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Past Program Participants

Learn about the SSRC Dissertation Proposal Development Program from past program participants.

Video

Participants describe their experiences in the DPD program.   

Past participants

Summer 2023 Participants

  •  Alex Baines, Interdisciplinary Program in Theatre and Drama (SoC)
    • Escape in Time: Performance, Reinscription, and Empire in Heritage Aesthetic Sites.
  • Ray Buckner, Religious Studies (WCAS)
    • Touching, Buddhist, Bodies: Formations of Queer and Trans Buddhism in Bangkok
  • Valeria Chávez Roncal, Music (Bienen)
    • Selective Musical Celebrations: Negotiating Indigeneity in Peruvian Cumbia Fusion Music
  • Alison Choi, History (WCAS)
    • Korean Diasporic Joy: Art and Community Activism in the Twenty-First Century
  • Ashleigh Deosaran, Art History (WCAS)
    • Atmospheric Aesthetics and Contemporary Art: Collaborations and Conversations with/in Anglophone Caribbean Artist Collectives
  • Hannah Feiner, Communication Sciences and Disorders (SoC)
    • Barriers and Facilitators of Spanish-Dominant Caregivers’ Involvement in Early Intervention: Integrating Provider, Caregiver, and Interpreter Perspectives
  • Maura Fennelly, Sociology (WCAS)
    • Boundary-making via Residential Organizations: The Formation, Routines, and Outcomes of Homeowners’ Associations
  • Julio Garcia Solares, Anthropology (WCAS)
    • Cultural Productions and Placemaking within Latinx Hardcore Punk Music Scenes in Los Angeles County
  • Jiwon Jung, Slavic Languages and Literatures (WCAS)
    • Picturing beyond the Boundaries: The Question of Mental Illness Represented in A. Chekhov’s Literary Works
  • Daisy Donaji Matias, Performance Studies (SoC)
    • The Body Does Not Exist: Imagining Alternate Corporealities
  • Charlotte Mencke, Political Science (WCAS)
    • “Thought Has No Mothers but Only Fathers” – Gender, Tragedy, and Representation in the Work of Christa Wolf
  • Govind Narayan Ponnuchamy, English (WCAS)
    • Residues of Victorian Energy – Transhistorical and Transimperial Energy Regimes in Late Victorian Empire and Independent India
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  • Eduardo Ramirez Bello, Spanish and Portuguese (WCAS)
    • Miraculous Development: Modern Visual Cultures in Mexico (1940s-1970s)
  • Tayler Scriber, Screen Cultures (SoC)
    • Is This All There Is?: Interstitial Space, Historicity, and Race in Media
  • Soumya Rachel Shailendra, Comparative Literary Studies (WCAS)
    • Transing Blackness: Race, Caste, and Colorism in Contemporary Dalit Writings
  • Mustafa Siddiqui, African American Studies (WCAS)
    • Trans* Synthetics: Black Immaterial Praxis and the Politics of Gender Authenticity
  • Andrew Stein, Human Development and Social Policy (SESP)
    • “Straight” As: Accountability, Abstinence, and Anti-WOKEness in K-12 Education Policy
  • Marquis Taylor, History (WCAS)
    • “In Pursuit of Democracy:” African American Youth Movements during the Interwar Period 1876-1945

Summer 2022 Participants

  • Andrew Barrett, Music (Bienen)
    • Transatlantic Musical Networks and United States-Spanish Relations during the Early Cold War
  • Syd Gonzalez, Anthropology (WCAS)
    • Latinx Productions of Masculinity: Embodiments of Masculinity through Material Culture in Houston, TX
  • Fortunate Kelechi Ekwuruke, Human Development and Social Policy (SESP)
    • More than a Home: The Role of Housing Insecurity in Shaping Adolescent Development Trajectories
  • Claudia Kinahan, Interdisciplinary PhD in Theatre and Drama (SoC)
    • Virtual Women: Intersections of Performance, Gender, and Labour in New Media Technologies
  • Monique Newton, Political Science (WCAS)
    • Worst Behavior: How State Sanctioned Traumatic Events Impact Local Political Participation of Black Neighborhoods in the United States
  • Aoi Saito, History (WCAS)
    • Contesting Welfare in Red-light Districts: Women's Networks, Self-Protection, and Public Health in Japan 1925 to 1965

