, world-building, and collaboration. What can bodies do or be, and what can moving bodies present or represent? How might choreographic processes create epistemologies and practices that cultivate collectivity and citizenship? In what ways are choreography and kinesthetic empathy useful tools to consider collective action, cultural expression, and environmental and social justice?
Maple Buescher	2025	Politics Department Honors Thesis Panel	This presentation encompasses the work of three honors Politics theses: (1) The development of constitutional ideas such that they become the majority perspective of the Supreme Court, as examined through a case study of the theory of the unitary executive presidency; (2) The political and constitutional implications of presidential executive orders and memoranda through case studies on healthcare and immigration actions throughout the presidencies of Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden; and (3) Changes in sub-state nationalist political parties’ campaign rhetoric from 2016 to 2024 in Galicia, Spain, including the substantial reframing of the relationship between nationalism and non-nationalist issues.
Christian Cabello	2025	Research and the Public Good: Multidisciplinary Explorations	How can undergraduate research contribute to community well-being and social justice? This year’s Community-Engaged Research Fellows hail from diverse disciplines, but they share an interest in the public purposes of higher education and the potential of research to build on community strengths and address community needs. This session will feature community-engaged projects targeting a range of issues and developed in collaboration with diverse community partners.
Sophia Cattalani	2025	Sociology Thesis Panel	Migrant farmworkers live in large numbers throughout the state of Maine, facing challenges of structural racism, lack of resources in rural settings, and the vulnerabilities of economic and educational disadvantage. In this study, I examine how Maine Mobile Health Program (MMHP), a local mobile healthcare clinic created for migrant farmworkers, is able to care for this population, what challenges it faces, and how the patients perceive their care. I surveyed 13 patients and interviewed 4 staff members to discuss culturally competent care, the challenges the program faces, and what patients would like to see in the future. I found that MMHP uses a model of cultural humility in place of cultural competency and that despite the program’s various challenges, clients are reluctant to express themselves as anything other than extremely satisfied with the program. Though research exists on mobile health, and its advantages in caring for vulnerable populations, little research details the challenges individual clinics face, or how said challenges might impact their patient care. Further research must be conducted to examine how these barriers can be effectively diminished and how the quality of care may be improved.
Ava Clancy	2025	Songs of Resistance: The Intersection of Labor, Music, and Culture in Appalachian Coal Mining Communities	This study examines the roles of music in Appalachian coal mining communities of the 19th and early 20th centuries, focusing on the influence of gender, race, social interaction, and political economy in shaping a musical environment. Using scholarly articles, interviews with miners, and primary source recordings of songs, my study explores how the music derived from Appalachian coal camps is a specific result of the community makeup and setting in which the music was created. This research examines how the multicultural social makeup, paired with the exploitative nature of mining labor, makes coal communities an incubator for musical innovation.
Hopper Clark	2025	Patterns Among Ulam Words	In 1964, Stanislaw Ulam introduced the Ulam sequence. Beginning with 1 and 2, the next term is the smallest unique sum of two different earlier terms. In 2020, the parallel notion of Ulam words was introduced by Bade, Cui, Labelle, and Li, and further explored by Adutwum, Clark, Emerson, Sheydvasser, Sheydvasser, and Tougouma in 2024. We build on both Bade et al. and Adutwum et al. by proving new results regarding Ulam words, and provide evidence to support the existence of strong new patterns. We explore Ulam words in the setting of cyclic groups, and compare the results found by the authors above in these new settings.
Luca Costea	2025	Genetics of Neurodevelopmental Disorders like NF1: Reflections for Future Research	NF1 (neurofibromatosis type 1) is an inherited or spontaneously developed disorder that hosts a wide array of symptoms, depending on where and when in the developmental timeline the mutation emerged. To solve the most pronounced symptom, blindness due to optic nerve tumours, the Woodworth Lab has partnered with the Goldberg Lab to improve the mouse model of NF1 glial tumours. As a disease, NF1 presents challenges to our current model of disease inheritance due to its spatiotemporal complexities, which allows for diffuse exploration of new understandings of what fundamentally constitutes a disease and how scientists go about finding it.
Bella Daly	2027	Gender, Power, and Politics	The students in this panel explore an innovative group project designed to deepen student understanding of contentious political and social debates surrounding gender, power, and politics. Through the structured analysis of conservative arguments found in Project 2025, students critically engage with perspectives opposing gender equity, reproductive justice and education. By identifying rhetorical strategies, logical flaws, and evidence gaps in these arguments, students develop research-based counterarguments and present them in accessible formats.
Wes DeOreo	2025	Cultural Agency in Occupied Germany and its Impact on German Autonomy from 1945 to 1950	The early years of the Allied occupation of Germany following the Second World War saw Germans attempt to reclaim autonomy and self-determination. A primary tactic of occupied Germans was the use of culture in order to reinstate their agency. These cultural avenues included relationships with GIs, also called fraternization, and attempts to claim victimhood as a result of German experiences during the Second World War. Furthermore, occupied Germans attempted to broadcast these attempts at cultural agency to audiences abroad, specifically in the United States, in the hopes of affecting their treatment and access to aid. By expressing cultural agency through interpersonal relationships and the media, Germans were able to fulfil their practical needs, while additionally using culture as a way to re-enter the liberal world order.
Jane Drumm	2025	Embodied Dialogues: Perspectives on Collaboration and Choreographic Practice	Three dance majors discuss their recent and ongoing choreographic research, considering their projects as important sites to address dance-making, world-building, and collaboration. What can bodies do or be, and what can moving bodies present or represent? How might choreographic processes create epistemologies and practices that cultivate collectivity and citizenship? In what ways are choreography and kinesthetic empathy useful tools to consider collective action, cultural expression, and environmental and social justice?
Lucy Edmunds	2025	Teaching 8th Grade Social Studies at Lewiston Middle School	In this presentation, I will be discussing my student teaching experience in an 8th Grade Social Studies classroom in Lewiston Middle School, highlighting areas of focus that coordinate with the Beginning Maine State Teaching Standards. Throughout my time at Lewiston Middle School I have learned to accommodate Learner Differences, working with a group of students with a wide variety of skills/strengths. Additionally, I have expended effort in curating a Learning Environment in which students feel safe to be their authentic selves and express their academic/social needs. Finally, I have worked towards developing interactive and Innovative Applications of Content, engaging students in meaningful and relevant learning experiences.
