Students

Naomi Bragin

Nathan Coben

Rachel Fiske-Cipriani

Ruth Goldstein

Ruth Goldstein explores the relationships between Linnaean taxonomies of plants and animals, based on eighteenth-century norms of human gender and sexuality and how these categories do not lie silent and fixed, but rather dialogue back to human notions of bodies, health, and disease. How people and institutions characterize, categorize, and create both sides of the human/nonhuman binary informs how pharmaceuticals get developed and used. By seeking to understand not simply the making and unmaking of classifications of life in all its forms but also why these categories have stayed so strong for hundreds of years, the limits and the gaps in knowledge can appear.

Alexa Hagerty

Renata Limón

Renata is interested in the relationship between folkloristics and the production of narratives of history. She is currently conducting research on late 19th and early 20th century New Mexico and the work of the folklorist Aurelio M. Espinosa.

Sara Mithra

Sara Mithra ruminates on the role of craft objects and craftwork in heritage tourism, souvenirs, and folk art. The crystal ball of the future deforms the past so at the edge of warping you can usually make out something recognizable as Tradition. She's also wondering about lost cities, planned utopias, new urbanism, voluntourism, "auspaciousness," and the museumifying effects of travel.