With the MAPH thesis serving as the culmination of the program, MAPH preceptors annually select projects to be publicly recognized for their excellent and innovative scholarship.
Click the bolded links to jump to each section.
CREATIVE
Fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and more that demonstrate intentionality of form, control of craft, and thematic coherence
Winners: Tariq Karibian | Cam Wade
CRITICAL
Nuanced, cogent and exciting interventions into contemporary scholarly conversations in the humanities
Winners: M Angel | Leo Ross | David Rubin | Rena Zhang
INTREPID
Ambitious, public-facing thesis projects that cross between critical and creative modes
Winners: Nataša Kvesic | Nia Pappas
EXTERNAL
Awards bestowed by UChicago departmental foundations onto critical theses that articulated timely topics within contemporary scholarship.
Karla Scherer Center for the Study of American Culture:
Emma Adler | Colin Lavery
Nicholson Center for British Studies:
Elisha Hamlin | Jenna Novosel
Art History Department:
Diana Freundl
CEAS M.A. Thesis Award in Japan Studies:
Simon Lenoe
CREATIVE AWARDS
Tariq Karibian | Advisor: Rachel Cohen | Preceptor: Darrel Chia
“Expelled from Eden a Second Time: The Watermelon Men and the Poetry of Mahmoud Darwish”
Particularly among the displaced and the disenfranchised, the art of writing provides a stage for creative expression, a platform for political resistance, and a sanctuary for unfettered existence. As such, my thesis encompasses the prologue and first chapter of my novel as well as a critical analysis of Mahmoud Darwish’s poetry collection Why Did You Leave the Horse Alone?. For the past few years, I’ve been drafting my first novel, The Watermelon Man. The seeds for the story and the genesis of Nazir, the novel’s protagonist, were planted during conversations I’d had with my grandfather about his life and topics such as tradition, immigration, colorism, and colonial resistance. Using my family’s history and memories as a starting point, the novel slowly blossomed into a 20th century historical fiction drawing on themes of racial intersectionality, musical expression, and managing expectations. For the critical component, I chose to analyze the Darwish collection alongside my novel excerpt because I found new meaning in Darwish’s poetry that mirrored similar ideas I’d been exploring through my novel. After rereading the collection for the first time in over a decade, I noticed how passionately Darwish’s verses spoke about exile and artistry and identity through semi-autobiographical, lyrical narrative. There is a particular journey Darwish’s speaker (adjacently, Darwish himself) embarks on as an artist in exile that parallels with Nazir’s own story. In many ways, the final version of this thesis is an ode to the great artists like Darwish and to my family for the preservation of our heritage through storytelling.
Preceptor Darrel Chia on Tariq’s Project
This creative thesis is the beginning of a novel – what we read here is the prologue and chapter 1 – set in the Palestinian countryside. The writing is luminous, possessing an impressive economy with words, setting out complex relationships between people and place, and moving between Arabic and English dialogue in a way that feels natural. You will notice the attentiveness to details in this piece, the ironic humor, and the ability to craft memorable characters within a large and unfamiliar social tableau. Tariq shows rather than tells very effectively – especially in examining the politics of colonialism, and unfolds the scenery for us with impressive precision. Both Tariq’s creative program advisor and I anticipate this on its way to becoming a book project for publication based on its merit. The critical piece speaks to the influence of Mahmoud Darwish. A pleasure to work with.
Cam Wade | Advisor: Kaneesha Parsard | Preceptor: Chris Carloy
“(Un)Becoming Human”
(Un)Becoming Human is a pet project of mine and a labor of love weaved together with the help of so many people, but especially by my amazing friends that inspired this script. Un(Becoming) Human is a pilot episode that follows the lives of eight college students as they learn what it means to be coming-of-age as members of Gen-Z as the supernatural ravages its way through their small southern town. Drawing from popular shows such as Teen Wolf, Euphoria, and Wolf Pack; (Un)Becoming Human sees its characters dealing with experiences not all too far from our own: catty boyfriend drama, suave frat boys, messy family issues, and broken promises. In contrast, as its main character Luke grows to learn more and more about the supernatural and his relationship within it, the aptly titled Genesis Corporation seems to be moving closer and closer to making moves on the city of Macon that will unsettle everything and everyone around it.