Maura Ferrigno	2025	Bodies, Memory, and State Control	Historians are often concerned with how power is exercised, sustained, and resisted. In these four papers, senior history majors draw on their theses to explore the ways that states enact power by policing bodies and memory. Students will present brief excerpts from their research, before turning to a panel discussion on archives, historical methods, and how historians tell stories about difficult-to-excavate pasts.
Lydia Frew	2025	The Hidden Curriculum in Dance: Investigating the Relationship Between Perceived Social Psychological Climate and Dancers’ Body Image	Aspiring professional dancers are vulnerable to negative body image. Teachers can influence students’ perceptions and training experiences. Eighty undergraduate dance students were surveyed on perceptions of social psychological climates of dance departments, dancer identity, professional goals, and body image. Interviews investigate ways in which students and teachers contribute to the climate. Students in more task-involved and caring climates will have better body image with a de-emphasis on competition and comparison. The results deepen our understanding of how the perceived climate of a dance space can influence students, as well as how teachers can positively contribute to student well-being.
Leia Gallego-Calle	2025	Gender, Power, and Politics	The students in this panel explore an innovative group project designed to deepen student understanding of contentious political and social debates surrounding gender, power, and politics. Through the structured analysis of conservative arguments found in Project 2025, students critically engage with perspectives opposing gender equity, reproductive justice and education. By identifying rhetorical strategies, logical flaws, and evidence gaps in these arguments, students develop research-based counterarguments and present them in accessible formats.
Charlotte Gisborne	2025	Sociology Thesis Panel	A collection of senior sociology majors share their theses from the academic year.
Garrett Glasgow	2025	The Rhetoric of Politics in Popular Culture	In this panel, students from the Rhetoric, Film, and Screen Studies department will present their theses on politics in popular culture. Topics include: Watchmen and alt-right antiheroes, the rhetoric of Donald Trump, SNL Joke Swap, and #saveourchildren.
Madyson Gonzalez	2025	How the Maine Teaching Standards Are Reflected in My 7th-Grade Social Studies Classroom	In this presentation, I will discuss my time at Lewiston Middle School in my 7th-grade social studies classroom.I tried to foster a relationship with each student by helping students one-on-one with their assignments and helping them find relevance in their work. This presentation will focus on three of the Maine Teaching Standards: Standard 6: Assessment, which would focus on formative and summative assessments; Standard 10: School Collaboration, which will focus on my efforts to learn and be a part of the school community; and, lastly Standard 11: Technology, which would focus on the way technology is utilized in my class.
Max Good	2025	Portafolio de Maxwell Good: Una reflexión de los Estudios Hispánicos en Bates College	Max reflects on his experience through the Hispanic Studies major, his academic and personal growth while abroad in Valencia, and his development facilitated by advisor, Stephanie Pridgeon, and the Hispanic Studies department.
Stella Gould	2025	The Present Sound of the Past: The Soul Revival and Resurgence of Vinyl in the 21st Century	This thesis investigates nostalgia, both with respect to the ways music sounds today (the stylistic choices made by artists to sound like the “past”) and the ways it is being physically produced (the increase of analog processes and the rise of vinyl in the last twenty years). This project asks why we are interested in returning back to “outdated” forms and processes? What is it about the physicality of the past that intrigues us? Within the increasing digitization of our world, perhaps our tethers to these tangible objects and the sounds they produce are helping us connect more profoundly with ourselves and to one another.
Sophie Hafter	2025	Production as Pedagogy: Directing, Design and Management in the Theater	How do collaborative, creative and organizational processes coalesce within the context of an interactive audience experience? The students on our panel–Kerrigan Anuzsewski ’25 (Set Design), Emma Seitz ’25 (Directing) and Sophie Hafter ’25 (Stage Management), will present and discuss the breadth of their organizational and creative work on the Theater and Dance 2025 productions of The Seagull and Body Awareness, and how preparatory content and engagement with the rehearsal process supported their realized outcomes.
Matt Hamilton	2025	Film, Art, and Documentary Rhetoric	In this panel, student from the RFSS department will present their theses that focused on art, film, and documentary Rhetoric. Topics include: Agnes Varda and her film Varda by Agnes, Documentary Filmmaking through a Cognitive Film Theory lens, and documentary film subjects.
Ella Hannaford	2026	Crafting Faith and Identity: The Pink Qur’an as Islamic Art	How does the Pink Qur’an embody the convergence of sacred text, cultural identity, and artistic mastery? This presentation explores these themes through the recreation of a surviving bifolium. The process of making illuminates the intricate balance the manuscript strikes between form and content, the regional and cultural influences that shaped its creation, and the extraordinary technical skill it required. Beyond providing a unique, tangible understanding of craftsmanship and spirituality in 13th-century al-Andalus, the work invites a broader discussion of the significance of Qur’anic manuscripts and a reconsideration of the definitions and boundaries within the field of “Islamic art.”
Lion He	2025	The Impact of Social Distance and Temporal Distance on Thinking About a Good Life	This study is designed to analyze the impact of social and temporal distance on how people think about a good life. Previous research has distinguished among three dimensions of a good life: a happy life, a meaningful life, and a psychologically rich life (Oishi & Westgate, 2022). Study 1 tests whether one would describe a good life for themselves (lower social distance) differently compared to a stranger (higher social distance). Study 2 tests whether one would describe a good life for themselves in the near future (lower temporal distance) differently compared to themselves in the distant future (higher temporal distance).
Lucy Hensley	2025	New Insights into Chemical Cues and Prey Naivety: Herbivory of Littorina obtusata in the Presence of the Invasive European Green Crab (Carcinas maenas)	Invasive crab species, Carcinus maenas, negatively affect western Atlantic intertidal ecosystems through Non-Consumptive Effects (NCEs) and predation on Littorinid species. I measured Littorina obtusata herbivory on Fucus vesiculosus when exposed to three different predator treatments (conspecific diet, algae diet, no predator). A linear ANOVA model indicated less consumption under the algae treatment possibly explained by the chemical defenses of F. vesiculosus and C. maenas. The mixed linear model exhibited no difference between treatments perhaps indicating complex prey naivety. Future research into the combined power of chemical cues and prey naivety may help us understand NCEs in more nuanced contexts.
