From Canon to Connection: Teaching Hamlet Alongside Culturally Relevant Texts
Student: Xavier Alva
Faculty: Kathryn Vomero Santos
Shakespeare remains the only author explicitly named in the Common Core Curriculum, and Hamlet has been a staple in many high school English Language Arts classrooms. As a result, educators are often required or feel pressured to prioritize canonical texts written centuries ago by white male authors. While these works hold historical and literary value, their dominance in the curriculum risks marginalizing voices and experiences more reflective of the students we teach today. This research project responds to that challenge by exploring how Hamlet can be taught in ways that are culturally relevant, responsive, and sustaining. Rather than centering Shakespeare as universal, this work seeks to place him in conversation with contemporary authors like Joe Jiménez (Bloodline) and Jason Reynolds (Long Way Down). These texts engage similar themes such as grief, betrayal, generational trauma, and moral decision-making, but do so in language, forms, and cultural contexts that resonate more immediately with students’ lived experiences.
Through the development of comparative, TEKS-aligned lesson plans, this project models how pairing canonical texts with culturally relevant literature creates space for more students to engage critically, reflect personally, and speak honestly. By foregrounding themes such as the cycle of violence and moral decision making, these lessons invite students to see themselves at the center of literature. This project asserts this approach is not about replacing Shakespeare, but about reimagining how we teach his texts so that all students are empowered to analyze, question, and connect across texts, time periods, traditions, and cultures.
Movement as a Theme in Ovid’s Poetry
Student: Emma Buhrman
Faculty: Tim O’Sullivan
This project examines the ways in which Ovid uses the themes of physical and metaphorical movement to comment on the cultural and social changes of the Augustan Age. After civil wars and the end of the Republic, Augustus brought an age of peace – alongside many changes in laws, religion, art, and even the topography of the city of Rome. Although many artists of this era utilized the theme of movement to describe these changes and the feelings they evoked, it has not yet been widely discussed in scholarship. This project aims to closely examine all of Ovid’s surviving works for instances where he portrays movement and how they relate to the politics of the time, adding to the existing discourse about Augustus and the contemporary artists that portrayed his era.
I have been investigating this question by reading English translations of Ovid's works to identify points of interest to the project, then I read the same lines in the original Latin to confirm their relevance. Then, I write a short analysis of the lines, including any connections to other notable lines. This method allows for my faculty mentor to have a quick but thorough point of reference upon which he can build as he continues his work examining movement more broadly in the works of artists beyond just Ovid. My preliminary findings have revealed many exciting uses of movement as a theme in all of Ovid’s works in a way that is directly related to my faculty member’s research.
Embodied Education as Liberation in Carceral Spaces
Student: Maria Kaissi
Faculty: Elly Gonzales/Judith Norman
This project examines how cultivating embodied learning environments within carceral spaces can create opportunities to reclaim agency and disrupt control over the body. During weekly visits to a prison, I experienced how spaces structured by surveillance, submission to authority, and the threat of violence often prompt the body to engage in protective responses like disconnection from one’s identity and physical self. My research asks how participating in the Philosophy & Literature (PHILLIT) circle as an embodied practice can cultivate collective safety and healing by inviting participants to reconnect with their bodies and identities.
To investigate, I joined somatic workshops, collaborated with the Core Community Team facilitating the PHILLIT Circle at Dominguez State Jail, and reflected on sessions at the Torres Unit, where I engaged in discussions with incarcerated classmates. I also examined literature on somatic abolitionism, a framework focused on dismantling the internalized effects of white supremacy and systemic violence through embodied healing.
Though grounded in incarceration, this research speaks to the broader potential of embodied practices to cultivate trust and connection across groups. I approach embodiment as an ongoing process experienced within ourselves and in relationship with others. This work highlights the value of embodiment in education and explores how the principles of the PHILLIT Circle can be applied to other settings, supporting the reclamation of humanity and dignity.
Borders and Belonging: The Arts and Archives of Place
Student: Hanna Khan
Faculty: Jenny Browne
Questions of belonging and identity constantly shift, especially when borders and other boundaries are imposed on people and their communities. Contemporary literature and art uniquely show how the Irish border and the Troubles conflict created a felt sense of in-between-ness in the six northern counties of Northern Ireland. Similar issues characterize the Texas/Mexico border, which is reflected in Chicana art and literature. How do creative arts uniquely reveal, explore, and map feelings of belonging and identity in areas with disputed borders, and how might creative writing students approach correlating geographic locations and literary/artistic evidence in creating their own portrait of these encounters with in-between-ness?
Using the arts to engage with connections between place and identity, I’m researching and talking with creative practitioners in South Texas and Northern Ireland to consider the place of art in processing ideas about division and connection, environmental crisis, and social justice, drawing on methodologies from many disciplines and artistic practices. These ideas will be further explored in the Fall 2025 Lennox Seminar, culminating in the online publication of a map-based multimedia archive of interviews, creative interventions, and literary/visual representations of place/s. Through reading literature, watching, and interacting with all kinds of media and art, I’m compiling sources to create a digital archive on ARC.GIS that represents the immediate and generational nuances of living in and experiencing borderlands.
