Senior Projects in Anthropology at Bard
Complete versions of anthropology Senior Projects are available at the library's Digital Commons.
Go to Digital Commons
What does a Senior Project in anthropology entail? Below you can download the Anthropology Program Handbook for Senior Project Proposals and Preparations in Junior Year.
Students in the Field
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Rachel Eisemann ’18 tracks the Albany Symphony as it wanders down the Erie Canal, reinventing the flows of “high” and “low” culture.
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Indira Bisram ’18 charts the social relations that hold together a New York City charter school.
Senior Projects 2024
LAUREL ELISABETH CHANNING CLINE
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
Anthropology: “Access and Visibility: The Intersection of Care, Justice, and Cultural Myths in the Response to Sexual and Domestic Violence”
Project Adviser: Laura Kunreuther
ABBEY GIVERTZMAN
Belmont, Massachusetts
Anthropology: “‘Physical People’: Contemplative Dance Practice and the Language of Touch”
Project Adviser: Maria Sonevytsky
RUBY RACHEL HARTE
Woodland Hills, California
Anthropology: “Zoom as a Virtual Conduit: The Possibilities and Limits of Intimacy in Remote Instruction”
Project Adviser: Jeffrey Jurgens
NATALIA VALENTINA MILLER
Whittier, California
Anthropology and Architecture: “Reading Earth: Decolonial Design through Sumak Kawsay”
Project Advisers: Yuka Suzuki and Thena Jean-hee Tak
FINN EDMUND O’ROURKE
West Roxbury, Massachusetts
Anthropology: “Global Aspirations in Urban Malaysia: Education, Language, Commerce”
Project Adviser: Laura Kunreuther
CIARA NAOMI RICHARDS
Brooklyn, New York
Anthropology: “For the Mind, Body, and Soul: How Food Sustains Ideas of Home, Identity, and Resistance for Trinidad Identities at Home & Abroad”
Project Adviser: Yuka Suzuki
CATHERINE ANN SARFATY
Hastings-on-Hudson, New York
Anthropology: “‘Just about Humanity’: Faith, Heritage, and Homeland among the Ukrainian Catholic Church in Diaspora”
Project Adviser: Maria Sonevytsky
LEILA TZUMEI STALLONE
Chicago, Illinois
Anthropology: “Farm Against This Mad World: An Ethnographic Glimpse into an Alternative BIPOC-Centered Farm Community in New York”
Concentration: Environmental Studies
Project Adviser: Sucharita Kanjilal
YUNMENG ZHANG
Dalian, China
Anthropology: “‘It’s Good For My Cooking’: The Life of Cooking and Eating of Bard Students Cooking and Eating at Bard Beyond the Meal Plan”
Project Adviser: Jeffrey Jurgens
Senior Projects 2023
SOLEDAD AGUILAR-COLON
Hartford, Connecticut
Anthropology and Written Arts: “‘We Have Nothing to Lose But Our Chains’: Paving the Way to a New Horizon for Marginalized Youth”
Project Advisers: Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins and John Burns
PENELOPE BELEN BERNAL CABILDO
Los Angeles, California
Anthropology and Global and International Studies: “Thrift: A Respelling of Home”
Project Adviser: Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins
SHANIQUA BULAH BOWDENWATERS
Kingston, New York
Anthropology: “Exploration of the Public School Education: Still Perpetuating Indoctrination in our Modern World”
Project Adviser: Yuka Suzuki
ISMAEL-VICENTE GRADY DELGADO
Bronx, New York
Anthropology: “Translating Worlds of Pleasure: Dialogues of Cuban Diaspora from the 1960s, to the Post-Soviet Generation”
Concentration: Latin American and Iberian Studies
Project Adviser: Laura Kunreuther
SARITA NELL FLEETWOOD BRADSHAW
Seattle, Washington
Anthropology and Biology: “Decomposing Science: How Fungi Reimagine Biological Ontologies”
Project Advisers: Yuka Suzuki and Patricia Kaishian
ZIYUE HE
Shanghai, China
Anthropology: “DRAWING THE LIFE STORY: The political emotion of the Chinese international students in the US”
Project Adviser: J. Andrew Bush
ASHE HUTCHINSON
Smithfield, Rhode Island
Anthropology: “Mapping Rhode Island Cemeteries in Flood Risk Zones”
Project Adviser: Jordan Ayala
MIKEL INCHAUSTI
San Francisco, California
Anthropology: “Dreaming of Nuclear Futures: History, Toxicity, Panic, and Motherhood in Contemporary Pro-Nuclear Advocacy”
Project Adviser: Yuka Suzuki
HARMONY SWEETWATER JOHNSON-WICKER
Oakland, California
Anthropology and Written Arts: “Maintenance Required”
Project Advisers: Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins and Dinaw Mengestu
MICHAEL PATRICK KNOX