Risa Horiuchi	2025	Sociology Thesis Panel	A collection of senior sociology majors share their theses from the academic year.
Gongshi Huang	2025	Royal Guards, The Mixi Sword, and Political Identities: Mongols as Co-Founders of the Ming Dynasty	I argue that the Ming court regarded the Mongol soldiers in the royal guards as core collaborators and supporters of royal power on equal footing with the Han Chinese. The breakpoint of this project is a type of sword named Mixi sword which was equipped by the Ming Royal Guards. By analyzing material remains and administrative records, I claim that the Mixi sword originated in the Mameluk Sultanate (al-Misr) and was transported to the Steppe becoming a prestige Mongolic weapon. I challenged the arguments that describe the Mongolic ethnic identity dissolved under the Ming rule as the result of assimilation.
Eva Hynes	2025	“Now Go We in Content to Liberty, and Not to Banishment”: Queer Utopia in Shakespeare’s As You Like It	This presentation focuses on Rosalind from Shakespeare’s As You Like It, interrogating the use of gender performativity as a form of feminist wit. Both Rosalind’s gender expression and her homoerotic relationship with Celia are surrounded, and created, by a sharp, cutting wit. As these women travel through the utopic Forest of Arden, where Rosalind is able to live freely with Celia without the pressures of patriarchal and heteronormative society, wit allows them to bring a piece of utopia into their lives beyond the utopian space.
Joey Ireland	2025	Memory Intrusions and the Breath	Have you ever been haunted by an embarrassing memory? Intentionally forgetting a memory is coordinated by the prefrontal cortex suppressing activity in the hippocampus. Holding one’s breath creates a brain-wide disruption in fMRI activity which could interfere with this suppression, meaning more unwanted memory intrusions. PTSD patients, who suffer from unwanted memory intrusions, often have ‘freeze’ responses to triggers, in which their breath is disrupted. This experiment uses the Think/No-Think paradigm to assess memory intrusions in participants who are instructed to hold their breath during suppression. Preliminary results will be discussed and future research directions will be proposed.
Keira January	2025	Bodies, Memory, and State Control	Historians are often concerned with how power is exercised, sustained, and resisted. In these four papers, senior history majors draw on their theses to explore the ways that states enact power by policing bodies and memory. Students will present brief excerpts from their research, before turning to a panel discussion on archives, historical methods, and how historians tell stories about difficult-to-excavate pasts.
Olivia Joaquin	2025	Situations of Habituation: Examining Habitual versus Goal-Directed Behaviors Under de Wit’s Slips of Action Task	This research explores the balance between habitual and goal-directed behavior using de Wit’s Slips of Action Task across three experiments. Experiment 1 examines the impact of time pressure on decision-making, hypothesizing that time constraints will lead to increased reliance on habitual actions. Experiment 2 compares the effects of punishments and rewards as feedback systems, expecting punishment to enhance inhibitory control and reduce impulsive responses. Experiment 3 investigates the relationship between creativity and performance on the slips of action task, proposing that individuals with higher creativity will demonstrate greater cognitive flexibility and inhibitory control, and therefore perform better on the task.
Inez Johnson	2025	Research and the Public Good: Multidisciplinary Explorations	How can undergraduate research contribute to community well-being and social justice? This year’s Community-Engaged Research Fellows hail from diverse disciplines, but they share an interest in the public purposes of higher education and the potential of research to build on community strengths and address community needs. This session will feature community-engaged projects targeting a range of issues and developed in collaboration with diverse community partners.
Elias Jones	2027	Student Research on Roman Slavery	This panel highlights original student research from CMS/HIST 301: Slavery in Ancient Rome. Presentations include topics like gladiators, slaves in the Roman army, and using critical fabulation to reconstruct narratives of abscondment.
Adam Joseph	2025	Sociology Thesis Panel	A collection of senior sociology majors share their theses from the academic year.
Kaitlin Kavanagh	2025	The Creative Writing Thesis Readings	English majors give readings from their creative writing senior theses in fiction, poetry and creative nonfiction.
Miryam Keller	2025	Artist Talks by AVC Studio Art Thesis Students	Our studio art seniors will be presenting an artist talk to talk about their 1 year thesis journey in their studios. Here they will talk about their own process to transform their ideas into an art exhibition in the museum through research and making.
Clara Kennedy	2025	Not Just a Woman Artist: Ethel Schwabacher and her Re-Painting of Abstract Expressionism	Ethel Schwabacher (1903-1984) was a female Abstract Expressionist painter who did not follow the rules. Like many women in the movement—marginalized by textbooks, the academy, and exhibitions, she struggled to achieve equal recognition to her male counterparts despite studying at the same art schools, exhibiting at the same galleries, and being collected by the same museums. Critics like Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg favored the machismo famously practiced by Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, reinforcing gender hierarchies. Schwabacher’s paintings not only pushed its boundaries, but actively expanded the movement’s patriarchal origins, radically re-painting them to articulate female experiences.
Matthew Kijowski	2025	Playing for Independence: The Role of Soccer in Nation-Building Among Unrecognized European States	This thesis explores the role of soccer in nation-building within European unrecognized states pursuing sovereignty. While existing literature addresses the significance of soccer in fostering national identity in recognized states and examines national identity in non-sovereign states, there is a notable gap in research combining these themes on a broader European scale. This study bridges that gap by comparing and contrasting the role of soccer in contemporary independence movements, such as those in Scotland and Catalonia, with its historical influence in the post-Yugoslavian states. By examining these cases, the thesis aims to illuminate the interplay between sport, national identity, and political sovereignty in Europe.
Jaewoo Kim	2025	Sociology Thesis Panel	Movies are typically regarded as pieces of media that serve solely to entertain, but they also function as a cultural object, which is a symbol or idea that people ascribe meaning to. This research aimed to elaborate on the connection between cultural objects and identity by examining how people interact with movies on online forums. Comment sections from YouTube videos were analyzed and coded for themes of identity. It can be assumed that by interacting with movies, people will reflect on and find new ways to see themselves, as well as express an ideal version of themselves to the public.
