Research and Outreach
Thursday, March 27
Success Stories: Undergraduate Award Winners 10:00-11:00
Bromery Center for the Arts Lobby
Undergraduate Panel moderated by Associate Dean for DEI and Professional Development Cara Takakjian.
Medha Mankekara, Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Eva Barajas, MA Art – Art Education
Katie Robertson, History and Commonwealth Honors College
Julio Varella, Theater
The panel is a group of HFA students who have won various scholarships/awards this past year that have facilitated either research projects, works of creative inquiry or internship experiences. The students will discuss their projects/work in the context of their scholarly and professional development, sharing their insights and experiences.
Faculty Lightning Talks 11:00-1:00
Bromery Center for the Arts Lobby
HFA Faculty Lightning Talks invite HFA faculty to present on their ongoing research and creative projects during a "lightning" discussion of 10 minutes each.
11:00-11:10 Introduction
11:10-11:20 “Public Art, Emerging Technologies, and Archives”
Juana Valdes, Art
The presentation focuses on Juana Valdés's most recent public art projects (2021–2025), commissioned by the Public Art Trust of Miami. It explores the intersection of conceptual art, historical research, and emerging technologies. Valdés examines her process of integrating archival materials, community narratives, and new technologies, such as digital modeling and fabrication, to create site-responsive works that engage with Miami’s cultural and ecological landscapes. The session highlights how contemporary artistic practices transform public art into platforms for collective memory and dialogue.
11:20-11:30 "Shit Greek Poetry"
Simon Oswald, Classics
There are no shortage of sources, ancient and modern, that identify for us the great poets and poetry of the Ancient Greek world, singing their praises and pointing out how and why they're so great and influential and meaningful. That's helpful for avoiding the not-so-great – just check the poet you've stumbled upon against the approved list of All-Stars and Homer away 'till the cows come home(r). But what if they're wrong? And even if not, does anyone talk specifically about bad poetry? Nearly everyone, as it turns out–at least in the ancient world (though with plenty of modern commentators besides)–and usually in the form of savage insults (no one inclined, understandably, to dedicate a longer treatment to poetry they detested). But there's a scandal afoot, for all the poets on Santa's Good List appear on his Naughty one too. My research investigates types of 'shit' Greek poetry from the perspective of critic and hypocrite alike, looking at approaches, motivations, and contradictions in this (dis-)honorable pursuit, in fact not so different from the practices of those extolling the great poets.
11:30-11:40 “Yes, There Were Student Loans in the Middle Ages!”
Jen Adams, English
Just like today's college students, medieval students turned in late work, fought with their roommates, and ran out of money. Although many wrote home for extra funds, some students and faculty in Oxford turned to the university's loan chests. Started in the year 1240, the chest system worked like a pawn shop; by depositing a security (usually an academic book), a scholar could obtain a one-year interest-free loan. In this talk, I outline the mechanics of this system and consider its effects on our own systes of higher education.
11:40-11:50 “Power in Play: The Drawings of Laylah Ali”
Karen Kurczynski, History of Art and Architecture
Laylah Ali’s drawings, on view at the University Museum of Contemporary Art in Spring 2025, take inspiration from activist art, cartoons, and racial politics to create imaginative figures that celebrate the odd, the speculative, and the queer, in all senses of the term. Addressing what she calls “the disconnect between bodies and freedom,” her works comment on her own emotional experience and that of all kinds of people who struggle against labels and lack of recognition. This talk describes the ways she uses drawing to convey affective states and ideas, from color and composition to linear gesture and hand-written text.
11:50-12:00 “MEGA Protests and Far-Right Performances”
David Rodriguez-Solas, Languages, Literatures and Cultures
This presentation examines the performance of a revisionist history adopted by the global far right, with a focus on Spain. Patriots for Europe is the third largest group in the European Parliament. It is formed by far-right groups in France, Hungary, and Spain. They adopted the slogan Make Europe Great Again. Since November 2023, the Spanish far right has organized daily protests accusing Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez of imposing an amnesty for hundreds of people prosecuted for organizing the failed push to secede Catalonia from Spain in 2017. Demonstrators use Franco's dictatorship symbols, and regularly open air catholic masses resonating with the times of the so-called national Catholic dictatorship.
