It was a wonderful summer working with Prof. Sarah Pearlman as her Ford Scholar. Her research explores migration and its influence on voting behavior in the United States. Thus, our project’s focus was to create a comprehensive dataset of U.S. population demographics and state legislatures; using this dataset, we made it our objective to draw correlations between the fluctuations in migration and electoral outcomes across states.

Collating the master dataset was no simple task, however: it necessitated weeks’ worth of searching for data, coding, and literature review to get to the right sources. The first couple of weeks I spent reading publications from peer-reviewed journals in Economics, think tanks, and legal reports. These sources commented on the most recent trends in immigration and the role of naturalized citizens on electoral outcomes. Moving forward, I began with preliminary cleaning of Census Bureau data (derived mostly from the American Community Survey) to visualize demographic trends of naturalized citizens across the past twenty years. Furthermore, I was able to pull more data and model the voter registration and turnout rates for naturalized citizens and link my findings to federal and state electoral outcomes. Once I gained more exposure to handling large data, I proceeded to work with a dataset containing information on state legislative election returns and their party composition.

In the end, I successfully created a master dataset and ran several regressions. While some of our findings were inconclusive due to inconsistent availability of most recent data, working on this project was greatly rewarding for me. I am incredibly glad that I got the opportunity to improve several crucial skills such as coding, handling large datasets, and combining literature review with quantitative research. It was truly a transformative experience.

This summer, I worked with Professor Alicia Atwood to study the long-run impacts of the measles vaccine in Mexico and explore the best ways to accessibly communicate health and economic data to broad audiences. Prior economic research has linked the measles vaccine to positive effects on schooling, employment, and income. As measles threatens its return across North America, this project presents a timely reminder of the importance of vaccination against measles. Our time was split between researching and modeling the effects of measles in Mexico and researching and implementing evidence-based approaches to data visualization.

The first half of our work began with reviewing relevant economic and health literature. From these sources and further historical documentation, we collected information to gain a clearer understanding of measles in Mexico, both before and after the introduction of the vaccine. We used these pivotal steps to inform our decisions regarding data and modeling. With strong justification, we carefully cleaned and prepared our 50 million observation dataset. Although these steps were time-consuming, they were fruitful. Once we were able to apply our model, we found significant effects on education, employment, and relationship status, all of which were consistent with previous literature.

With a strong set of results established, we asked a difficult question: how can visuals help synthesize dense information into a digestible message for a broad audience? We began by revisiting previous economic and health publications to look for examples of accessible data communication.

Over the summer, I worked with Professor Jimi on estimating water salinity in the floodplains of Bangladesh and calculating its accuracy compared to actual groundwater salinity. High levels of water salinity have been associated with abnormal child health outcomes and poor agricultural productivity, so water salinity data collection is an increasingly important subject with the rise of climate change. Due to the costs of actual groundwater data collection, many studies have been turning to satellite data and other such modeling approaches. My project aims to test whether this growing alternative could act as a good proxy or not.

The first few weeks were spent on extracting and navigating the ocean salinity dataset taken from Copernicus Marine Service. During which I experimented with different parameters and how to load it into a Python script. I also spent a significant amount of time on literature review to get me acquainted with the work already done in this field.

The next few weeks saw the completion of the Python script with parameters based on existing studies. I then ran the ESPA dataset through the script to produce the estimated salinity for every household listed in that dataset. Afterwards, I conducted various statistical tests and made conclusions based on them. I then fine-tuned the parameters and started testing whether administrative levels or distances would impact the results.

Overall, our results show the folly in trusting something at face value. At the same time, we recognized that it can still be a useful tool if some of its downfalls can be rectified. Alongside our conclusions, we also made a detailed list of what follow-up steps need to be taken and some of our ideas for how to improve the results.

This summer, I worked with Professor Benjamin Ho to conduct data analysis of a dataset from a recent experiment. This experiment and research centered on detecting deception in a simple game that models communication between a “sender” and “receiver.” We explored receivers’ responses to lies as well as senders’ anticipation of how receivers detect deception, particularly when believable lies are incentivized. In a time of constant mass-communication, where there is an incentive for real-life senders to persuade others to believe them, it is imperative to understand how people respond to lies.