Summer 2021 Participants

  • Jennifer Dibbern, Linguistics (WCAS)
    • Raciolinguistic ideologies within a Chicago Latinx community: How social information shapes language perception and use in bilinguals
  • Sarah Dwider, Art History (WCAS)
    • Traveling Artists, Traveling Idioms: Egyptian Artist and Formative Spheres of Artistic and Diplomatic Exchange, 1952-1970
  • Sophie Reilly, Anthropology (WCAS)
    • Cooking Meals and Creating Resilience: Examining Food Security in Transconquest Peru
  • Jesse Rothbard, Spanish and Portuguese (WCAS)
    • De las ruinas de Sodoma: Queer Survival and Resistance in Latin American Narratives of Crime (1900-1940s)
  • Luna Vincent White, Sociology (WCAS)
    • The Master's Tools: Whiteness and Racial Framing in U.S. Black Freedom Movements
  • Erique Zhang, Media, Technology, and Society (SoC)
    • Looking Trans and Being Beautiful: Understanding Conceptions of Beauty among Transgender Women and Femmes

Summer 2020 Participants

  • Jaime Benheim, Linguistics (WCAS)
    • The Sociolinguistic Construction of White Ethnic Identity at a Chicago Catholic High School
  • Sarah J. Breiter, Anthropology (WCAS)
    • Building Landscapes in West Suffolk: Human-Environmental Relations during the Feudal to Capitalist Transition
  • Austin Bryan, Anthropology (WCAS)
    • Sexuality, Gender, and Law: Unequal Regimes of Living and Dying in the East Africa Federation
  • Rikki Byrd, African American Studies (WCAS)
    • In Loving Memory: Performance and the Sartorial Politics of Black Mourning
  • Mian Chen, History (WCAS)
    • Propagandists and the Making of the Communist Propaganda Network (1921-1965)
  • Jennifer Rose Cowhy, Human Development and Social Policy (SESP)
    • Special Education Policy: What is the Current State of Education Policy? And, How Did We Get Here?
  • Ashley P. Ferrell, Rhetoric and Public Culture/Communication Studies (SoC)
    • Accounting for University Pasts: Institutional Legacies, Memory Practices, and Contemporary Modes of Redress
  • Prince Grace, Sociology (WCAS)
    • Racial Calibrations: Constructing “Racial Discrimination” in the International Human Rights Regime
  • Bethany Hill, Art History (WCAS)
    • Space and the Image(inary): Black Feminist World Building and Theory as Praxis in the United States (1965-1985)
  • Emily Lyon, History (WCAS)
    • Domesticating Difference: White Women, Visual and Material Culture, and U.S. Empire, 1870-1930
  • Emily Masincup, Music (Bienen)
    • Signaling Sirens: Representations of the Monstrous Vocal Female in Mexican Horror and Fantasy Cinema
  • Myrna Moretti, Screen Cultures (SoC)
    • Everyday Cyborg: Embodiment and Emerging Consumer Technology in Popular Representations of Everyday Life (1980-2000)
  • Yasmin Silvia Portales-Machado, Spanish and Portuguese (WCAS)
    • Those Families Will Be Queer: Familial Bonds and Sexualities in Cuban Science Fiction Literature and Their Relationship to Political Thought
  • Risa Puleo, Art History (WCAS)
    • The Disorder of Things: Unsettling Western Collections with Indigenous Cosmologies
  • Qi Song, Sociology (WCAS)
    • “Data as the New Oil”? Uncovering Data Production in the Artificial Intelligence Industry as a Social Process
  • Enzo Vasquez Toral, Performance Studies (SoC)
    • Cuir Devotion: Queer and Trans Engagement in the Andean Patron-Saint Fiesta
  • Cinnamon Williams, African American Studies (WCAS)
    • Another Kind of Slavery: Black Feminist Maternal Refusal in the Era of Black Power
  • Anna Zalokostas, English (WCAS)
    • Counternarratives of Globalization: Domestic Labor, Internationalism, and Multiethnic Literature in the 1990s