Rashad King	2025	Caribbean Republicanism & Neocolonial Tourism: Expanding Republicanism to Confront Postcolonial Economic Dependency	An era of republicanism arrived in the Commonwealth Caribbean when the island-state of Barbados, in 2022, removed the British monarch as head of state, in favor of a constitutional president. This event sent a wave of constitutional inquiries, and referendum hopes and speculations, across the rest of the Anglophone Caribbean about the decolonial importance of adopting republics; with many states affirming commitments. However, the Caribbean tourism industry in the region exists as a neocolonial force by Global North benefactors (i.e. United Kingdom, United States) that creates structures of dependency that affect institutional, economic, and social society in the region. These neocolonial structures exist as descent systems of colonial hierarchies, and global underdevelopment systems that have defined and constructed Caribbean existence, and condition of the state. Republicanism in the circum-Caribbean exists in many states, however I insist that the republican ideals of non-domination, and dependency are incompatible with the (neo)colonial circumstances of the Caribbean. The republican outlook the Commonwealth Caribbean has adopted neglects this reality, and yet the states of the Caribbean demand the republican option. In my thesis, by examining the neo-republican scholars, and postcolonial theorist I will define the problems with current republican theory and the methods postcolonial scholars can offer decolonization and creolization as frameworks to expand the theory to meet the needs of the Commonwealth Caribbean. The meeting of these needs, and the expansion, would constitute the creation of a Caribbean republicanism that confronts the issue of neocolonial tourism, and produces a compatible republican doctrine.
Naina Kondragunta	2028	Gender, Power, and Politics	The students in this panel explore an innovative group project designed to deepen student understanding of contentious political and social debates surrounding gender, power, and politics. Through the structured analysis of conservative arguments found in Project 2025, students critically engage with perspectives opposing gender equity, reproductive justice and education. By identifying rhetorical strategies, logical flaws, and evidence gaps in these arguments, students develop research-based counterarguments and present them in accessible formats.
Maggie Kornfeind	2025	Research and the Public Good: Multidisciplinary Explorations	How can undergraduate research contribute to community well-being and social justice? This year’s Community-Engaged Research Fellows hail from diverse disciplines, but they share an interest in the public purposes of higher education and the potential of research to build on community strengths and address community needs. This session will feature community-engaged projects targeting a range of issues and developed in collaboration with diverse community partners.
Hannah Kothari	2026	Gender, Power, and Politics	The students in this panel explore an innovative group project designed to deepen student understanding of contentious political and social debates surrounding gender, power, and politics. Through the structured analysis of conservative arguments found in Project 2025, students critically engage with perspectives opposing gender equity, reproductive justice and education. By identifying rhetorical strategies, logical flaws, and evidence gaps in these arguments, students develop research-based counterarguments and present them in accessible formats.
Lena LaPierre	2026	The Naked Truth: Art Scandals, the Russian Mass Media, and the Hairy Legs of Leo Tolstoy	What do an obscure Russian artist, an unknown Jewish journalist, and the hairy naked legs of Leo Tolstoy have in common? Unexpectedly, the collision of these entities produced one of the most heated cultural scandals of fin-de-siècle Russia. For a modernizing empire, the scandal served as a rare site where unspoken issues could be brought to the surface and interrogated such as the legitimacy of private property rights in an illiberal autocracy, the role of the traditional artist hero in age of ascendant capitalism, and the use of anti-Semitic tropes to define the essence of a rapidly changing Russian nation.
Avery Lehman	2025	Artist Talks by AVC Studio Art Thesis Students	Our studio art seniors will be presenting an artist talk to talk about their 1 year thesis journey in their studios. Here they will talk about their own process to transform their ideas into an art exhibition in the museum through research and making.
Kaeleigh Leone	2026	Reconsidering Bates’s History	What does it mean for a college to be founded by abolitionists and funded by cotton produced by enslaved people? One way to answer this question is to look at some of the sources related to the founding of the college. Another way is to examine the ways that college has told its own history in books, student theses, and admissions materials. This panel will report on some of our findings, both in terms of the evidence we have found and in terms of the silences that remain. In the evidence and the silences are clues to Bates College’s history and to why that history matters.
Muey Li	2028	Gender, Power, and Politics	The students in this panel explore an innovative group project designed to deepen student understanding of contentious political and social debates surrounding gender, power, and politics. Through the structured analysis of conservative arguments found in Project 2025, students critically engage with perspectives opposing gender equity, reproductive justice and education. By identifying rhetorical strategies, logical flaws, and evidence gaps in these arguments, students develop research-based counterarguments and present them in accessible formats.
Sarah Lieber	2026	Reconsidering Bates’s History	What does it mean for a college to be founded by abolitionists and funded by cotton produced by enslaved people? One way to answer this question is to look at some of the sources related to the founding of the college. Another way is to examine the ways that college has told its own history in books, student theses, and admissions materials. This panel will report on some of our findings, both in terms of the evidence we have found and in terms of the silences that remain. In the evidence and the silences are clues to Bates College’s history and to why that history matters.
Bora Lugunda	2025	In Search of Witches: Kongolese Cosmology and the Opperation of Power	What did it mean to be a witch among the people of the Kongo Kingdom? How were witchhood and witchcraft understood, how were they practiced? What does a study of the Kongolese cosmos reveal about the structures of power among the BaKongo? This project begins to answer these questions with an exploration of the Kongolese cosmos, the place and the operation of power within it. Through examining the Kongolese cosmogram and a variety of distinctly Kongo crosses, I will trace the shape of the Kongo universe and uncover the practice and operation of power within it.
Ava Lyon	2025	The Creative Writing Thesis Readings	English majors give readings from their creative writing senior theses in fiction, poetry and creative nonfiction.
Rosina Makwabe	2026	Reconsidering Bates’s History	What does it mean for a college to be founded by abolitionists and funded by cotton produced by enslaved people? One way to answer this question is to look at some of the sources related to the founding of the college. Another way is to examine the ways that college has told its own history in books, student theses, and admissions materials. This panel will report on some of our findings, both in terms of the evidence we have found and in terms of the silences that remain. In the evidence and the silences are clues to Bates College’s history and to why that history matters.