12:00-12:10 “Conducting Business”
Marianna Ritchey, Music and Dance
The evolution of the large conducted classical orchestra was roughly coterminous with the development of industrial capitalism in Western Europe. Accordingly, many theorists have suggested that one of the social functions such a musical spectacle performs is to beautify the capitalist labor relation in which the boss of a firm (the conductor) seems to be the creator of value, rather than the workers (the musicians) who actually produce the firm’s products. Much of my research concerns the implications of this historical dialectic between “high” Western art music and the seemingly separate realm of material production. In my lightning talk, I will discuss the contemporary phenomenon of “managerial arts,” where business managers are taught to “think like artists”—and particularly like orchestra conductors—in order to unlock innovation and creativity at their firms. This bizarre and poorly-evidenced connection is made continuously, in management seminars, music departments, incessant book and article publications, and even in a recent opera glorifying the management style of Steve Jobs. One of my goals is to reveal the nefarious ideological work that musicians, musicologists, and passionate supporters of classical music participate in when they lend themselves to such projects.
12:10-12:20 “Guesses and Degrees of Belief”
Sophie Horowitz, Philosophy
Much of human inquiry aims at finding truth. But certainty is rare: for many questions, our evidence and understanding is incomplete. In recent decades, philosophers (as well as economists, cognitive scientists, and others) have recognized this kind of nuance by understanding belief as existing on a spectrum, rather than a binary. This approach raises a question, however: how can degrees of belief, which cannot be true or false, be more or less accurate? I will introduce my answer to this question, arguing that we can understand the accuracy of degrees of belief by looking at the guesses they license.
12:20-1:00: Mingle and wrap up
Graduate Student Exposition, 1:00-3:00pm
Bromery Center for the Arts Lobby
Convened by Associate Dean for Graduate Education and Student Success Lisa Green, this event will showcase graduate student research and scholarship.
Master of Art in Teaching in Latin and Classical Humanities
Vivian Dai and Seth Hamel, Classics
We will display a posterboard highlighting the academic and pedagogical focuses of our program. We will include pictures of student teaching/conference presentations/etc., descriptions of coursework, and more.
Inter- and intra- speaker variability in “BIN” utterances in African American English
Alessa Farinella, Linguistics
In African American English, one way of expressing the remote past is with a construction sometimes referred to as “stressed BIN” (Rickford 1973, 1975). For example, a sentence like “Mae been announcing the winners” could mean that Mae is announcing the winners, and has been doing so for a long time. It has been reported that in order for this construction to express the remote past meaning, there must be higher pitch and intensity on the word “been.” However, it has also been claimed that there is much variability across and within speakers (Green et al. 2022). In this project, I characterize the phonetic variability in these types of utterances using data-driven pitch measurements. I demonstrate that speakers vary their pronunciation in systematic ways across the entire contour, and not just on the word expressing the remote past (i.e., “been”). Better understanding this variation in pronunciation can help us understand the relationship between these phonetic characteristics and the factors that condition them.
Developing Applications for New Directions in Early Childhood Music
David Casali, Music Education
I have developed a series of 25 new applications for use in my own early childhood music classroom. These apps cover a range of music technology topics including sampling sounds from the environment, creating beats with drum machines, the roles of different instruments in popular music, and sound design elements like filters. The applications are designed to give students access to material that was previously very difficult to introduce to younger students. As more and more people engage with music using technology, these concepts will be important for young students.
Let’s Redesign Career Education with Writing Studies!
Nicole O’Connell, English
I study the rhetoric UMass Amherst uses to teach students about careers. I do this to consider how career education might be redesigned to better meet students’ needs. Drawing upon writing studies and social justice, I conduct rhetorical analysis on university-wide career information, and I consider student and educator perspectives through focus groups and surveys. Based on my findings, I am collaborating with career educators to devise recommendations for (and implement) career education that embraces humanities and emphasizes empowerment.
Beyond Form: Architecture as a Bridge Between Disciplines
Krashang Giri Goswami, Architecture
Architecture isn’t just about making things look good. It connects with climate science, engineering, construction, and even psychology. This showcase brings together four projects that cross different fields, proving that design thinking reaches far beyond blueprints. One project focuses on metal buildings, where structure meets efficiency. Another, SunSync, explores climate-responsive design. A hands-on build tests ideas in reality. An interior design study examines how space affects people. Each piece stands alone, but together, they tell a bigger story—how architecture influences everything.