Summer 2019 participants

  • Enrique Alvear, University of Illinois at Chicago, Sociology
    • Circuits of Neoliberalization: Gang Enforcement in Chicago and Santiago, Chile
  • Claire Arnold, Northwestern University, History (WCAS)
    • The Intimacy of Distance: British Families Around the World, 1780-1914
  • Jessy Bell, Northwestern University, Art History (WCAS)
    • A View of the World to Come: Spatializing Futures and Revolutionary Hope in Soviet and Yugoslav Architecture and Urban Planning (1922–1974)
  • Allena G. Berry, Northwestern University, Learning Sciences (SESP)
    • Historical Imagination in History Classrooms: How Ideology Mediates the Narratives We Construct about the Past, Present, and Future
  • Andrew Born, University of Illinois at Chicago, Urban Planning and Policy
    • Race, Place, and Collaboration: Understanding Urban Governance in Chicago during the Great Black Exodus
  • Marissa Croft, Northwestern University, Communication Studies/Rhetoric and Public Culture (SoC)
    • State of Dress: Rhetorically Fashioning the Ideal Republican Citizen in France, 1789–1799
  • Bright Gyamfi, Northwestern University, History (WCAS)
    • Ghanaian Intellectuals and the Global Development of African Studies, 1966–1992
  • Kévin Irakóze, University of Chicago, Philosophy
    • Impersonal Forms of Justice
  • Benjamin Jones, Northwestern University, Art History (WCAS)
    • What We Cain't Do: Pedagogy and the Art of Charles White, Elizabeth Catlett, and Dewey Crumpler.
  • Mendel Kranz, University of Chicago, Religious Studies
    • In the Shadows of Colonialism: Jewish and Postcolonial Identity in 20th-Century France
  • Yujie Li, University of Chicago, History
    • Wheels and Sweat: Bicycles, Wheelbarrows and Horse-drawn Carts in the Everyday Life of Socialist China, 1949-1976
  • Gervais Marsh, Northwestern University, Performance Studies (SoC)
    • A Wi Seh Slackness: Exploring Representations of Sexualities in the Queer Caribbean
  • Julissa Muñiz, Northwestern University, Human Development and Social Policy (SESP)
    • “I Don't Think Any Kid Should Be Here”: Schooling and Learning in the Carceral Context
  • Idil Ozkan, Northwestern University, Anthropology (WCAS)
    • Jewish Memory in Spain: Language Ideologies, Citizenship, Homeland
  • Kenneth Pass, Northwestern University, Sociology (WCAS)
    • Diagnosing Blackness: AIDS, Science, and the Evolution of Black Politics
  • Matthew Peterson, University of Chicago, Religious Studies
    • Suspension of Belief: The Religious Afterlives of Phenomenology and Psychoanalysis
  • José L. Ramirez, University of Illinois at Chicago, Latin America and the Caribbean History
    • The Ultimate Expression of Revolution, War: The Initial Years of the Salvadoran Civil War (1980-1983)
  • Kaelin Rapport, Northwestern University, Anthropology (WCAS)
    • Health in the Carceral Capital: Lived Experiences of Black Men in Milwaukee, Wisconsin
  • Sangi Ravichandran, University of Illinois at Chicago, Sociology
    • Racializing the Human Genome: The Development of DNA from an Evidentiary to a Surveillance Tool
  • Catalina Rodriguez, Northwestern University, Spanish and Portuguese (WCAS)
    • Writing Like a Woman: Gendered Pseudonyms in Nineteenth-century Latin America (1830-1899)
  • Angela Tate, Northwestern University, History (WCAS)
    • "You Got to Disturb the Peace When You Can't Get No Peace": Race, Citizenship, and Aesthetics of Black Womanhood in the Global Freedom Struggle, 1919-1994
  • Benjamin Weissman, Northwestern University, Musicology/Music (Bienen)
    • “Simply Voice, Human Voice”: Extending and Disassembling Voice in Institutions of Musical Experimentation, ca. 1971-1985
  • Jacob Wilkenfeld, Northwestern University, Spanish and Portuguese (WCAS)
    • Diasporic Stories: Cultural Hybridity in Jewish-Brazilian and Jewish-American Fiction Since 1940
  • Benjamin Zender, Northwestern University, Performance Studies (SoC)
    • Queer, Black, Feminist Trash: Abject Object Orientations and Collecting Communities