Almost all of our data analysis was conducted using Stata. At first, we focused on senders’ truth-telling and receivers’ trusting behavior between conditions where senders were and were not incentivized to be believed. From there, we began to expand and explore other topics of interest. Items of particular interest were receivers’ confidence in their choices, participants’ perception of their peers, and participants’ earnings from the experiment.

As results were found, we conducted a literature review to explore other studies centered on deception to interpret our results. The information drawn from the literature review, especially relating to confidence, appears to paint a more complex picture of how receivers discern the messages that they receive. During this time, I also assisted with creating a summary statistics table and ran regressions for the probability of senders reporting the truth and the overall size of senders’ reports.

I am honored and thrilled to have been able to participate in this rewarding project. In a world of constant communication, learning about lies are both detected and communicated was poignant to me. For me, this project has allowed me to grow as a researcher and find deeper meaning in how we interpret one another’s messages.

This summer I worked with Professor Leonisa Ardizzone to create a peace education handbook to help educators implement peace education practices and lessons into their classrooms. Professor Ardizzone is the founder of the Peace Education Center of the Hudson Valley (pechv.org) which supports the local community through peace education and programs primarily for students and educators. Peace education actively educates to counteract the war system and various manifestations of violence and promotes peace through the values of relational existence, global consciousness, and holistic earth care. Many people can agree that peace education aligns with what we would like to see more of in our classrooms and society at large, and the goal of our handbook is to make it easier for educators to put peace education into practice.

I began the summer by analyzing data from a cohort of educators who went through a peace education workshop conducted by Professor Ardizzone last year. I then worked with her and Zak Shearn, another Vassar student working at the PECHV this summer, to create an outline for our handbook which was informed by a variety of peace education texts. It includes an introductory section about the practices of a peace educator as well as a curriculum of nearly 50 lessons divided into the categories of Need and Wants, Human and Planetary Rights, Conflict Resolution, War is Terrible, and Creating a Peaceful Society. Completing the handbook will be an ongoing project with the collaboration of others and all of us are very proud of the progress we made this summer.

In addition to writing curriculum, I also spent the summer assisting with many other PECHV projects including Zak’s Photovoice research, working with students at the YWCA and YMCA in Kingston, creating videos about peace education, and screen printing upcycled t-shirts to sell at events the PECHV participated at throughout the summer. I had the most amazing experience this summer and I will always be extremely grateful I was given the opportunity to participate in and learn so much from this work.

This summer I worked for John Murphy and Ian Shelley at the Loeb, conducting research and preparing an exhibit for the Frederic Church 200, a celebration which many museums are participating in next year. Church belonged to the Hudson River School, the first national school whose work laid the underpinning for an American imagery or imaginary and also, for the founding collection of our college museum. Painting during the antebellum period when the introduction of western territories meant aggravated separation of interests between the slave economies of the South and the industrial economies of the North, Church found national images through natural formations.

Most of the summer I took to familiarizing myself with Church’s way of thinking: how were these neutered scenes to be public instruments of manifest destiny? Uncovering his ideology through his fascination with Humboldt’s Cosmos, a publication which detailed the naturalist’s journey through South America in search for god’s interrelation of all through natural observation of minerals, plants, and animals, I unravelled how his replicated journey to Colombia and Ecuador was subsequently a search for god, unification, and truth during a time lacking in harmony. Due to the degradation of North America through deforestation, overcultivation, and exploitation, the unspoiled continental Southern landscapes were to reinstate god as sovereign over the Edenic Americas while still maintaining distance from the nationalistic tensions that came with depicting a scene local to the United States.

The two paintings I was assigned were Autumn in North America and Summer in South America, where continental differences speak to the complications of representing an American identity. His Autumn, a New England forest interior, references the North-South jockeying for national representation, resolved by his Summer, a divine image of fraternal land that emits American exceptionalism while remaining unspecific to how the land is to be controlled. This is something I found interesting in conjunction with Church’s mentor and founder of the school, Thomas Cole, who critiqued man’s dedication to progress and advocated for a ‘juste milieu,’ a pastoral middle ground between man and nature. By neutrally representing territories while doubly formulating a kaleidoscopic land of god, Church was able to reach a large audience, but most times, failed to procure a unified message or image for the nation.