Architecture and Human Perception
Yirkelys Santana Che, Architecture
The work presented reflects my personal interest in exploring the profound relationship between architecture and human perception, emotion, and behavior. Examining various scales, from intimate, human-scale environments to monumental construction. This research aims to understand how architectural dimensions influence people and their psychological responses. How much do designers understand these aspects of the design and much emphasis is placed on these ideas? Small-scale structures often evoke a sense of familiarity and comfort, stimulating personal connections and enhancing individual engagement. Contrary to large-scale architecture it can inspire awe, evoke feelings of insignificance or empowerment, and significantly impact social interactions.
Cacao Cove: A Metamorphosis of Shape to Structure
Liz Helmin, Architecture/Landscape Architecture
The concept behind this outdoor recreational and wellness playground focuses on blending key concepts related to health and wellness. Originally influenced by the cacao plant (Theobroma Cacao), the playground’s shape and structure are influenced from Ancient Mayan architecture that includes tiered platforms to reach new heights in the circulation of the structure. Using these key notions, the design of the structure includes three distinct occupied spaces, each with their own distinctive programming. This idea of mind, body spirit is directly related to universal notions such as health and wellness, community and nourishment, where all notions are reflected in each type of programming separately and as a unit.
Art History Research Trip to Dublin, Ireland
Olivia White, History of Art & Architecture
Last spring, I went on a three-day research trip to Dublin, Ireland as part of my master’s qualifying paper research. While there, I viewed my subject of study—a 19th-century French oil painting—in person, met with the gallery’s curatorial team, viewed museum object files, and gained access to hundreds of non-digitized manuscripts across three different archives around the city. This experience, generously supported by the History of Art & Architecture Department, was instrumental to my studies and education as a burgeoning art historian.
Art, Climate Resilience, and Eco-Anxiety: Interdisciplinary Workshops
Bo Kim, Art
This study explores the role of artistic engagement in fostering resilience, environmental awareness, and emotional healing in response to climate change. Through hands-on workshops using natural and recycled materials, participants created works reflecting their personal experiences (Dewey, 1934) with environmental crises. Findings suggest that creative practices serve as a valuable means for processing eco-anxiety (Clayton, 2020), fostering sustainability awareness (Pihkala, 2020), and building community resilience (Inwood & Taylor, 2012). By integrating art education with public pedagogy (Freire, 1970) and climate activism (Branagan, 2005), this study presents a transdisciplinary framework for addressing eco-anxiety. The creative workshops allowed participants to explore their emotional responses to environmental crises, resulting in artworks symbolizing both personal and collective resilience (Inwood & Taylor, 2012). This research highlights the importance of incorporating emotional and reflective practices into environmental advocacy and education (Shand, 2014), offering a holistic approach to climate action through art.
Faculty Special Initiatives 3:30-5:30
Integrative Learning Center, Room N400
3:50-4:00 “Too Small to Succeed?”
Ray Mann, Architecture
In August of 2024, Governor Maura Healey signed into law the Affordable Homes Act, making accessory dwelling units (ADUs) a by-right use in single family zoning districts across the Commonwealth. In spite of such historic policy changes, both explicit and hidden barriers significantly impede the adoption of ADUs in many communities. My colleague Robert Williams and I have been analyzing such issues and investigating novel methods by which they might be overcome. We are taking two strikingly different approaches that may or may not converge: The first is to use geospatial analysis to understand quantitatively how zoning and other factors may inhibit ADU construction, as well as examining the impact of targeted modifications to such factors; the second is to use the spatial and visualization tools of architecture that are now so fluid and accessible in order to create animated visualizations of ADU insertions at the neighborhood scale that could help communicate some of their broader potentials towards enhancing community character.
4:00-4:10 “Slavery North Initiative”
Charmaine Nelson, History of Art and Architecture and David Montero, Artist-in-residence Fellow
This talk introduces the work of the Slavery North Initiative, focusing on how the fellowship program builds a cohort mentality to propel research on the neglected histories of Transatlantic Slavery in Canada and the American North. David Montero shares his investigative research on the hidden history of how Boston bankers financed and expanded southern US slavery, and how the profits of southern slavery helped build Boston.
4:10-4:20 "Translate to Educate: The 45-Year Path from the Provision of Language Services to Programming for High School Students"
Regina Galasso, Languages, Literatures, and Cultures and Adelyn Hoyt, Linguistics and Spanish major
This presentation will be an overview of the services and outreach work of the Edwin C. Gentzler Translation Center with a focus on partnerships with public school districts, including the recent development of support for courses for high school students and other introductory audiences. This support helps students become familiar with how translation works and the professional opportunities involving translation, better understand the role of language access in the global world and local community, increase their knowledge of how to responsibly use language in professional and community settings, and expand the value they place on speaking more than one language and language learning.