Jack Markert	2027	Gender, Power, and Politics	The students in this panel explore an innovative group project designed to deepen student understanding of contentious political and social debates surrounding gender, power, and politics. Through the structured analysis of conservative arguments found in Project 2025, students critically engage with perspectives opposing gender equity, reproductive justice and education. By identifying rhetorical strategies, logical flaws, and evidence gaps in these arguments, students develop research-based counterarguments and present them in accessible formats.
Julianne Massa	2025	The Creative Writing Thesis Readings	English majors give readings from their creative writing senior theses in fiction, poetry and creative nonfiction.
Erin McCarthy	2025	Artist Talks by AVC Studio Art Thesis Students	Our studio art seniors will be presenting an artist talk to talk about their 1 year thesis journey in their studios. Here they will talk about their own process to transform their ideas into an art exhibition in the museum through research and making.
Sophie McDevitt	2027	Gender, Power, and Politics	The students in this panel explore an innovative group project designed to deepen student understanding of contentious political and social debates surrounding gender, power, and politics. Through the structured analysis of conservative arguments found in Project 2025, students critically engage with perspectives opposing gender equity, reproductive justice and education. By identifying rhetorical strategies, logical flaws, and evidence gaps in these arguments, students develop research-based counterarguments and present them in accessible formats.
Maria McEvoy	2025	Sheep, Blood, and Empire: The Pastoral Politics of Racial Purity in Early Modern Spain	This presentation explores how Spain’s obsession with purity—both of blood and breed—shaped its emerging racial ideologies in the early modern period. Tracing linguistic and symbolic connections between shepherding, textile production, and limpieza de sangre statutes, this talk argues that the creation of Spanish racial logics depended on the use of shepherding logics, providing Spanish sovereigns with the linguistic and practical tools necessary for creating and maintaining purity statutes. Rooted in anxieties about blood and lineage, these policies borrowed from the language of animal breeding and textile production, where ‘raza’ signified a defect in wool and a defect in non-Christian ancestries. This presentation will explore how Spain’s shepherding industry worked to connect ideas about disease, stain, and darkness to non-Christian people, ideas which justified the management, policing, and expulsion of conversos and Moriscos in the premodern era, and which have persisted until today.
Rosie McKerley	2025	Effects of Synesthetic Photisms on Visual Cognition: Investigating the Temporal Organization of Grapheme-Color Synesthesia and Object Trimming in the Cognitive Processing Pathway	Object trimming is a perceptual effect in which illusory edges, formed by two adjacent dots, compete with nearby edges, altering numerical perception. For example, an “8” with dots near the upper right or lower left edge is perceived as a “6” or a “9,” respectively. Since edges are processed early in visual perception, likely in area V2, this effect occurs rapidly. Grapheme-color synesthesia, where numbers evoke specific colors, arises from cross-activation near the color-processing region (V4). This study tested the order of synesthetic associations and object trimming in cognitive processing, with results suggesting that trimming precedes synesthetic experience.
George Miller	2025	Athanasian Asceticism: Late Antique Egyptian Christian Identity in Ascetic Literature	My presentation covers a chapter of my thesis covering early Christian Egyptian ascetic saints from various monastic hagiographies. The first aspect I consider is the literary influence of the author and Patriarch Athanasius of Alexandria, understanding his motifs and historical context. I then use the framework of understanding Egyptian Christian identity based on my research and find places within various texts, including Life of Antony, Lives of the Desert Fathers, and The Lausiac History, to see (1) the literary influence of Athanasius and (2) the presentation of Egyptian Christian Identity within these texts.
Lily Miller	2025	Plunging into the “Mommysphere”: The Inadvertent ‘Birth’ of Anti-Abortion Rhetoric in the Radical Discussion of Bodily Autonomy in Mommy Blogs	CONTRIBUTING TO A PANEL ON REPRODUCTIVE JUSTICE: This thesis focuses on conversations on mommy blogs within the early 2000s-2010s; what their work as discussion leaders reflects in a radical nature, and what terms of conversations they set for women (and pregnant individuals) in the early 2000s. The first piece of this thesis addresses the revolutionary feature of mommy blogging, the act of self-representation by bloggers, one of the earliest times that women were discussing their bodies, pregnancy, sex, abortion, and miscarriage outside media portrayal of “perfection” (such as with celebrities). Additionally, the second piece analyzes the rhetorical framework and terms of the conversation of abortion used by mommy bloggers, comparing the reflection of pro-abortion rhetoric of “choice” or anti-abortion rhetoric of fetal personhood. Therefore, this thesis aims to accomplish an analysis of how we progress in the steps of revolution that mommy bloggers wrote in their “realism” and how to combat any usage of anti-abortion rhetorical frames, continuing the fight for bodily autonomy, reproductive rights, and abortion access. How do discursive thought leaders develop revolutionary rhetoric, what frames do they use, and how do they falter to the rhetoric of social movements?
Whitney Miller	2026	Reconsidering Bates’s History	What does it mean for a college to be founded by abolitionists and funded by cotton produced by enslaved people? One way to answer this question is to look at some of the sources related to the founding of the college. Another way is to examine the ways that college has told its own history in books, student theses, and admissions materials. This panel will report on some of our findings, both in terms of the evidence we have found and in terms of the silences that remain. In the evidence and the silences are clues to Bates College’s history and to why that history matters.
Elizabeth Nahigian	2026	Embodied Dialogues: Perspectives on Collaboration and Choreographic Practice	Three dance majors discuss their recent and ongoing choreographic research, considering their projects as important sites to address dance-making, world-building, and collaboration. What can bodies do or be, and what can moving bodies present or represent? How might choreographic processes create epistemologies and practices that cultivate collectivity and citizenship? In what ways are choreography and kinesthetic empathy useful tools to consider collective action, cultural expression, and environmental and social justice?
Julia Neumann	2025	Student Research on Roman Slavery	This panel highlights original student research from CMS/HIST 301: Slavery in Ancient Rome. Presentations include topics like gladiators, slaves in the Roman army, and using critical fabulation to reconstruct narratives of abscondment.