While juggling a variety of characters and plots, at its core, (Un)Becoming Human is a story about the enduring power of friendship. Violence, sex, and comedy might follow this group of college kids like a specter, but the one thing this community can count on is each other. Through terror and love, these eight grapple with what it means to care for another. They scream, they yell, they fight, they fuck, they love. And in the end, they always try to make it back to one another, because all they really have is each other.
Preceptor Chris Carloy on Cam’s Project
Cam Wade’s thesis takes the form of a pilot script for (Un)Becoming Human, a proposed TV show centered on a close-knit friend group of college-aged vampires, witches, werewolves, and humans. Across a whirlwind first episode, Cam traces lines of interpersonal drama connecting each of the characters, sets up personal and familial traumas faced by the core group of “besties”, and hints at a corporate-scientific-military plot that will threaten not only their relationships but their lives. Drawing on Cam’s love of teen dramas and the fantastic, (Un)Becoming Human is at once campily genre-savvy and deadly serious in its exploration of Gen-Z mores, identities, and struggles. Language, characterization, and other elements (such as music cues) successfully establish a generational and geographic specificity without losing a broader audience in the process. Action escalates across the final pages of the script until the reader is genuinely afraid for the safety of characters who they met mere scenes earlier.
CRITICAL AWARDS
M Angel | Advisor: Jason Riggle | Preceptor: Chris Carloy
“The Phonology of Emoji: An Analysis of the B Button Emoji”
Previous research on phonology in emojis found that when an emoji replaces a letter or word, it uses the sound information of the letter/word it replaces. This thesis investigates a potential counter-example to this body of research: the B button emoji (🅱️). This emoji is able to replace non-<b> letters (e.g., 🅱️lear for clear), so where does the sound come from? To answer this question, 2,342 tweets using the emoji were analyzed, along with 24 participants completing a grammaticality acceptability judgment task, a phonetic elicitation task, and a metalinguistic interview. The phonetic elicitations found that pronunciation of the emoji differed significantly from [b] in four variables: voice-onset time, burst pressure, sound intensity, and word intensity. Therefore, the emoji does not get its sound information from the letter <b>, but rather has a novel phonological component, meaning unique sound information is directly attached to it. The tweet analysis found that linguistic rules constrain the usage of the emoji: the emoji can replace any consonant at the beginning of the word or any plosive at the onset of the stressed syllable. When a word using the emoji incorrectly (breaking the previous rules) was read, participants would correct for it by pronouncing features of the emoji in the grammatically correct place, showing not only the novel phonological component of the emoji but also a subconsciously internalized grammar of usage for the emoji, proving that emoji can exhibit linguistic features and behaviors.
Preceptor Chris Carloy on M’s Project
In this thesis, M Angel makes a significant intervention in the way we understand the phonology of emoji through a multi-faceted study of the B button emoji. Whereas previous phonological work on emoji has understood them to be reproducing the phonetic content of the graphemes they replace, this research shows the B button emoji to have its own unique, novel phonological content. Put another way, M has shown that emoji may have unique linguistic and grammatical rules attached to them, and that users may be seen to recognize and adhere to these rules, and even to make adjustments to avoid grammatical mistakes. M designed this study along two fronts: an analysis of over 2300 tweets containing the emoji, and a multi-task exercise and interview with 24 participants. The resulting written study, clear and careful in its presentation of disciplinary context, stakes, and findings, is sufficiently meticulous for a specialist reader while understandable for a non-linguist. While highly technical, this study has exciting ramifications for readers who care about communication, meaning-making, and social practice in online, new media platforms.