Princeton Junction, New Jersey
Anthropology: “The Sound of Sense of Belonging: El Sistema, Ideology, and Having Fun”
Project Adviser: Laura Kunreuther
Double Bass Performance (BM): Serge Koussevitzky: Double Bass Concerto, Op. 3; Francois Rabbath: “Le Cri de Venise”; Vigilance Brandon: “Night Chorus: I Love You”; Marin Maraise: “Les Voix Humaines”; Johann Sebastian Bach: Suite No. 1 in G Major, BWV 1007; Chick Corea: “Armando’s Rhumba”
Principal Teacher: Jeremy McCoy
MAYA ELAINE LAVENDER
Dunwoody, Georgia
Anthropology: “Daughters of the Commandment and Their Mothers: An Ethnographic Exploration of Bat Mitzvahs in Metro Atlanta”
Project Adviser: Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins
Theater and Performance: “Maya Lavender’s Senior Project in Theater and Performance (Part 3): Reflections from Playtime”
Project Adviser: Jack Ferver
JONAH SORBY ROTH
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Anthropology and Russian and Eurasian Studies: “Forming the Kyrgyz Community of Chicago: Identity, Organizations, and Institutions”
Project Advisers: Naoko Kumada and Olga Voronina
CHRIS VALDIVIA
Bronx, New York
Anthropology and Literature: “Attempt at an Open Letter to the Bronx”
Project Adviser: Rebecca Cole Heinowitz
Senior Projects 2022
PAXTON ELIZABETH ANGELL
Dummerston, Vermont
Anthropology: “Cultivating Community: Collective Identity as Built through Urban Gardening in New York”
Project Adviser: Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins
ZARA RUTH FRANKE
Berlin, Germany
Anthropology and Film and Electronic Arts: “Of Archives and Ghosts”
Project Advisers: Brent Green and Gregory Duff Morton
EVYATAR GUTTMAN
Chevy Chase, Maryland
Anthropology: “From the Outside Looking In: Mass Media Representations of Jews in the US”
Project Adviser: Jeffrey Jurgens
ALENA KWAN
Carlisle, Massachusetts
Anthropology and Psychology: “Ontologies of Dementia: Changing Forms of Selfhood, Personhood, and
Temporality from the Relational Perspective of Caregivers”
Project Advisers: Naoko Kumada and Frank M. Scalzo
DYLAN JAMES LALANNE-PERKINS
San Francisco, California
Anthropology: “Flocking Together: An Ethnography of Birds and the People Who Watch Them”
Project Adviser: Yuka Suzuki
ELI LOTZ
Shoreline, Washington
Anthropology: “Where Capital Slows: An Ethnographic Reorientation of Amazon’s Inbound, Stow”
Project Adviser: Jeannette Estruth
SIMON LEN NICHOSON
Tivoli, New York
Anthropology: “‘Useful Wooden Toys’: Skateboarding as a Tool for NYC Youth Advocacy”
Project Adviser: Dominique Townsend
SASHA DEMBA ONYANGO
Beijing, China
Anthropology: “‘Nappy Hair, Don’t Care’: Storytelling through Strands”
Concentration: Latin American and Iberian Studies
Project Adviser: Yuka Suzuki
ESMERALDA PAULA
New York, New York
Anthropology: “The Immigrant Nannies of New York City: An Examination of the Friendships between Nannies and Mother-Employers”
Project Adviser: Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins
JOELLE SIMONE POWE
Kingston, Jamaica
Anthropology: “Kinship, Power, and Public Service: A Jamaican Family Responds to the COVID Epidemic”
Project Adviser: John Ryle
ANDREW JAMES BODNAR ROBERGE
Bethany, Connecticut
Anthropology: “‘A Certain Brauch’: German-Georgian Palatine and Rhenish Immigrant Houses in Columbia County, New York, and Their Vernacular Architectural Roots”
Concentration: Medieval Studies
Project Adviser: Christopher R. Lindner
Theater and Performance: “Accommodation and Coping in Medieval Catholic England: A Historical Dramaturgy Casebook for The Chester Mystery Cycle’s ‘Play 14: Christ at the House of Simon the Leper, Christ and the Moneylenders, and Judas’s Plot’”
Concentration: Medieval Studies
Project Advisers: Miriam Felton-Dansky and Marisa Libbon
LANCE SUM
Brooklyn, New York
Anthropology: “Pouring the Tea at Yum Cha: Redefining Chinatown’s Boundaries during COVID-19”
Project Adviser: Robert J. Culp
MILAN LEIGH WEATHERSPOON
San Diego, California
Anthropology: “It Wasn’t That I Was Ugly, It’s That I Wasn’t White: Casted Shadows, Lifted Veils, and Mediated Intimacies through the Lens of Mixed Asian American Subjectivities”
Project Adviser: Gregory Duff Morton
ARIEL MIRA WEST
Los Angeles, California
Anthropology and Film and Electronic Arts: “Petro-Stained City: Production and Hiding of Oil in Los Angeles”
Concentration: Experimental Humanities
Project Advisers: Sky Hopinka and Laura Kunreuther