Summer 2018 participants

  • Eduardo Acosta Gonzalez, University of Chicago, South Asian Languages and Civilizations
    • Nabadvip Lost and Found: Towards a Textual History of the Nadia Raj in Bengal, 17th - 18th centuries
  • Brandon Alston, Northwestern University, Sociology (WCAS)
    • Cradle to the Grave: Tracing the Perilous Surveillance That Constrains Black Boys’ Gender and Sexualities
  • Anjni Amin, Northwestern University, Music Theory and Cognition (Bienen), Cognitive Science Certificate
    • Conceptualizing Expressive Musical Performance: Skills, Representations, and Learning
  • Christopher Anderson, University of Illinois at Chicago, History
    • The Environmental History of Outdoor Ministry, 1945-2007
  • Blair Bainbridge, University of Chicago, Joint Degree in Anthropology and Conceptual & Historical Studies of Science
    • Habitability: Speculative Science and the Planetary Present
  • Colin Bos, Northwestern University, History (WCAS), Science in Human Culture Cluster
    • The Book of Healing: Writing, Orality, and the Transformation of Yorùbá Medical Culture, 1840-1980
  • Olivia Cacchione, Northwestern University, Musicology (Bienen)
    • "A Perfect Rainbow of Sound": Musical Mediumship and the Experience of the Supernatural in British and American Spiritualism, ca. 1850-1920
  • Jayme Collins, Northwestern University, English (WCAS), Poetry and Poetics Cluster
    • In Situ: Climactic Materiality, Archival Environments, Artefactual Poetics, 1945-2017
  • Lucia Delaini, Northwestern University, Rhetoric and Public Culture (SoC), Critical Theory Cluster
    • Ready-Minds: Rhetorical Technologies of Self and Others in Early Modern Italy
  • Erin Eife, University of Illinois at Chicago, Sociology
    • Freed Without Freedom: Surveillance and Mechanisms of Control for People on Pretrial Release
  • Sarah M. Estrela, Northwestern University, Art History (WCAS), Global Avant-garde and Modernist Studies Cluster
    • Visualizing the Future: The Art of Lusophone Africa in Its Struggle for Independence
  • Isaac Ginsberg Miller, Northwestern University, African American Studies (WCAS), Poetry and Poetics Cluster
    • Beware the Dog: Contemporary Black Poetry Collectives and the Question(s) of Community
  • Claire Hautot, University of Chicago, The Divinity School/Religious Studies
    • God’s Plan for the South: Religion, Politics, and Memory in Mississippi
  • James Howard Hill Jr., Northwestern University, Religious Studies (WCAS), Comparative Race and Diaspora Cluster
    • “What Does Webster Say About Soul?”: Black Popular Culture, Religion, and the Poetics of the Political
  • LaShaya Howie, University of Chicago, Anthropology
    • Funeralized: Death Work & Mourning on Chicago’s South Side
  • Nathalia Justo, Northwestern University, Political Science (WCAS)
    • The Politics of Natural Disasters: Narrating Displacement and Asylum Claims in the “New World”
  • Alicia Vanessa Nunez, Northwestern University, Spanish & Portuguese (WCAS), Latin American and Caribbean Studies Cluster
    • Viajar sin referencia: Sounds of Becoming, Places of Belonging in Latinx Literature & Soundscapes
  • Salih Nur, Northwestern University, Political Science (WCAS), Comparative and Historical Social Science Cluster, African Studies Cluster
    • The Legacies of Liberation: Critical Junctures and Regime Development in Postcolonial Africa
  • Jennifer Porter-Lupu, Northwestern University, Anthropology (WCAS), Gender and Sexuality Studies Cluster
    • Drugs, Drag, and Decadence: An Archaeology of Queer Care in 1920s Washington, DC
  • Caterina Scalvedi, University of Illinois at Chicago, History
    • Education in Italian Colonialism (1880s-1940s)
  • Mine Tafolar, University of Illinois at Chicago, Political Science
    • Divergent or Convergent Paths of Populism?: Disentangling Social Policy in Erdogan's Turkey and the Kirchners' Argentina
  • Keegan Terek, Northwestern University, Anthropology (WCAS), Middle East and North African Studies Cluster, Gender and Sexuality Studies Cluster
    • The Language of Queer Asylum in Amman, Jordan
  • Anthony Topoleski, Northwestern University, Slavic Languages and Literatures (WCAS)
    • Developing Reality: Nature, Technology, and the Soviet State in Russian Metarealist Poetry
  • Wara Urwasi, Northwestern University, Sociology (WCAS)
    • The Planner and the Poor: Varieties of Planning Culture and Urban Exclusion in the Global South