Leo Ross | Advisor: Patrick Jagoda | Preceptor: Megan Tusler
“Jane Schoenbrun and the Phenomenology of the Loading Screen”
What role might phenomenology play in a twenty-first-century media system that operates at speeds far beyond those of human consciousness? The predictive algorithms behind much of the content we see on the internet incorporate such massive amounts of user data so rapidly that even the programmers building these algorithms are not sure why they make the decisions they do. Accordingly, human consciousness seems to take a backseat when it comes to determining the flow of online life, as viral memes, popular trends, and political ideologies emerge without an identifiable human source. How, then, should we understand our conscious experiences of these phenomena? Through a close reading of Jane Schoenbrun’s 2021 internet horror film We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, my thesis argues that our phenomenal experiences of online life have epistemological and practical value as our primary means of understanding and intervening in the twenty-first-century media system, even if these experiences do not reveal much about the ontology of this media system. In other words, although our conscious perception of the twenty-first-century media system necessarily lags behind the algorithms that make it run, this perception is nonetheless invaluable for registering our responses to this system and correcting its trajectory (albeit imperfectly). In making this argument, the thesis strikes a middle ground between queer theoretical and media theoretical perspectives on ineffability and affect. It joins recent media theoretical strains of affect theory in positing an incomprehensible twenty-first-century media system as a more visible manifestation of the ineffable flows of affect coursing through everyday life. Borrowing from queer theory, it identifies attention to this ineffability as a potential starting point for radical critique. Arguing that we cannot consciously comprehend the twenty-first-century media system, I contend that we nevertheless must learn to feel for it.
Preceptor Megan Tusler on Leo’s Project
This critical essay addresses a widely-asked question: what does the internet feel like—as a phenomenological, affective, and aesthetic experience? Unlike most essays on the internet, this thesis is a rigorous, well-researched, and argumentatively original piece. The writer meditates on objectivity, subjectivity, and intersubjectivity to arrive at new questions around embodiment (how certain kinds of media upend the distinctiveness of the body) and how effects like dehiscence and dysphoria can arise from this. When the writer states, “the phenomenal experience of the loading screen exemplifies the internet feeling… This feeling can be described broadly as the forward thrusting of an isolated, dissociated, objectified, entranced digital subject into confrontation with a defamiliarizing aesthetic that incites the subject back towards phenomenological subjectivity,” they are engaging seriously with how being online inflects on the problem of the subject itself.
David Rubin | Advisor: Sergio Delgado Moya | Preceptor: Tristan Schweiger
“Direct Speech and Resistance in Nicanor Parra’s Lear, Rey & Mendigo”
This paper examines Nicanor Parra’s Lear, Rey & Mendigo, a 1992 translation of King Lear. It explores the text’s engagement with the fraught historical and political context of post-dictatorship Chile. First, I connect Parra’s Lear to his broader theory of antipoetry, which emphasizes popular culture and language over intellectual abstractions and grandiloquence. Drawing on Parra’s own writings and interviews, I suggest that the translation is an antipoetic text in its use of everyday speech and its irreverent attitude towards established discourse. I then argue that the text’s relationship to post-dictatorship Chile lies in its ability to mobilize an affective response in its audience. Through a close reading of Parra’s formal and linguistic translation choices, I suggest that he channels and vents powerful (and often repressed) emotions such as anger, pain, grief, and madness, speaking in a communal voice that variously laughs, shouts, swears, and howls back at authority. The result, I maintain, is a deeply embodied and physical response to the pain of the dictatorship; one that possesses a destructive potential in its ability to question, subvert, and ridicule hierarchical structures.
Preceptor Tristan Schweiger on David’s Project:
I am thrilled to nominate this outstanding essay for a MAPH critical thesis award. The essay examines Nicanor Parra’s 1992 Spanish translation of King Lear, which was performed in post-Pinochet Chile. Building from an astute and well-researched examination of Parra’s commitment to “antipoetry” and “antiphilosophy” – both of which eschew overly intellectualized or grandiloquent language in favor everyday speech and experience – the essay argues Parra’s translation engages with its historical and political context by challenging hierarchies and advancing a proletarian (and distinctly Chilean voice). But perhaps even more impressive than its sophisticated historicism is its extremely astute close-reading and skills in translation that it deploys in support of that historicist argument. It is truly fantastic work.