Beyond Words and Numbers: Aesthetic Representations as Creative Assessment in University Classrooms
Student: Alyssa Martinez
Faculty: Courtney Crim
Most university classrooms rely on conventional assessments rooted in verbal-linguistic and logical-mathematical approaches. However, research shows that integrating creativity can deepen students’ understanding of academic content through complex thinking. This research project qualitatively examines how university students choose to demonstrate learning through aesthetic representation (AR)—artistic forms such as visual art, music, or poetry—and how
these align with Multiple Intelligences (MI). The eight MI domains, which reflect diverse ways individuals process information, guide the categorization process.
This study explores the following research question: When using aesthetic representations (ARs) in the university classroom, how do students choose to demonstrate their learning beyond and including conventional verbal-linguistic and logical-mathematical domains? Drawing from a culminating assessment, we analyzed approximately 30 ARs using textual and photographic evidence and narrative evidence of the professor (also co-researcher for the project). To ensure consistency, student work was categorized by the eight MI domains and analyzed dichotomously as conventional or unconventional. The strong presence of ARs beyond a conventional academic approach suggests that, when given autonomy, students often choose non-conventional ways to demonstrate learning. Preliminary outcomes suggest students choose to move beyond the conventional areas of MI to demonstrate learning. This suggests that Aesthetic Representations are a model for guiding university instructors in implementing meaningful and creative assessments.
Invasive Technology and Disability in Science Fiction
Student: Mylo Mittman
Faculty: Althea Delwiche
This qualitative critical textual analysis investigates how science fiction (SF) films’ representation of invasive technologies interacting with disability reflects changing cultural attitudes toward artificial intelligence, genetic engineering, and brain-computer interfaces. Such research helps anticipate the social impacts of advanced technology by identifying the hopes, fears, and inequalities it may provoke. These trends may also inform how future media scholars understand changing portrayals of disability. Analyzing these shifts can deepen our understanding of whether society views disability as something to be adapted to or overcome with technology.
I selected six films featuring explicit disability representation, themes of technology impacting disability, and consistent engagement between the two. I identified key themes, filmmaking techniques, narrative developments, and audiovisual cues. My notes were inductively analyzed to compare how each film presents disability through character viewpoints, morality, technological invasion, and physicality. Initial analysis suggests American science fiction has long expressed anxiety about technological change and bodily invasion. However, more recent films increasingly depict invasive technologies as hopeful, but still risky, solutions to disability. As a result, disability in science fiction shifts from a source of pity or fear to an obstacle that technology can fix and erase. This work contributes to disability and media studies by examining how SF reflects shifting cultural perceptions of disability and the body.
Iconographic and Economic Elements of Cypriot Coinage from the Hellenistic Period
Student: Ruth Patterson
Faculty: Melanie Godsey
My project concerns ancient Cypriot coinage, paying special attention to the Hellenistic period (c. 323-31 BCE). This period was characterized by territorial contestation and warfare between the would-be successors of Alexander the Great after his death. Cyprus was a key site of struggle between kings Ptolemy and Antigonus during the earliest part of the Hellenistic period before it fell to Ptolemaic control (294 BCE) – a period only weakly attested in ancient sources. Material culture offers a rich window into all aspects of the Hellenistic period, and my research analyzes iconographic interactions between traditional Cypriot and Ptolemaic coinage, from the earliest instances of Ptolemaic coinage on Cyprus to its evolution through the Hellenistic period.
I will demonstrate key aspects of the relationship between Cyprus and the Ptolemaic ruling presence, including Ptolemaic ruling strategies and utilization of Cypriot economy and culture. My initial work has focused on parallels in numismatic depictions of Aphrodite, a goddess closely associated with Cyprus who also appears on Ptolemaic coinage on Cyprus. Further research will focus on existing interactions between traditional Cypriot and Ptolemaic coinage, identifying additional objects for my case study, and, if possible, highlighting other iconographic parallels from Cypriot and Ptolemaic coinage. To conduct this research, I am attending archaeological field school at Pyla-Vigla, an early Hellenistic fortified settlement in Cyprus and researching coins from this site as well as others. I am also utilizing archaeological and classical databases and consulting ancient sources, all of which are vital for a study of classical archaeology.
Is the rise of Hindutva a democratic failure, or is it a political and cultural reaction to decades of symbolic marginalization?
Student: Pradyot Shetty
Faculty: Hye Yun Kang
This research examines the rise of the Hindu Right in India as a historical backlash rather than a sign of democratic collapse and backsliding. While many western scholars and global media outlets characterize Hindutva merely as a form of authoritarian populism, this project takes a broader view and understands its origins. It investigates how postcolonial India’s elite-driven secularism has largely shaped its functioning post the Nehru-Gandhi political legacy and colonial-era institutions. It may have unintentionally sidelined the cultural and political identity of the Hindu majority which over time created this feeling of exclusion. In return, this further created deep-seated resentment, especially among non-elite Hindus, who felt that their traditions and voices were suppressed in the name of minority protection and cosmopolitan ideals.
I hypothesize that the Hindu Right’s ascent reflects a desire to reshape Indian democracy around a majoritarian civilizational identity rather than a rejection of democracy itself. To explore this, I use historical and political analysis to understand and analyse constitutional documents through key court cases (like the Shah Bano verdict) and events such as the abrogation of Article 370 and the 2002 Godhra riots. Preliminary findings suggest that support for the Hindu Right stems less from anti-democratic impulses and more from a demand for recognition and representation in a system long perceived as biased. This project offers a new way to understand one of the most important political shifts in contemporary India.