The theme of sacred geographies stood out to me during my research as they are the physical arrivals to an ever-receeding immateriality, whether that be a national identity, the American West, or the passage into god’s domain. While in the New World, Church used nature as scientific proof of the divine; however, after Darwin’s theory of evolution and the outbreak of the Civil War, Church’s search for god and unification pulled him backwards to the Old World, particularly the Middle East, where biblical sites, ruins, and temples could materially prove god’s sovereignty. How did the shift from finding god in nature to proving divine existence through architecture affect modern conceptions of national identity and religious justifications of territorial expansion?

Curious about Church’s recession from westward expansion, I found interest in Tanner’s View of Palestine, an elevated view of the sprawling holy land with irrigation features and dotted people in the distance. Known as a biblical scene painter and member of the AME Church, Tanner was one of the first prominent black artists...

This summer, I worked with Professor Dozier and three other research assistants to design an introductory course for the Greek and Roman Studies Department. This introductory class will make students feel more comfortable taking higher level classes in the department by providing them with basic knowledge of Greek and Roman civilization. I felt particularly drawn to this project because I have had many people tell me that they want to take a GRST class, but don’t know where to begin. Many people feel like they would be overwhelmed in a higher level class. So, the ultimate goal of this project is to make the Greek and Roman Studies Department and its courses more accessible.

Creating this introductory class was a significant undertaking, since we hoped to give students a comprehensive overview of both Greek and Roman civilization in one semester. Professor Dozier chose to divide the class sessions into chronological history, social history, language, literature, and material culture. Our first step was to look through Greek and Roman civilization textbooks and decide which specific topics to cover during those class sessions.

We used Ancient Greece: From Prehistoric to Hellenistic Times by Thomas Martin, Ancient Greece: A New History by Jeremy McInerney, The Greeks: History, Culture, and Society by Ian Morris and Barry Powell, Ancient Greece: A Political, Social, and Cultural History by Sarah Pomeroy, and Ancient Greek Civilization by David Sansone.

We used The Romans: From Village to Empire by Mary Boatwright, A History of Rome by Marcel Le Glay, Ancient Roman Civilization: History and Sources by Ralph Mathisen, Ancient Rome: A New History by David Potter, and A History of the Roman People by Celia Schultz and Allen Ward.

Once we had decided which topics to cover, Professor Dozier tasked us with creating an outline for each of the social history classes. Social history is a field of history that explores people’s lived reality, rather than strict political and economic history. So, our social history classes covered topics such as enslavement, religion, and leisure. We organized these outlines into questions, content, and takeaways. The questions frame the structure of each class session. The takeaways indicate what we want students to remember from the class session. The content supports the takeaways. Brainstorming and developing the questions, content, and takeaways was a very collaborative process. The other research assistants and I broke into pairs to develop them, then each pair presented their outline to the other pair and incorporated their feedback.

Once we had created outlines for each class session, we began going through the textbooks and highlighting sections that corresponded with the content we wanted to teach. At this point, Professor Dozier wanted to deliver a test lecture to determine if our process was effective. He used the outline and textbook sections we designated to develop a lecture for our first Greek chronological history day. After watching and discussing his test lecture, we realized that we needed to be more involved in the lecture-making process.

So, we began creating lecture slides and slide narratives for Professor Dozier to develop his lectures from. These lecture slides and narratives followed the same outline of questions, content, and takeaways. We synthesized information from the textbooks to create the slides and the slide narratives. The slide narratives were the most important part, because they became the basis for Professor Dozier’s lectures. We made sure to indicate where in the textbooks we got the information in the slide narratives, so that Professor Dozier could always go learn more about the material. Once we finished our slide narratives, Professor Dozier went through and left comments where he needed more clarification or more information. He also commented when he disagreed with the information, or thought we needed to go a different direction. These slide narratives and comments made the process more collaborative and ensured that we were on the same page as Professor Dozier. After Professor Dozier left these comments, we went through and incorporated his feedback to complete the slides and slide narratives.

This project had a very positive impact on me personally. First of all, it taught me how to work with and lead a team of research assistants. The four of us met over Zoom almost everyday, sometimes multiple times a day. I led these daily meetings and assigned each of us tasks in order to meet the goals Professor Dozier set for us. Leading and working with a team is a valuable skill that I will take with me far beyond this project. Designing this introductory class also gave me a better idea of what being a professor would be like and affirmed my instinct to pursue an academic career. I found the process to be challenging, but fulfilling. The most challenging part was choosing which topics to cover and narrowing down which information to include. The most fulfilling part was thinking about how to communicate the information to students in the most effective way. I am really looking forward to hearing students’ feedback in the spring!