Rena Zhang | Advisor: Wu Hung | Preceptor: Darrel Chia
“Fashion and Archaeology on the Chinese Attire Restoration Team’s ‘2020 Chinese Attire Restoration Show’”
Founded in 2007, the Shanghai-based Chinese Attire Restoration Team (CART) is an organization of professional researchers who specialize in the study and reconstruction of clothing, hairstyles and personal ornaments from Chinese history. Whether it be through their fashion shows, online engagements or appearances on state media, they have become an integral contributor to the Hanfu Movement—a youth-led fashion subculture which started in 2003 and aims to reintroduce traditional Chinese culture and aesthetics into modern life through the medium of clothing. This thesis uses the work of CART to explore how Hanfu Movement participants have been adapting artistic material from China’s past to invent new cultural signs and negotiate the concept of “Chineseness” in an era of globalization. It examines CART’s relationship to the Movement’s history, analyzes their systematic process for making costume restorations, and finally explores the compositional structure of two models that were displayed on their “2020 Chinese Attire Restoration Show.” Ultimately, this thesis argues that the sartorial pieces created by CART and the Hanfu Movement constitute a unique form of modern art which strategically synthesizes archaeology and fashion design. It calls to attention the intellectual and artistic agency of young creators who, while pursuing an ideal sense of cultural authenticity, are actually designing original artworks that answer to 21st century needs.
Preceptor Darrel Chia on Rena’s Project
The work that is evident in this thesis is quite phenomenal, from the prodigious research into and historicizing of the grass-roots Hanfu movement, the writer’s meticulous attention to their objects such as the costumes featured in the 2020 Restoration Show, and deep research on cultural revivalism. The writing capably takes us on a journey into this fascinating phenomena, examining its cultural and political resonances with nuance and thoughtfulness. It really sets out to understand the motivations and effects of an organization like CART, which seeks to maintain a kind of fragile objectivity between the imperatives of archaeology and fashion, without merely reducing a complex phenomenon to simple nationalist agendas. For what it’s worth, the student took the revision process very seriously and completely rewrote big sections of this thesis to produce what you read here.
INTREPID AWARDS
Nataša Kvesic | Advisor: Megan Tusler | Preceptor: Alexandra Fraser
“Encountering the Latin Bridge: Place, Performance, and National Identity”
This thesis was an incredibly personal endeavor and soon became a crucial step in my understanding of my very own identity formation as a Yugoslavian from the city of Sarajevo, Bosnia. I was incredibly interested in the role that the built environment, particularly the city, takes in the performance of national identity in Bosnia. Looking closely at the popular and ever-changing Latin Bridge in my hometown of Sarajevo, I set out to identify the bridge as an active agent in the creation of a new, post-Yugoslav Wars Bosnian identity. The physical features of the bridge, its historical significance and its use as a symbol of the Bosnian national identity are all engaged in order to argue that the encounter between the bridge and the public is a performance of the Bosnian national identity, both during the times of Yugoslavia and in its disintegration. The paper is split into three sections, acting as a pathway to, on and away from the bridge. I lean into the sensation of being a part of the public, that is a resident of the city or a tourist. Including reviews and photos from tourists on TripAdvisor was something that aided in my exploration of the encounter between the public and the bridge as a performance of the contemporary Bosnian national identity. It was challenging to include reviews in a scholarly work, but ultimately aided in the exploratory and path-making spirit of the project. Supporting this exploration was (what I like to consider) a toolkit of theoretical framework which situated the bridge as a trauma site and as a literal surface of contemporary life, where Bosnian nationalism is encountered on a daily basis. The remainder of the project brings to the forefront personal experiences of residents of Sarajevo with the Latin Bridge and what the changes to the surface and the bridge’s status as a symbol have meant for the people of the city. This project has since left a lasting impact on my academic career but will forever represent a big step in my own path towards understanding my status as a Yugoslavian refugee from Bosnia and my experience walking through Sarajevo as somebody who is forever destined to be disconnected with it.
Preceptor Alexandra Fraser on Nataša’s Project
It was my delight to nominate Encountering the Latin Bridge for the Intrepid category. This is an ambitious project that begins from, and indeed continually returns to, Nataša’s personal experience of their hometown of Sarajevo in the years since the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. It is a fresh, supremely MAPH-y take on urban and architectural studies, and a boldly creative approach to building an argument that mimics the type of personal, performative encounter that one might have with the urban fabric itself. While some studies of the city spaces, memorials and trauma sites, or ethnic and nationalist communities treat monuments like the Latin Bridge as a symbol, Nataša draws on her own refugee experience—”somewhere between resident and visitor”—to reject such readings. Instead, she culls a truly interdisciplinary cast of sources ranging from Michel de Certeau and Maja Babić to TripAdvisor and Zainab Bahrani to make a compelling case for seeing the bridge as part of a living, breathing, material practice of identity formation in Sarajevo—one that draws on a traumatic past and projects into an everforming present.