Nakelm Nicholson	2025	Queer Mystics’ Way of the African Diaspora	This thesis presentation will be addressing the institutionalized heteronormativity embedded in Christianity and its intrusiveness towards the coexistence between the Black human body and queer embodiment of African spiritual practices. This presentation will be organized into two chapters. “Chapter 1: Gender Inversion” will discuss gender fluidity as an indigenous spiritual practice that exists through spirit, to debunk the idea that gender binaries are a traditional notion in West African countries as well as the African Diaspora. “Chapter 2: My 9Spiritual Rebirth” discusses the origins of Obeah in the African Diaspora including the Caribbean, in addition to my spiritual intimacy with Obeah.
Mari Nolasco Alcantara	2028	Gender, Power, and Politics	The students in this panel explore an innovative group project designed to deepen student understanding of contentious political and social debates surrounding gender, power, and politics. Through the structured analysis of conservative arguments found in Project 2025, students critically engage with perspectives opposing gender equity, reproductive justice and education. By identifying rhetorical strategies, logical flaws, and evidence gaps in these arguments, students develop research-based counterarguments and present them in accessible formats.
Heidi Nydam	2025	Research and the Public Good: Multidisciplinary Explorations	How can undergraduate research contribute to community well-being and social justice? This year’s Community-Engaged Research Fellows hail from diverse disciplines, but they share an interest in the public purposes of higher education and the potential of research to build on community strengths and address community needs. This session will feature community-engaged projects targeting a range of issues and developed in collaboration with diverse community partners.
Kevin O’Connor	2025	The Rhetoric of Politics in Popular Culture	In this panel, students from the Rhetoric, Film, and Screen Studies department will present their theses on politics in popular culture. Topics include: Watchmen and alt-right antiheroes, the rhetoric of Donald Trump, SNL Joke Swap, and #saveourchildren.
Julia Oliver	2025	Sociology Thesis Panel	A collection of senior sociology majors share their theses from the academic year.
Adriana Pastor Almiron	2025	Rethinking Mathematics, Computing, and Data for Equity	The RIOS Institute, housed at Bates, supports student research at the intersection of inclusion and STEM education. Here, we present two projects: a study of biocalculus and VECINA. The first reviews biocalculus, a computational-modeling based approach to calculus. It engages students in authentic investigation of biological processes improving performance and narrowing achievement gaps compared to traditional calculus experiences. Meanwhile, VECINA rethinks how data and digital information systems can be built collaboratively with communities for advocacy. These human-centered approaches make mathematics, data, and computing more relevant and accessible to our communities.
Meghan Peters	2028	Gender, Power, and Politics	The students in this panel explore an innovative group project designed to deepen student understanding of contentious political and social debates surrounding gender, power, and politics. Through the structured analysis of conservative arguments found in Project 2025, students critically engage with perspectives opposing gender equity, reproductive justice and education. By identifying rhetorical strategies, logical flaws, and evidence gaps in these arguments, students develop research-based counterarguments and present them in accessible formats.
Jade Pinto	2025	Amaterasu: The Embodiment of the Spiritual and Sensual	The concept of empowerment in embodied movement is culturally and historically important, shaped by audience perception, performer agency, and institutional frameworks. Miko dance and Chairlesque illustrate how female empowerment is negotiated within structured spaces, where women navigate and redefine their agency through embodied movement. While miko dance historically ties empowerment to spiritual devotion within religion, Chairlesque reclaims sensuality as a form of self-expression and bodily autonomy. By comparing these forms, I attempt to illustrate how female empowerment is not a fixed quality but rather a shifting dynamic, a fluid and evolving force shaped by shifting cultural perceptions and power structures.
Alex Provasnik	2025	Artist Talks by AVC Studio Art Thesis Students	Our studio art seniors will be presenting an artist talk to talk about their 1 year thesis journey in their studios. Here they will talk about their own process to transform their ideas into an art exhibition in the museum through research and making.
Charles Renvyle	2025	The Use of Natalism by European Right-Wing Populists Across Italy, France, and Poland	Right-wing populism (RWP) is becoming increasingly prevalent across Europe, with right-wing populists increasingly gaining political power in European elections. While RWP can be very multifaceted, this thesis focuses specifically on the use of natalism across three RWP parties in three European countries: France’s RN (National Rally), Italy’s FdI (Brothers of Italy), and Poland’s PiS (Law and Justice). These three cases were chosen because they represent various economic, political, geographical, and sociological circumstances which precipitated the rise of their respective RWP parties. In these specific cases, I found that the rhetoric of the RWP parties studied intersects and contrasts across various relevant contemporary issues, such as abortion, immigration, Christian identity, and the traditional family vs. the LGBT family, among others. I conclude with a discussion about similarities and differences of how the selected three parties approach and use these issues within their respective populist frameworks and how they relate to natalism. Overall, I conclude that while there are some commonalities in how RWP parties approach these issue of natalism, differences can arise from a variety of factors, owing to a variety of things such as different cultural and historical backgrounds and different geographical circumstances.
Lily Ritch	2025	Czech New Wave Film: The Critique of Authority Through Cinematic Style	The Czech New Wave emerged in the 1960s as a response to both artistic constraints and political repression, using formal experimentation to challenge authority. This paper examines how The Firemen’s Ball (Forman, 1967), A Report on the Party and Its Guests (Němec, 1966), Closely Watched Trains (Menzel, 1966), Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (Jireš, 1970), and Daisies (Chytilová, 1966) use stylistic elements to reveal the failures of power. By manipulating style to expose the absurdity of control, these films turn aesthetic choices into acts of subversive critique. In doing so, they embody artistic dissent, contributing to broader discussions on film as a tool of political resistance and formal innovation in repressive contexts.
Annie Roach	2027	Gender, Power, and Politics	The students in this panel explore an innovative group project designed to deepen student understanding of contentious political and social debates surrounding gender, power, and politics. Through the structured analysis of conservative arguments found in Project 2025, students critically engage with perspectives opposing gender equity, reproductive justice and education. By identifying rhetorical strategies, logical flaws, and evidence gaps in these arguments, students develop research-based counterarguments and present them in accessible formats.
Zachary Rosenthal	2026	Reconsidering Bates’s History	What does it mean for a college to be founded by abolitionists and funded by cotton produced by enslaved people? One way to answer this question is to look at some of the sources related to the founding of the college. Another way is to examine the ways that college has told its own history in books, student theses, and admissions materials. This panel will report on some of our findings, both in terms of the evidence we have found and in terms of the silences that remain. In the evidence and the silences are clues to Bates College’s history and to why that history matters.