This summer, I worked with Professor Paravisini-Gerbert and Professor Aronna on the first and second volumes of Historia General y Natural de las Indias (General and Natural History of the Indies) by Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo. This was an extremely exciting time to be working with The Oviedo Translation Project because I came in during the final editing and wrapping up stage(s) of pre-publication and publication of Volume I.

...We ended up with a long list of contacts of 49 translators. Unfortunately, we were never able to contact one translator, so Professor Paravisini-Gerbert is re-translating their work. In my last week and a half, I began work on Volume II. I identified words, places, and people mentioned in three books of the second Volume.

This summer, Professor Holland and I have reconceptualized and given a new life to the project that has been in the works for about a year: the study of arms manufacturers’ responsibility towards the protection of children’s rights.

We started with reviewing the various international, regional, and national legal frameworks regulating and restricting arms trade, to analyzing the key international agreements, reports, guidelines, and scholarly works on Children’s Rights and protection of children in Armed Conflict. Having gained a robust understanding of the legally binding and non-binding frameworks surrounding arms trade and protection of children’s rights, we have constructed an argument that arms manufacturers not only are able and could benefit from, but also must conduct human rights due diligence independently of the state issuing an export license for an arms transfer. Moreover, we suggest that incorporating child-centric risk assessment policies is crucial to align the risk assessment practices within the arms trade industry with the international legal standard. This argument gained even more strength as we assessed the disproportionate vulnerability of children to illicit dispersion, diversion, and misuse of arms, as well as the increased risks that lack of consideration of children’s safety in arms design, export, and use carries.

Then, we conducted a literature review and a secondary in-depth analysis of the corporate policies of 5 of the largest 30 arms manufacturers, with 2 based in the USA, 2 based in China, and 1 based in Norway, which, according to our preliminary analysis, represented different levels of commitment to protection of human rights, transparency, and diligence in risk assessment. The review of corporate policies, supported by findings from the literature review, revealed increasing awareness and willingness of the arms manufacturers to respond to the demands of civil society, pressure of shareholders, and to comply with domestic legislation and demands of clients, to avoid legal repercussions, decrease financial losses, and preserve reputation. Our initial findings revealed that although the arms manufacturers largely fail to reference the rights and protection of children in any context but the prevention of child labor in the supply chain, arms manufacturers have responded to global action and outrage regarding conflict minerals, child labor, human trafficking, and even sustainability, by seeking innovative solutions and adopting more robust policies and risk assessment practies.

To gain more insight into the inner workings of the arms trade, risk assessment, and protection of children in conflict, we conducted informational interviews with four experts: Patrick Wilcken, an expert in Arms Control, Security & Human Rights at Amnesty International and Forum on the Arms Trade; Saudamini Siegrist, a Senior Advisor on Child Protection in Emergencies at UNICEF; Hugues Laurenge, UNICEF Child Protection Specialist developing and leading the work of the office on mine action and explosive weapons; and Alec Wargo, ex-Senior Child Protection Adviser and member of the human security team at NATO. These conversations have tremendously enriched our understanding of the complexities of arms trade and human rights risk assessment, but have also reassured us of the meaningfulness and importance of our work. The interviews and advice we received supported us in laying the foundation for the development of a tool for child-specific risk assessment as a part of the due diligence process required before arms transfer.

We are currently completing two papers and are carrying the work forward into the semester, hoping to expand and strengthen the project as we continue to refine and test the child-centered risk assessment tool for human rights due diligence processes in arms transfers.

This project has made me grow as a scholar, researcher, interviewer, writer, and critical thinker more than I could have imagined. I have learned of the immense complexities, potential, but also the many limitations and loopholes of the international legal system when it comes to regulating arms trade and human rights, and gained crucial experience in critical analysis of corporate policies. Most importantly, I had a chance to directly engage with an issue that is very close to my heart, and by continuing our work on the project, I hope to contribute to the international effort of protecting children in armed conflict.