It’s also worth mentioning that this is but one element of an ambitious, creative, and whole-hearted immersion into this project over the MAPH year. Much like the practices and performances of identity that they describe in the text, Nataša has truly thrown herself into the practice of sustained inquiry and critical reflection. In my opinion, this is the kind of project that MAPH is uniquely poised to cultivate and, judging from the final product, Nataša seems to recognize just that.
Nia Pappas | Advisor: Mark Payne | Preceptor: Megan Tusler
“From Meditations to Manifesto and Beyond: A Speculative? Correspondence Between Rene Descartes and Donna Haraway”
I don’t wish to reflect too much on my thesis, in the interest of avoiding redundancy, since I do a lot of that in the secondary component of the thesis itself. With regard to shedding new or different light on my project, I suppose there is something to say about free writing. I know outlining and planning are important for many types of writing, but despite this project being a quilt of quotation and primary reference, no outline or template was made. The published words of each author were the driving force and inspiration for how the dialogue was to unfold. Each time I sat to write I wrote two letters: Haraway then Descartes. Haraway’s past and present influence and contribution opening doors to paths that could lead to many different places and Descartes’ timeless discoveries which aided in the choosing of paths. Their historical distance and cultural incongruency seemed to make for a fun and unique intellectual back-and-forth. The choosing of these two individuals in the first place was almost entirely serendipitous. The germane stages of this work were very much stumbled upon in the dark. I had nearly forgotten about Donna Haraway and Descartes was one of those canonical figures I was purposely trying to avoid. Nevertheless, a few conversations with friends and a couple timely lectures later, my brain decided to wind itself around Haraway and Descartes, and I went with it. I suppose an aspect of my project that I was surprised to learn is the importance of embracing whimsy and detours in certain aspects of academic work. I hope if nothing else, my project demonstrates that! Happy reading :))
Preceptor Megan Tusler on Nia’s Project
I nominated this thesis for the “intrepid” award based on its vibrant engagement with philosophical methods, its bracing writing, and its courage in taking on a speculative project. Nia has produced a thoughtful account of the project’s emergence in their critical companion, but it is in the correspondence proper that the thesis really shines. She has produced a vivid portrait of two scholars’ speculated philosophical conversation: Donna Haraway and René Descartes engage in a lively discussion of empiricism, knowledge, and embodiment, and gently challenge each other on matters of God and human living-together. On its surface a strictly creative project, this thesis’s mastery of these writers’ many texts demonstrates its additional academic significance.
EXTERNAL AWARDS
Karla Scherer Center for the Study of American Culture
Nicholson Center for British Studies
CEAS M.A. Thesis Award in Japan Studies
KARLA SCHERER CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF AMERICAN CULTURE
Emma Adler | Advisor: Kenneth Warren | Preceptor: Tristan Schweiger
“Social Narrative, Disability, and Race in Stephen Crane’s The Monster“
Stephen Crane’s 1898 novella “The Monster” centers on Henry Johnson, a Black man whose face becomes disfigured in a fire while he saves the son of his white employer, Dr. Trescott. The story highlights the fraught race relations between the white and Black residents of Johnson’s New York town as the narrative portrays the ostracizing shift in the way the townspeople treat Johnson after he becomes disabled. Literary scholars have frequently taken “The Monster ” as an object of study given Crane’s striking allegory of racism during the Reconstruction Era, which he develops through the figure of monstrosity. Despite the fact that Crane’s monstrous metaphor is born in relation to Johnson’s emergent disability identity, and scholarship by Susan Schweik revealing historical salience to Crane’s construction of Johnson’s disability, critics have largely overlooked the significance of disability in the novella. Addressing this oversight, I argue that attending to disability representation sheds light on “The Monster” as a text that takes us towards a criticism of disability and race as social narratives that misrepresent reality and impose oppressive social norms. However, the text presents these norms as impervious to social change, calling into question Crane’s own commitment to challenging these constructs.