Summer 2017 Participants

  • Morgan Clark, Department of Sociology (WCAS); Gender and Sexuality Studies Cluster
    • “Skanks Need to Pay with Their Lives”: Sexual Harassment in Online Communities
  • Gideon Cohn-Postar, Department of History (WCAS)
    • “Mind How You Vote, Boys”: Economic Intimidation and the Construction of an Illiberal Political Culture, 1873-1900
  • Maria de Simone, Interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Theatre and Drama (Department of Theatre, SoC); Gender and Sexuality Studies Cluster and Certificate
    • Exchanging Race, Connecting Culture: Racial and Ethnic Impersonations on the Chicago Vaudeville Stage, 1897-1924
  • Thomas Love, Department of Art History (WCAS); Critical Theory Cluster
    • “Could Fairies Be Socialists?”: Left Radicalism and Alternative Sexualities in Berlin, 1968-1989
  • Jahara “Franky” Matisek, Department of Political Science (WCAS); Program of African Studies
    • Strong Militaries in Weak States: An alternative path to state-building in Africa?
  • Bennie Niles, Department of African American Studies (WCAS); Gender and Sexuality Studies Cluster
    • Changing the Game: Black Athletes, Sports Cultures, and the Dilemma of Black Gender
  • Zachary Nissen, Department of Anthropology (WCAS); Latin American and Caribbean Studies Certificate; Gender and Sexuality Studies Certificate
    • Negotiating Change: Histories of Everyday Life at Aventura, Belize.
  • William Richardson, Department of Sociology (WCAS)
    • The Urban Settler Colonial Present: Racial Residential Segregation and White Settlers' Relationship to Land
  • Vanessa Tonelli, Musicology Program (Bienen); Gender and Sexuality Studies Cluster
    • Early Modern Music, Politics, and Gender at the Venetian Ospedali Grandi: A New Perspective on the All-Female Musical Ensembles
  • Cintia Vezzani, Department of Spanish and Portuguese (WCAS); Critical Theory Cluster
    • Shared Secrets, Public Lies: The Crisis of Marriage in Turn-of-the-Century Brazilian Literature
  • Brianna White, Department of Political Science (WCAS); Comparative and Historical Social Science (CHSS) Cluster
    • Locked In: How Inmates Influence the Political Behavior of State Legislators
  • Guangshuo Yang, Department of History (WCAS); Gender and Sexuality Studies Cluster; Asian Studies Graduate Cluster
    • Defining Animals, Building the Chinese Nation: The Invention, Discipline, and Protection of Non-Human Beings in 20th Century China