This summer, I worked with Professor Tracey Holland on a proposal for a travelling photography exhibition entitled Reframing Childhood. Featuring around 20 photos from the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, this project aims to raise awareness and invite conversations around topics of childhood, children’s rights, and armed conflict. Through various education programs and educational exhibition texts, we hope to inform viewers with the fundamental tools of looking at images–most importantly, the ethical concerns of looking at images of suffering. We also explores non-traditional approaches to curating a photography exhibition, one that incorporates multiple perspectives from different participants including visitors, curators, and student researchers.

Our project received funds from Vassar’s Creative Act Across Disciplines, which shaped the project’s creative curatorial vision. Our interdisciplinary research method not only incorporates materials from different academic disciplines but also professional knowledge. We began with image research by organizing past student writings and readings on topics including children’s rights, photojournalism, and peace education. As we started drafting our proposal, we visited photography exhibitions in the NYC and explored multiple online collections. From conversations with curators and directors at the Loeb we learned more about the logistics planning, public programs, and curatorial strategies. We followed the “making and doing” aspect of curating with the educational goals. We used creative visualization tools including Mindmaps, Vision Boards, Minecraft, and Sketchup to present and develop our ideas. Creating these visual materials deepens our connection with the photos and understanding of the themes.

In the end, our proposal established a framework that organizes our materials into five major thematic sections, conceptual design of the exhibition space and the catalogue, and ways to increase the project’s reach and visibility. As our project transitions to the implementation stage, we will focus on making realistic budget planning and adapting the exhibition designs within the specific venues we hope to present our project at.

This summer, under the guidance of Professor Arpitha Kodiveri, Sahaj Sharma, and I worked to develop a legal framework and synthesis report to assist climate lawyers in quantifying climate-induced loss and damage, with a focus on Indigenous communities in the Global South. This topic is tremendously important and under-researched in the space of climate law, and is becoming one of the most impactful legal concepts in all of climate litigation. Specifically for Indigenous communities who feel the brunt of the increasingly dire effects of climate change, loss and damage litigation could be one of the most useful ways for individuals/communities to get compensated for both economic and non-economic (cultural erosions, loss of traditional ways of life, e.g.) damages.

To begin our research, we started by reading and analyzing almost every climate-related case that has been brought to a court in legal jurisdictions across the entire world, and found around 21 that involved loss and damage compensation/reparation claims. After going through all 21 in detail, we decided on 10 that would be relevant and meaningful to our research within jurisdictions such as Ecuador, Uganda, Indonesia, Switzerland (transnational), etc. Then, we began the long and intellectually stimulating process of developing an expansive literature review that encompassed all aspects of loss and damage research, with a specific focus on the non-economic aspects of L&D (NELD). This research helped us fully contextualize this complex issue and provided us with the necessary tools to find real solutions that would be impactful for litigators in the space.

After refining our literature review, we began reaching out to and interviewing experts in the field, aiming to gain further insight into how these frameworks and methodologies are actually applied in legal argumentation. Some of our most notable interviewees include Johanna Gusman, a Senior Attorney at the Center for International Environmental Law; Sara Seck, a Professor of Law at the Schulich School of Law; and Robin Gregory, a Senior Scientist and Professor at the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability, University of British Columbia. These conversations provided us with invaluable insight into what challenges litigators have faced within differing court jurisdictions, and both their optimism and pessimism towards the current global climate legal regime.

Although this project will be extended into the upcoming academic year, the research and effort invested in building the foundation for the report this summer have been incredibly rewarding. Additionally, along with the report, Professor Kodivieri, Sahaj, and I are in the process of publishing a three-part paper discussing tort law, insurance mechanisms, and the recent International Court of Justice Advisory Opinion in relation to L&D litigation. Altogether, we are all hopeful our work will have an immense impact in developing L&D cases all over the globe.

This summer I worked with Professor Hite on a book she is in the process of writing, titled, at the moment, Encountering Texas: White Supremacy and Remembrance in the Lone Star State. It was an absolutely amazing experience to work with Professor Hite over the summer! Her book focuses on Texan ideas of relational encounters, violent white supremacy, frontier masculinity, trans-racial solidarity, collective political memory, and individual and communal identity, among a plethora of other supporting facets and perspectives.

It was so unique to read books diving into the ontology of seemingly innocuous social identifiers, like the collection of essays, On Whiteness: The Racial Imaginary Institute, in tandem with books like Seeds of Empire, by Andrew Torget, which uncovered Texas memories which implicate and imagine these social identifiers as large players in the formation of the State’s history.