4:20-4:30 “Decolonial Graduate Studies: The World Studies Interdisciplinary Project, the Graduate Certificate in Decolonial Global Studies, and Beyond”
Asha Nadkarni, English and Mwangi wa Gĩthĩnji, Department of Economics
This talk briefly surveys the various initiatives undertaken by the World Studies Interdisciplinary Project (WSIP), with a particular focus on those relating to graduate education. Specifically, we will focus on our newly launched Graduate Certificate in Decolonial Global Studies, our Liaison Fellowships with the International Civil Society Action Network (ICAN) and with Building Solidarity Economies (BSE), and our graduate student works-in-progress group. We will also gesture towards WSIP’s future plans and how they might help our students reenvision the possibilities, pleasures, and perils of decolonial work in graduate school and beyond.
4:30-4:40 "The Souls of Black Folk and the Foundations of African American Studies"
Toussaint Losier, PhD., W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies and Yolanda Covington, W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies
Building off of recent initiatives to further weave African American Studies into Secondary School curricula, this presentation will focus on how HFA faculty have sought to make local contributions to these national efforts. Beginning with an overview of the current policy and legislative terrain, this workshop will focus on how members of the College of Education and the Afro-American Studies Department have collaborated to address the needs of high school educators preparing to teach the new AP African American Studies exam as well as engage African American content more broadly in their teaching. Drawing first on a workshop series these faculty members developed in 2023-24 and then focusing on a two-week summer institute these faculty will be hosting in summer 2025, this presentation will call attention to the ways in which their projects are designed to meet the needs of teachers in Massachusetts and beyond, while also avoiding the pitfalls associated with conducting research on and teaching of topics increasingly deemed controversial.
4:40-4:50 “Question Everything: A residential pre-college program for high school students from Springfield and Holyoke”
Ned Markosian, Philosophy and Julia Jorati, Philosophy
This talk will be a brief overview of Question Everything, a free, residential philosophy program open to rising high school seniors from Springfield and Holyoke. Question Everything is a great way for participants to get a taste of college, meet new people, and receive help with college applications. The questions to be explored include: Do all humans have an inalienable right to liberty? What are inalienable rights? Can the government ever justifiably take away or limit someone’s liberty? Can schools impose dress codes on their students? Do young children have a right to liberty? Do non-human animals? What is free will?
4:50-5:00 “10 years of Civic Art Lab: A laboratory for art, design, and sustainability”
Jeff Kasper, Art
This talk reflects on a decade of public engagement and community education at the intersection of creativity, social responsibility and the environment. It examines how Civic Art Lab has facilitated platforms for learning, skill-share, and collaboration between artists, designers, sustainability experts, and publics through accessible experiential programming formats. Highlighting key projects and initiatives, the presentation showcases the Lab as a supportive forum for local, national, and global efforts to transform communities with art and design, while forgrounding sustainable development goals. It also explores the power of creative solutions in fostering resilience, engagement, and environmental stewardship.
Exhibition and Artist Talk 4:00-6:00
Herter Gallery
Tumulus: a multimedia exhibition by Iranian artist Iman Tash
Friday, March 28
10:00-11:00 "Why do I Learn Languages?" Essay Contest Winners
Bromery Center for the Arts Lobby
Undergraduate Panel Moderated by Professor Ela Gezen, German - Languages Literatures and Cultures, and Professor Teresa Ramsby, Classics.
Join us to hear about different language-learning journeys on our campus! The recent winners of the campus-wide, short-essay contest read their winning contributions, share their experiences, and reflect on the impact of multilingualism and language learning in their lives.
Panelists
Alexandria Galicki, Mechanical Engineering
Maxine Gemeinhardt, Linguistics
Evan Owens, Linguistics/Portuguese
Rebecca Shahrooz, Biology/Spanish
Andrea Tchesnovsky, Comparative Literature
Faculty Lightning Talks 11:00-1:00
Bromery Center for the Arts Lobby
HFA Faculty Lightning Talks invite HFA faculty to present on their ongoing research and creative projects during a "lightning" discussion of 10 minutes each.
