Dissertations in Progress

Kohar Avakian: ”Before and After: Racial Justice, Reparations, and the Palimpsests of Genocide” Advisor: Matthew Jacobson, Lisa Lowe; Committee Members: Daniel HoSang, Laura Wexler
 
Frankie Barrett: “Valuing Cheap: The Rise of the Dollar Store Economy” Advisors: Crystal Feimster, Michael Denning; Committee Members: Scott Herring, Lisa Lowe
 

Candace Borders“Towards a Method of Refusal: Black Women’s Public Housing Activism in St. Louis” Advisor: Crystal Feimster; Committee Members: Aimee Cox, Lisa Lowe, Matthew Jacobson

Sofia Cutler“Lanscapes of Consumption: Logistics, Race and Space in Northern New Jersey” Advisors: Michael Denning, Mary Lui; Committee Members: Jennifer Klein, Matthew Jacobson

Karla Cornejo Villavicencio: “Migrants in the Biosphere: Migrants, Water, and the Politics of Pain” Advisor: Kathryn Dudley; Committee Members: Alicia Schmidt Camacho, Albert Laguna

Nancy Escalante: ““She is the First of Many”: The María Guardado Collective and Intergenerational Counter-Archiving by U.S. Central Americans in Los Angeles” Advisors: Matthew Jacobson, Albert Laguna; Committee Members: Melissa Barton

Madeleine Han:  “Demilitarizing War: Culture, Tourism, and US Militarism in South Korea” Advisor: Lisa Lowe; Committee Members: Michael Denning, Mary Lui, Sunny Xiang

Charlotte Hecht“Exposed: Visualizing the Landscapes of the Nuclear Present” Advisor; Laura Barraclough; Committee Members: Matthew Jacobson, Chitra Ramalingam,  Laura Wexler

Isaac Jean-Francois: ”Black Gay Aesthetics” Advisor: Roderick Ferguson; Committee Members: Daphne Brooks, Marta Figlerowicz, Ellie Hisama (Toronto), Karen Barad (Santa Cruz)   

Alison Kibbe“Stitching Pathways through the Plantation: Black (Im)mobilities and Practices of Belonging in the New World Belonging in the New World” Advisors: Aimee Cox, Albert Laguna; Committee Member: Laura Barraclough

Katy Maldonado Dominguez:  “Displaced Kinships: Central American Constellations of Belonging and Refusal” Advisor: Alicia Schmidt Camacho; Committee Members:  Leigh-Anna Hidalgo, Roderick Ferguson, Lesiy Abrego (UCLA)

Brennan McDaniel“A Healing Instrument: The Harp in the Secular Clinic” Advisor: Zareena Grewal; Committee Members: Greta LaFleur, Sally Promey, Travis Zadeh

Dolma Ombadykow“Shifting Mechanics of the Human: Race, Gender, Generation (1865-1968)” Advisor: Greta LaFleur; Committee Members: Joanna Radin, Kalindi Vora

Isabel Ortiz“Narrative and Non-Narrative in the Reproduction of the Modern Self” Advisors: Margaret Homans, Laura Wexler; Committee Member: Tavia Nyong’o

Maryam Parhizkar“Designs of Another World: Primitivity, Modernity and Racial Entanglements in 20th-Century U.S. Performance and Aesthetics” Advisor: Daphne Brooks ; Committee Members: Alicia Schmidt Camacho, Kathryn Lofton

Damanpreet Pelia: “Market of Souls: Missionaries and the Making of Nineteenth-Century Panjab” Advisors: Mary Lui, Sunil Amrith; Committee Members: Michael Denning, Lisa Lowe

Hector PeraltaKumeyaay Valleys, Mexican Opportunities: Race, Territory, and Belonging in East County San Diego” Advisor: Daniel HoSang; Committee Members: Laura Barraclough, Alicia Schmidt Camacho, Professor Ana Ramos-Zayas

Maria Jose PlascenciaAqui Empieza La Patria: Labor and Placemaking in Tijuana from 1930-1970” Advisor: Laura Barraclough; Committee Members:  Alicia Schmidt Camacho, Matthew Jacobon, Stephen Pitti

Olivia Polk“We Can Dream the Dark: “Black Lesbianism and the Ethics of Black Queerness” Advisors: Roderick Ferguson, Erica R. Edwards; Committee Members: Greta LaFleur, Tavia Nyong’o

Katherine Ponds“Upheaval: A Theory of Black Tragic Aesthetics” Advisors Tavia Nyong’o, Emily Greenwood; Committee Members: Daphne Brooks, Shane Vogel

Daniella Posy: “Crafting Blackness: The Social Construction of Race, Gender, and Sexuality in 20th Century African American Periodicals” Advisor: Roderick Furguson; Committee Members: Greta LaFleur, Amy Herzog (GS, CUNY)

Jocelyn Proietti“Outsider Blackness: Black Radical Feminists and the Philosophy of Aesthetics, 1970-1996” Advisor: Daphne Brooks; Committee Members: Greta LaFleur, Matthew Jacobson, Kobena Mercer

Amanda Rivera: ”Domestic Foreigners in the Constitution State: Puerto Rican Education Reform and Political Belonging in Southern Connecticut, 1966-2024” Advisor: Ana Ramos-Zayas; Committee Members: Mary Lui, Daniel Martinez HoSang, Mérida Rúa (Northwestern University)

Isabella Robbins“Relationality and Being: Indigeneity, Space and Transit in Global Contemporary Art”  Advisor: Nicola Suthor; Committee Members: Ned Blackhawk, Roderick Ferguson, Pamela Lee

Sylvia Ryerson“Calls From Home: Carceral Cartographies and Contestations through Central Appalachia” Advisors: Kathryn Dudley, Daniel HoSang; Committee Members: Lisa Lowe, Matthew Jacobson

Melinda Stang: “Crypts of Fear: A Cultural History of American Haunts” Advisor: Kathryn Lofton; Committee Members: Matthew Jacobson, Katherine Trumpener, Ellen Seiter (USC)

Babette Thomas: ““Can You Hear Me Now?” Twentieth-Century Black Feminist Soundwork in Transmission and Reception” Advisor: Daphne Brooks; Committee Members: Brian Kane, Matthew Jacobson, Lisa Lowe

Minh Vu“Corrugated Care: The Kinship of Cardboard and Enfolded Militarisms” Advisors: Lisa Lowe, Sunny Xiang; Committee Members: Roderick Ferguson, Mary Lui

Yaprak Yildirim: ”“To Die as a Woman”: Feminicide and Islamist Neoliberalism” Advisors: Fatima El-Tayeb, Evren Savci; Committee Members: Lisa Lowe, Eda Pepi