Preceptor Tristan Schweiger on Emma’s Project
This essay takes up Stephen Crane’s 1898 novella The Monster and contributes to the scholarly conversation around this text by arguing for understanding its treatment of disability as neither secondary to nor symbolic of its examination of racism and the construction of race – but as a central concern that fundamentally intersects with those discourses. In a theoretically grounded and well-researched analysis, the essay argues that The Monster interrogates the social narrativization of both race and disability that “don’t describe but rather impose reality.” At the same time, this essay examines the text’s own ambivalence toward and participation in that narrativization.
The careful attention to its object; the way the key terms were woven in; and the broad engagement with research – are all impressive here. In particular, we appreciate the carefully considered nuance in the framing of the essay’s claim. The writing is strong, and the primary object is represented accurately while simultaneously being shown to us from slightly different angles in a way that proves illuminating.
Colin Lavery | Advisor: Hilary Strang | Preceptor: Andrew Pitel
“until sentience it moves us”
My project was motivated by popular and critical misunderstandings of Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, especially the tendency to overlook the characters’ perseverance in the face of societal collapse. Rather than reading the novel as a particularly prescient dystopia, I argue that the novel urges its readers to imagine new forms of communal aid and survival that could carry us through our own impending crises. I compare the practices and beliefs of the Earthseed community to works within the Black anarchist tradition to argue that the utopian core at the heart of Sower can only be realized through an adherence to anarchist principles of organization and a historical perspective that allows us to consider the failures of past radical movements.
Preceptor Andrew Pitel on Colin’s Project
The essay argues that the reception of Octavia Butler’s The Parable of the Sower as a work of ‘critical dystopia’ is mistaken, and proposes to treat the novel as a Utopian work within the Black radical and Black anarchist traditions. It effectively makes this case, and is interestingly structured around a reading of different ‘spaces’ in the text, while also impressively engaging with an array of theoretical works – both within the Black anarchist tradition and, for example, with Walter Benjamin.
There is palpable energy and excitement in the writing. We also liked its robust research and sincere engagement with scholarship.
NICHOLSON CENTER FOR BRITISH STUDIES
Elisha Hamlin | Advisor: Ellen McKay | Preceptor: Sarah Kunjummen
“‘Cruel, Ireligious Piety:’ Eucharistic Tropes and Witnessing Whiteness in Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus”
While the excessive and chaotic violence of Titus Andronicus may distinguish it from Shakespeare’s broader body of work, this thesis examines how that violence echoes the presentations of the Eucharist in medieval drama, particularly the mystery cycle plays. These sacramental tropes are not passive elements of the story, but rather rituals activated by the Andronici in their struggle to assert a dominant picture of Roman identity. While largely removed from its theological significance, the Eucharist as trope offers a specific pattern of presentation that the characters draw upon to display a version of Roman piety tied to performative whiteness in contrast to the black characters of the play, witnessed to by both the other characters in the play and Shakespeare’s early modern audience.
Preceptor Sarah Kunjummen on Elisha’s Project
The ambition of this piece in taking something well-known and allowing us see it in a new way was admirable. The understanding of race here struck us as sophisticated and backed by historicizing evidence while simultaneously attending to the primary text and engaging in substantial close readings. We had the sense that Elisha effectively engaged it as an opportunity to do advanced graduate-level scholarly research, and we think that deserves recognition.
The argument this thesis offers is rich and substantial in bringing together the history of race and racialization and the history of religious iconography. It has a mature relationship with the secondary literature in its field, offering both a concise account of recent trends in the study of its specific object, while also drawing on broader scholarship in its area of inquiry. We noted the distinctive and deep specific literary archive informing its analysis: the medieval mystery cycle plays, including both their ways of imagining the Eucharist, and their ways of imagining racial and religious difference.