It was a very special experience to grapple with these ideas, ever present in the current political landscape, with Professor Hite, and see how her book has shifted, and will continue to shift bit by bit, with every new article and book she reads. It was empowering and unique to be treated as an equal, in many ways, by Professor Hite as we discussed readings and bounced ideas off of one other. To rant for multiple minutes, spewing all my thoughts about a reading and more at Professor Hite as soon as we sat down to meet, and to watch her sit silently and carefully chew on and consider every word I said, was a very powerful experience. It is easy in a classroom of brilliant peers to shrink into one’s own thoughts, and going into my final year at Vassar, I will be ever grateful to have had this chance to re-orient myself in relation to what, and how, I learn.

This summer, I worked with Professor Jannay Morrow of the Psychological Science Department to conduct research in social psychology. Professor Morrow was also simultaneously working on a few URSI projects with Professor Baird, so we all met as a group and discussed our areas of interest in psychology and helped each other brainstorm regarding our research.

Professor Morrow allowed me to choose the direction of our research, which led me to be even more passionate about the project. I began short-listing certain topics that piqued my interest and reviewed articles published in Social Psychological journals to understand the scope of previous research and look for areas that are under-studied.

The topic I landed on was a sociological concept called “Marketized Mentality,” which we wanted to study in a psychological manner. A Marketized Mentality, or MM, is a value system in which one sees wealth as the ultimate indicator of success and may even resort to crime or unethical behavior to achieve it. One with an MM puts the economy over all other institutions such as family, polity, or education. We were interested in studying the relationship MM had with prejudice, particularly toward supposedly “unprofitable” groups of people like the disabled, homeless, or unemployed. We also were curious to see whether those with a MM dehumanized these groups.

Next, I worked on writing down my predictions for the results of our research and fine-tuning all our questionnaires. It was a lengthy process, but I learnt a lot about creating a study. Once we finalized our design, Professor Morrow launched the study online and we finally began collecting data! Unfortunately, 8 weeks had already passed by then, but I look forward to analyzing the results when I am back at Vassar.

This summer, I worked as a research assistant for Professor Kirsten Wesselhoeft in Vassar’s Religion Department, who is currently developing a book on a surprisingly underexplored topic: a cultural introduction to Ramadan. While there are countless works on the other pillars of Islam, Ramadan has received comparatively little sustained cultural study, and that gap shaped much of my work. I shared the position with another Ford Scholar, Felix, and our collaboration became an important part of the experience. We regularly exchanged ideas, shared readings, and offered suggestions for further inquiries, making the research process all the more generative. I think we often imagine academic work as a solitary pursuit, but this summer reminded me how collaborative it can be.

My primary focus was twofold. First, I developed an archive of creative works related to Ramadan, including poetry, visual art, music, theatre, and architecture. I also identified contemporary Muslim artists whose work could contribute to a 2027 Loeb Art Center exhibition on Ramadan. The envisioned exhibition will be interactive and designed to welcome both the Hudson Valley Muslim community and broader public audiences into a multidimensional exploration of the month. I compiled this research into a detailed exhibition proposal and artist roster for the Loeb’s review.

Second, I worked with Felix on the reading list for Professor Wesselhoeft’s upcoming fall course, Religion, Violence, and Peacebuilding. This involved reviewing a wide range of literature in religious studies and peace studies, assessing both foundational and emerging works, and curating selections that aligned with the course’s pedagogical goals. We often discussed which texts best fit the course objectives and which ones—despite their reputations—were not worth including. I also integrated South Asian perspectives throughout, reflecting my own research interests. As an outcome of this collaboration, I will be teaching a week of the course in the fall on the Bhagavad Gita and Gandhi. I will be responsible for lesson planning, designing activities, and setting learning objectives, which will be an exciting early step into teaching.

Alongside these projects, I conducted more tangential research on pre-modern Ramadan writings, including instructional fasting manuals, mystical interpretations, and culinary texts. I also visited the Schomburg Center to explore the Larry Neal archives for Ramadan-related creative works. While his film treatment Ramadan Lovers unfortunately did not connect directly to my research, the process of looking through his manuscripts revealed other compelling engagements with Muslim themes in Black creative expression.

