Pablo a Marca is a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Italian Studies. His dissertation is tentatively titled “Posthuman Fairy Tales: Recuperating European Folklore in the Age of the Anthropocene.” It focuses on the interconnections between European folklore, particularly fairy tales, and recent theorizations of posthumanism. The project seeks to develop a new methodology to study fairy tales to advance both the fields of folkloristics and posthumanism. Starting from three of the main topics that constitute posthumanist theory, namely, the relations between humans and animals, the environment, and inanimate objects, the project demonstrates that such themes were already textualized in European fairy tales before the advent of such theories. In reading the texts from a 21st-century perspective, he seeks to recuperate fairy tales to address contemporary injustices related to the human and the non-human world. The goal is to derive an ethics and praxis from the texts that are not based on hierarchies and can be applied to contemporary societies.

Osama Ahmad is a third-year doctoral student in the Department of History. His research focuses on colonial South Asia and the early-modern Persianate world, particularly the Mughal Empire. He is currently exploring the impact of colonialism on vernacular knowledge formations in the city of Lahore, Punjab under the British Raj. He is interested in examining the impact of modern colonial institutions (like colleges, art schools, and museums) and the ways it shaped ‘traditional’ educational institutions, the old ‘native’ city, the ‘Urdu bazaar,’ and vernacular fields of Urdu, Persian as well as Punjabi writing and publishing. Before coming to Brown, he received his B.A. in History from the Lahore University of Management Sciences, and an M.Phil. in Modern South Asian Studies from the University of Cambridge on the Commonwealth Shared Scholarship.

Alberto Alcaraz Escarcega is a third-year doctoral student in the Department of Political Science, specializing in political theory. He is interested in exploring a more-than-human account of political subjectivity. What prospects unfold from radically opening up subject formation to the variegated forces of what is usually (mis)understood as inert “stuff?” One possibility is that we can begin to understand different stimuli not as merely events that evoke specific reactions in an already formed subject but also as constitutive of the subject itself. A set of stimuli that Alcaraz is particularly interested in exploring is the constant stream of lights, sound, and vibrations that emanate from our cell phones. How are these (and the information that they represent) rewiring our understanding of the self, other, and community?

Katherine Contess is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Modern Culture and Media where she studies television, digital media, and science and technology. Her current research centers on fitness media and technologies, wellness cultures, and the quantification of the body. In addition to the Collaborative Humanities certificate, she is pursuing a certificate in Science, Technology, and Society. In 2019, she was awarded the Archambault Teaching Award by the Brown Division of Pre-College and Summer Undergraduate Programs for excellence in teaching. She holds an M.A. in English from CUNY Brooklyn College and a B.A. in English and International Comparative Studies from Duke University.

Thomas Dai is a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate in the Department of American Studies. His research and teaching interests include queer studies, Asian American literature and visual culture, and the environmental humanities. He is currently developing a dissertation that examines entomological figures and other cross-species intimacies within contemporary discourses on sexuality, race, and aesthetics. Alongside his academic work, he is also working on a book of creative nonfiction about travel and geography. Recent writing has appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, Conjunctions, Literary Hub, New England Review, and elsewhere. He has received support for his writing from Lambda Literary and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. Prior to Brown, he earned an MFA in Creative Nonfiction at the University of Arizona and A.B. in Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University.

Norman Frazier is a second-year doctoral student in the Department of History. He is broadly interested in nationalism and the politics of sound in 19th-century Europe, with particular focus on the formation of national identity in Germany. His research examines spaces and built environments, particularly within cities, where notions of Germanness were negotiated along lines of class, region, religion, and taste. His current project considers nationhood within the acoustic world and everyday music practices of Berlin tenements in the late-19th century. Prior to Brown, he received a B.A. in History from Loyola University Chicago and has studied at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität in Freiburg, Germany.

Lee Gilboa is a third-year doctoral student in the Department of Music. Her creative work uses speech, audio spatialization, and vocal processing, and engages with different themes around the sonic identity such as naming, representation, collectivity, and self-expression. These themes occupy her scholarly work as well, which brings together sound studies, semiotics, political theory, black studies, and voice studies. Prior to her studies at Brown, Gilbao earned her B.A. in Electronic Production and Design and Jazz Composition from Berklee College of Music, and an MFA from Columbia University. Her music was featured at venues such as Roulette Intermedium and The Cube in Virginia Tech, and was released by the labels Contour Editions and Surface World.

Heather Lawrence is a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate in Modern Culture and Media, where she researches theories of mass media, conspiracy, and Black critical thought. Her scholarship explores the changing concept of the “public,” the problem of epistemology in a hyper-mediated information landscape, and how the Black radical tradition can help us understand our current social reality and shape new futures. Prior to Brown, she earned a B.A. in English and Sociology from William and Mary.