Gabriela Ruberto	2025	A Deeper Dive into the Realities of Campus Sexual Assault Adjudication: Assessing the Conflicts of Title IX, Due Process Rights, and Trauma-Informed Practice	Based upon the research conducted as part of my senior thesis, this presentation begins with a brief overview of Title IX’s history, focusing on the evolution of its scope and related regulations and guidelines. Next, we turn to one of the main debates surrounding Title IX adjudication as it pertains to campus sexual assault and misconduct. Namely, the balance between respondent due process rights and complainant rights to trauma-informed process and procedure. What emerges alongside this debate is a timeline that can be traced across changing presidential administrations. This raises the query of whether the two sides of the debate are in fact at odds, or reconcilable with additional reform.
Emma Sablan	2025	Film, Art, and Documentary Rhetoric	In this panel, student from the RFSS department will present their theses that focused on art, film, and documentary Rhetoric. Topics include: Agnes Varda and her film Varda by Agnes, Documentary Filmmaking through a Cognitive Film Theory lens, and documentary film subjects.
Dara Salka	2028	Gender, Power, and Politics	The students in this panel explore an innovative group project designed to deepen student understanding of contentious political and social debates surrounding gender, power, and politics. Through the structured analysis of conservative arguments found in Project 2025, students critically engage with perspectives opposing gender equity, reproductive justice and education. By identifying rhetorical strategies, logical flaws, and evidence gaps in these arguments, students develop research-based counterarguments and present them in accessible formats.
Cate Sauri	2028	Gender, Power, and Politics	The students in this panel explore an innovative group project designed to deepen student understanding of contentious political and social debates surrounding gender, power, and politics. Through the structured analysis of conservative arguments found in Project 2025, students critically engage with perspectives opposing gender equity, reproductive justice and education. By identifying rhetorical strategies, logical flaws, and evidence gaps in these arguments, students develop research-based counterarguments and present them in accessible formats.
Lila Schaefer	2025	Artist Talks by AVC Studio Art Thesis Students	Our studio art seniors will be presenting an artist talk to talk about their 1 year thesis journey in their studios. Here they will talk about their own process to transform their ideas into an art exhibition in the museum through research and making.
Emma Seitz	2025	Production as Pedagogy: Directing, Design and Management in the Theater	How do collaborative, creative and organizational processes coalesce within the context of an interactive audience experience? The students on our panel–Kerrigan Anuzsewski ’25 (Set Design), Emma Seitz ’25 (Directing) and Sophie Hafter ’25 (Stage Management), will present and discuss the breadth of their organizational and creative work on the Theater and Dance 2025 productions of The Seagull and Body Awareness, and how preparatory content and engagement with the rehearsal process supported their realized outcomes.
Sarah Senator	2025	Politics Department Honors Thesis Panel	This presentation encompasses the work of three honors Politics theses: (1) The development of constitutional ideas such that they become the majority perspective of the Supreme Court, as examined through a case study of the theory of the unitary executive presidency; (2) The political and constitutional implications of presidential executive orders and memoranda through case studies on healthcare and immigration actions throughout the presidencies of Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden; and (3) Changes in sub-state nationalist political parties’ campaign rhetoric from 2016 to 2024 in Galicia, Spain, including the substantial reframing of the relationship between nationalism and non-nationalist issues.
Efe Sert	2025	From Liberation to Commodification: The Shifting Ethos of Club Music	Club music, including disco, house, and techno, emerged as a cultural outlet for marginalized communities, particularly Black, Latinx, and LGBTQ+ individuals. Early disco and 1990s rave culture promoted queer-inclusive, utopian spaces rooted in the ethos of “Peace, Love, Unity, Respect” (PLUR). However, the rise of electronic dance music (EDM) in the late 2000s shifted the focus toward commercialization. Corporate interests and the dominance of white, male DJs transformed formerly radical spaces into commodified, heteronormative environments. This thesis traces how club music’s inclusive ethos evolved and critically examines its current state.
Declan Sheehan	2025	Experiences with Student Teaching: US History and Debate at Lewiston High School	This presentation will discuss my student teaching experience in a 10th-12th grade social studies classroom in Lewiston High School, with a particular focus on how my teaching coordinated with the Beginning Maine State Teaching Standards. While working at Lewiston High School I have learned a great deal about accommodating Learner Differences, creating pedagogy and curricula that reflect the diverse nature of LHS, and designing a supportive Learning Environment for all students. Lastly, I have worked towards creating progressive and innovative applications of content, with students engaging in Socratic Seminars, primary source analysis, and group activities in new ways.
Liya Simon	2025	The Creative Writing Thesis Readings	English majors give readings from their creative writing senior theses in fiction, poetry and creative nonfiction.
Talia Skaistis	2025	The Creative Writing Thesis Readings	English majors give readings from their creative writing senior theses in fiction, poetry and creative nonfiction.
Kaidi Stec	2025	A Comparative Genomic Synthesis of the SNARE and Endocytosis KEGG Pathways in Homo sapiens and Ephydatia muelleri	The absence of tumorigenesis in sponges suggests unique mechanisms of cancer resistance are at play in their physiology. This thesis investigates the evolutionary conservation of the SNARE and endocytosis KEGG pathways in the freshwater sponge Ephydatia muelleri and in Homo sapiens, aiming to reveal these pathways’ roles in cancer biology. By conducting comparative analyses, this study identified conserved and partially conserved sections of these pathways. Developmental gene expression patterns in E. muelleri were also examined to shed light on pathway activity during crucial stages of development. This study found overall high levels of conservation in both pathways, particularly in STX and VAMP genes in the SNARE pathway, and RAB and WASH genes in the endocytosis pathway. The developmental expression of pathway components identifies clusters of genes that are co-regulated and functionally interdependent. These findings enhance our understanding of cancer-related pathways and propose evolutionary insights as a basis for novel cancer therapies.
Mark Steinnagel Taylor	2028	Gender, Power, and Politics	The students in this panel explore an innovative group project designed to deepen student understanding of contentious political and social debates surrounding gender, power, and politics. Through the structured analysis of conservative arguments found in Project 2025, students critically engage with perspectives opposing gender equity, reproductive justice and education. By identifying rhetorical strategies, logical flaws, and evidence gaps in these arguments, students develop research-based counterarguments and present them in accessible formats.