This summer was a rare chance to move between curatorial planning, archival research, and course design, all in a deeply collaborative setting. It gave me a glimpse of how ideas grow and transform—not just in classrooms or archives, but also in conversations, shared projects, and the spaces where academic work meets the public.

For my summer project, I worked with Nikolai Firtich to translate the works of four Russian Futurist poets: Elena Guro, David Burliuk, Aleksei Kruchenykh, and Vasily Kamensky. The purpose of our translation work was to focus on translating the untranslated works of the above poets, for the purposes of publishing an annotated bilingual collection of their work. The four poets we translated represent something of a gap in current literature in translation – while the two highest-profile of the Russian futurists, Velimir Khlebnikov and Vladimir Mayakovsky are well-translated at this point, their compatriots in the movement have gone ignored by English language translators. Our hope is that our bilingual collection will serve as an important teaching aid and tool in the classroom, in addition to expanding the amount of excellent Russian poetry available to an English readership. In total, with Firtich’s help and careful review I translated approximately 150 pages of previously untranslated poetry from Russian into English.

I originally applied for this project due to my love of Russian verse and my love of writing poetry. I am a poet in my own time, and write and read equally voraciously. I believe that this is, frankly, a prerequisite for proper verse translation; a poetic translation requires a poet’s touch, and while translation is not the same as creative writing, nearly all skills transfer. I also came to this project with some experience in translation – I had for credit translated the entirety of Russian Symbolist poet Mikhail Kuzmin’s multi-part epic/collection Форель разбивает лед (The Trout Breaks the Ice) the previous summer – and found that both the most interesting aspect of the process was deciding what methods were best to translate each poem individually. While the four poets were part of a shared poetic movement – the Russian Futurist movement, and even more specifically, the Hylean Group of the Futurists – and did share some similarities in style or subject matter, their respective oeuvres were very evidently different. A greater puzzle came from how commonly there were significant stylistic differences within a single poet’s work. The Futurists were in part defined by their experimentation with language; how was a translator to approach the variety of their work?

I took my cues in the process of translation ultimately from a favorite translator of mine, Paul Schmitt, who translated an excellent collection of fellow futurist Velimir Khlebnikov’s poems many years ago. Schmitt’s approach to translation is purposefully anti-dogmatic – in translation, Schmitt argues, one should approach each poem as itself, and pick the style of translation based on what the poem is able to accommodate. The process of translation is always somewhat of a compromise; no language is ever fully intelligible with another, and as a result all good translation requires many intentional decisions carefully made, in the attempt to both preserve the content of the poem, its form, and its original quality. Sometimes one of these things must be sacrificed: the majority of my translations are in free verse, that is, unrhymed and with no standard meter, which is not true of the poems in the original Russian. This is ultimately because, in all but a few cases, I felt that fully preserving the content of the poet’s work was more important than attempting to emulate the poem’s form, when said attempts would already lead to a compromise of sorts.

A simple example of how I applied Schmitt’s advise, and made it my own, was in attempts to translate zaum language throughout the poets’ works. Zaum, or “beyond-mind” language was a Futurist technique where neologisms were derived from Russian roots. While many of the Futurists dabbled with it, Kruchenykh was its master and primary theoretician (alongside perhaps Khlebnikov). In translating zaum, I used a variety of techniques: while in many cases I simply transliterated it to preserve the original sound, in cases where I felt the etymological origin of a particular neologism was more important I constructed English language neologisms from English, Old English, and Latinate roots.

Professor Firtich was an enormous wealth of information on Futurism and the Russian language, and was absolutely vital in providing me with knowledge on the meaning or tone of specific diction, and with deciphering the etymology of many of the complicated neologisms the Futurists utilized. It was truly wonderful to partner with him on this project, and I look forward to continuing to collaborate on this project and further polish our translations as we approach publication.

What I hope to have effectively communicated here is that translation requires a series of complicated choices that are both analytic and artistic. With the advent of artificial intelligences that compete with existing translators, and a movement against the humanities in favor of academic disciplines that can drive greater short-term returns on investment, there are significant forces from both within and outside the American Academy that seek to automate away the very thing that has made the Humanities possible for centuries: thought. The Ford program, which supports projects like ours, serve to ensure that the loss of one of the key engines of human art and knowledge does not occur.