11:00-11:10 Introduction
11:10-11:20 “Meaning-Making in Community-Engaged Architectural Design Studio Practice”
Erika Zekos, Architecture
This talk presents findings from a study designed to examine student perceptions of a critical pedagogy-informed, community-engaged architecture design studio course. The research aimed to identify how the class's critical and community engagement pedagogies in enabled six alumni of the course to understand their own identities as architects operating within systems of privilege and oppression, how students viewed the role of the architectural designer in community-focused work, and how their experience in the course translated to their current experiences in architecture. The presentation will examine themes of meaning-making and academic counterspace alongside examples of recent course design projects.
11:20-11:30 “Imperial Addiction: British India and the Origin of the Opium War”
Matt Wormer, History
This talk traces the origins of the world's first opioid epidemic to labor struggles in colonial Bengal in the early decades of the nineteenth century. Efforts by the British East India Company to monopolize the production and sale of opium in Asia met with widespread resistance from Indian cultivators who engaged in smuggling and adulteration of the Company product. To combat such practices, colonial officials began to experiment with new forms of chemical testing that sought to determine the percentage of morphine contained within the drug. This equation of opium "purity" with narcotic content led to manufacturing innovations that increased the potency of the product sold to Chinese consumers in the years prior to the First Opium War.
11:40-11:50 “Carpet Craze: Oriental Rug Merchants in the West”
Aviva Ben Ur, Judaic and Near Eastern Studies
Beginning in the 1860s, thousands of Middle Eastern immigrants arrived in the West in search of new livelihoods and destinies. This project focuses on the central role of Armenian Christians and Sephardic Jews in the commerce in Oriental carpets in the West, with a focus on Britain and North America. Based on extensive archival research and oral interviews, “Carpet Craze” demonstrates how these Ottoman immigrants, including survivors of the Armenian genocides, used their human capital and elements of their ethnic heritage to transplant, rebuild, and transform their own lives as well as the material culture of the West.
11:50-12:00 “Memory Activism and Remembering Activism in Documentaries about and around 1989”
Mariana Ivanova, Languages, Literatures, and Cultures
In 2023, Aleida Assmann has defined the objectives of “memory activism” as “challenging an official past and its normative self-image.” Through the lens of ”memory activism” I will unravel intersections between Gerd Kroske’s poignant East German documentaries – in the hope to contribute to ongoing discussions about the usefulness of grassroot activism against processes of forgetting and erasure, as well as for the recovery and re-interpretation of past events as interdependent. Kroske’s work questions the promise of 1989 by bringing into the limelight complacency, as well as failed attempts to deal with betrayal and surveillance. In addition to the “memory activism” framework, I will use film clips and analysis of interviews to argue that Kroske’s films open a discursive space for remembering change and activism, as well as for the necessity to continue to challenge totalitarian hegemony - in personal as well as in political actions.
12:00-12:10 “Logic Penguin: An Open Educational Resource”
Kevin Klement, Philosophy
Symbolic logic is difficult to learn for many students without direct guidance. Often there are too few instructors or tutors to help them. I have been working on a framework for online exercises called "Logic Penguin", which is being made open source and free to use by everyone. The goal is to provide students with immediate feedback on their work interactively, giving less and less hand-holding as they progress. The exercises can be used inside LMS systems like Canvas and Moodle. In this talk, I will demonstrate the system and provide a quick overview.
12:10-12:20 “Word internal code-switching”
Faruk Akkus, Linguistics
We often hear multilingual people mixing languages within sentences. For example, “Quiero apples” to say “I want apples”. But taking things a step further we also observe this code switching within words themselves. Words consist of smaller pieces called morphemes. In this talk I discuss what restrictions exist on how these morphemes are structured and patterns observed in this intra-word language mixing. Exploring this behavior in a trilingual context helps to inform our broader understanding of how language works. This research draws on my work with trilingual speakers of Turkish, Kurdish and Anatolian Arabic.
12:20-12:30 “The You-Cube: a new model of theater-making”
Anya Klepikov, Theater
Briefly installed on our campus this coming Fall will be the You-Cube, a tiny, experimental performance space which welcomes anyone in the university community to create a tiny show for audience peering through cracks in its walls. The You-Cube offers a new model of making and experiencing performance and breaks down many of the barriers associated with traditional Theater - cultural, financial, and architectural - by platforming a variety of uses for an UN-captive audience. You-Cube invites experienced performers as well as those who don’t typically engage with traditional theater but have a need to be seen and heard.
12:30-1:00: Mingle and wrap up
Student Art Sale 12:00-4:00
Studio Arts Building
Master of Architecture Thesis Review 12:30-3:30
Design Building Commons