Jenna Thomas	2025	Sociology Thesis Panel	A collection of senior sociology majors share their theses from the academic year.
Mary Beth Tune	2025	Art, Craft, Witchcraft: Colonial Obsession and the Racialized Female Body in The Tempest	This talk examines how Prospero constructs and fetishizes Sycorax’s monstrosity in The Tempest, reinforcing colonial, racial, and gendered hierarchies. Through the imagery of Sycorax as “grown into a hoop,” Prospero encodes her body as deviant, aligning her with early modern anxieties surrounding Blackness, womanhood, and witchcraft. Drawing on feminist, postcolonial, and critical race theories, I argue that Prospero’s obsessive retelling of her story reveals his paradoxical dependence on her image to sustain his own authority. His distinction between art and craft, moral purity and monstrosity, unravels upon scrutiny, exposing the instability of colonial narratives that seek to erase the very figures they fixate upon.
Willa Wang	2025	Praying for the Rain: Local Power and Belief in the Jinzhong Basin in the Late Qing	In 1876–1879, the Dingwu Famine devastated northern China, claiming thirteen million lives. The experience of the famine was far from “natural.” In my research, I investigate how the residents of a 2000-person village, Gulian, in Jinzhong Basin, Shanxi organized the community and tried to save themselves during a crisis brought about by both environmental and political failures. Environmental shock lay bare the ground-level tensions of village life. I believe how people respond to a crisis both reveals and challenges systems of the local authority, religious beliefs, and the social institutions that are part of everyday, mundane village life.
Peter Weil	2026	Characterization of Widely-Tunable-Random-Access DBR Laser for Gas Spectroscopy and Greenhouse Gas Sensing	Tunable lasers are widely used for laboratory spectroscopy. However, most tunable lasers are limited by the range of wavelengths they can scan across. “Random-access” tunable DBR lasers significantly extend the range of tunable wavelengths. While these lasers add considerable utility, their performance in precision spectroscopy remains relatively unexplored. Our lab has acquired a widely tunable “random-access” DBR laser which we intend to use for precision laboratory spectroscopy. Using a relatively simple and extensively-modeled gas, carbon-monoxide, we will characterize the precision of our laser. This work will prepare us to conduct greenhouse gas sensing and spectroscopy of more complex molecules.
Sophie Wheeler	2025	The Rhetoric of Politics in Popular Culture	In this panel, students from the Rhetoric, Film, and Screen Studies department will present their theses on politics in popular culture. Topics include: Watchmen and alt-right antiheroes, the rhetoric of Donald Trump, SNL Joke Swap, and #saveourchildren.
Tommo White	2025	Predicting Odor-Evoked Brain Activity Maps from Molecular Features	Despite decades of study, we are still only mediocre at predicting how something will smell on the basis of its chemical properties. The task remains challenging, owing to the very large number of molecular features that could conceivably confer odor quality, and which could conceivably be represented in the brain’s odor maps. In an effort to “crack the odor code”, we are applying graph neural networks (GNNs) to labeled data comprising several hundred molecules and their corresponding maps of odor-evoked brain activity. We aim to develop a data-driven description of which molecular features organize odor map topography.
Kyle Woodworth	2025	Film, Art, and Documentary Rhetoric	In this panel, student from the RFSS department will present their theses that focused on art, film, and documentary Rhetoric. Topics include: Agnes Varda and her film Varda by Agnes, Documentary Filmmaking through a Cognitive Film Theory lens, and documentary film subjects.
Jonah Yaffe	2026	Reconsidering Bates’s History	What does it mean for a college to be founded by abolitionists and funded by cotton produced by enslaved people? One way to answer this question is to look at some of the sources related to the founding of the college. Another way is to examine the ways that college has told its own history in books, student theses, and admissions materials. This panel will report on some of our findings, both in terms of the evidence we have found and in terms of the silences that remain. In the evidence and the silences are clues to Bates College’s history and to why that history matters.
Grace Yonchak	2026	Gender, Power, and Politics	The students in this panel explore an innovative group project designed to deepen student understanding of contentious political and social debates surrounding gender, power, and politics. Through the structured analysis of conservative arguments found in Project 2025, students critically engage with perspectives opposing gender equity, reproductive justice and education. By identifying rhetorical strategies, logical flaws, and evidence gaps in these arguments, students develop research-based counterarguments and present them in accessible formats.
Eloise Wyatt	2026	Reconsidering Bates’s History	What does it mean for a college to be founded by abolitionists and funded by cotton produced by enslaved people? One way to answer this question is to look at some of the sources related to the founding of the college. Another way is to examine the ways that college has told its own history in books, student theses, and admissions materials. This panel will report on some of our findings, both in terms of the evidence we have found and in terms of the silences that remain. In the evidence and the silences are clues to Bates College’s history and to why that history matters.
Amanda Zerbib	2025	Research and the Public Good: Multidisciplinary Explorations	How can undergraduate research contribute to community well-being and social justice? This year’s Community-Engaged Research Fellows hail from diverse disciplines, but they share an interest in the public purposes of higher education and the potential of research to build on community strengths and address community needs. This session will feature community-engaged projects targeting a range of issues and developed in collaboration with diverse community partners.
Raven Zhang	2028	Gender, Power, and Politics	The students in this panel explore an innovative group project designed to deepen student understanding of contentious political and social debates surrounding gender, power, and politics. Through the structured analysis of conservative arguments found in Project 2025, students critically engage with perspectives opposing gender equity, reproductive justice and education. By identifying rhetorical strategies, logical flaws, and evidence gaps in these arguments, students develop research-based counterarguments and present them in accessible formats.
Phoebe Zhou	2026	Student Research on Roman Slavery	This panel highlights original student research from CMS/HIST 301: Slavery in Ancient Rome. Presentations include topics like gladiators, slaves in the Roman army, and using critical fabulation to reconstruct narratives of abscondment.
Danny Zuniga Zarat	2025	Artist Talks by AVC Studio Art Thesis Students	Our studio art seniors will be presenting an artist talk to talk about their 1 year thesis journey in their studios. Here they will talk about their own process to transform their ideas into an art exhibition in the museum through research and making.