Jenna Novosel | Advisor: Hilary Strang | Preceptor: Tristan Schweiger
“Doctor and Disciple: Heterodoxic Science and Epistemological Optimism in Arthur Machen’s The Great God Pan (1894)”
Though British nineteenth-centuriests have begun to see scholarly value in the era’s “weird” fiction, the field regards this genre almost solely as a signpost to cultural fears—a phenomenon Christine Fergusons terms, “the anxiety thesis.” Therefore, I wanted my thesis to argue for the other stylistic, cultural, and narrative qualities that Pan has to offer. My paper brings Arthur Machen’s weird tale, The Great God Pan out of the anxiety thesis by arguing that the text initially stems from a contemporary epistemological optimism– modern science need not disenchant the world, rather it will confirm the existence of an unseen, spiritual realm. However, once the weird nature of Pan makes this epistemological union impossible, the text’s contemporary reader is left with dashed hopes and a sense of existential futility. By inverting occult and scientific conventions, Pan shows how weird fiction explores epistemology as much as it explores anxiety, thereby expanding the scope of what weird fiction contributes to British Literature.
Preceptor Tristan Schweiger on Jenna’s Project
I was thrilled to nominate this thesis for a Nicholson Center for British Studies thesis prize. The essay takes up a famous though still under-studied text from the famous though still under-studied genre of “weird fiction” of the late 19th century – Arthur Machen’s The Great God Pan (1894). While many critical accounts of Machen’s novella have shared what Christine Ferguson has called the “anxiety thesis,” exploring the ways the text registers fears about modern scientific practice, social transformation, and the occult, this essay convincingly argues the novella is about epistemology, and the failed promise of modern science to bring the occult and occult knowledge within its ken. It’s excellent scholarship, an engaging read, and richly deserving of a Nicholson award.
ART HISTORY DEPARTMENT
Diana Freundl | Advisor: Wu Hung | Preceptor: Jessical Landau
“The Lives of Others– Chinese Artists and the Archive in Twentieth Century British Columbia”
Read Full Thesis Here | View Archive
Preceptor Jessica Landau on Diana’s Project
Diana’s is not only well researched and well written, but also truly ground-breaking in its approach to archival absence. Identifying that much scholarship that purports to be decolonial or anti-racist simply explains that histories of the oppressed cannot be told due to archival absences perpetuated by racism, coloniality, and misogyny, this thesis makes strides in rectifying those absences. The problem here, this thesis argues, is that historians continue these absences by pointing to them. Rather than believe that these histories cannot be recoverable and thus continue to perpetuate racism or settler colonialism (albeit while identifying them) – Diana’s project takes cues from radical archiving to create a new archive that unearths, collects, and disseminates stories of artists not only left out of the archive – but also previously left out of the writing of art history. Here – Diana has presented a clear theoretical basis on which she constructed her own archive to more adequately address this absence.
CEAS M.A. THESIS AWARD IN JAPAN STUDIES
Simon Lenoe | Advisor: Michael Bourdaghs | Preceptor: Helina Mazza-Hilway
“Racialization as Gaze Across Languages and Disciplines in the Early Works of Mori Ōgai”
This thesis primarily focuses on race as a phenomenon in the works of Mori Ōgai, one of the highest regarded authors of Japan’s Meiji Era who also worked as a doctor and studied abroad in Germany. English-language studies of Meiji literature in the past have generally ignored the issue of race. More recently, scholars have demonstrated that racialized language exists in Ōgai’s literature, but they do not explain its aesthetic effects. To investigate how race manifests in Ōgai’s works, I focus on his time in Germany, specifically his medical essays and studies written in Berlin and Munich, and his 1890 story Maihime (“The Dancing Girl”) written upon his return to Japan and based upon his time abroad. I propose that across his early scientific and literary works, Mori Ōgai is grappling with race in the form of a European gaze upon East Asia, and that this gaze is, by its nature, hybrid.
Much of my work as a scholar is influenced by personal experience, and this paper is no exception. Like Ōgai, I also spent significant time abroad in Germany in my youth, and I still recall the way in which race impacted my and my Japanese mother’s experiences in Berlin. During my time in college, as I read Meiji authors like Natsume Sōseki for the first time, my mother recommended that I do a research project on Mori Ōgai. She explained that Ōgai had studied in Germany, meaning that my German language skills could come in handy if applied to a study on him. Reading Maihime for the first time, I saw descriptions of racialized encounters that paralleled my and my mother’s experiences in Berlin 125 years later. It was with this in mind that I wrote this thesis and why I would like to thank my mother, Mari Tsuchiya, for her role in its realization.