Conference projects at Sarah Lawrence College are an opportunity to infuse creativity into academia, and the way students deliver their ideas are often as creative as the ideas themselves. How will you share your ideas at Sarah Lawrence?
Mariah Lofgren
Pronouns: She/her
Hometown: Lewisburg, PA
Concentrations: Cell/Molecular Biology on the Pre-Health Track
Faculty: Matthew Ellis
Course: The Middle East and the Politics of Collective Memory
Conference project: Biological Transmission of History: Epigenetics and How It Informs the Idea of Memory
Description: I studied how historical trauma narratives and their intersections with memory and amnesia can be informed by the field of epigenetics (the modification of genetic material that can occur due to environmental factors such as stress and trauma). I argued that there can be a biological inheritance of trauma.
Amelia Brennan
Pronouns: She/her
Hometown: Santa Monica, CA
Concentrations: Social Sciences and Art
Faculty: Nicole Maloof
Course: Print Making: Silk Screen
Conference project: Untitled
Description: I made pieces to represent Latinx issues of identity, alienation, and exclusion from the “white American society.” The first one is about assimilation and erasure of Latinx culture/heritage; the second is about deportation and families being separated; and the third is about the “American dream” as a fallacy.
Mia Jimenez
Pronouns: They/them
Hometown: Naperville, IL
Concentrations: Writing, Literature
Faculty: Rachel Eliza Griffiths
Course: Shapes, Self, and Bridges: Poetry, Images & Memoir
Conference project: Writing on the Body as Ephemeral
Description: The goal of the class was to make poetry as physical as possible, and because my writing focused on the body, I let loose on a pair of jeans with paint and embroidery of lines of my writing that I still wear two years later.
Claire Marieb
Pronouns: She/her
Hometown: Portland, OR
Concentrations: Theatre, Spanish, and History
Faculty: Heather Cleary
Course: Advanced Spanish: Coming of Age
Conference project: “Las ideales educativas de Las Madres de Plaza de Mayo” or, in English, “The Educational Ideals of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo”
Description: For this conference project, I studied Las Madres de Plaza de Mayo, the activist group from Argentina, and the activism university that they founded in Buenos Aires. Following this project, during my year abroad, I had the wonderful opportunity of marching with Las Madres in Buenos Aires, which was an incredibly surreal and wonderful experience.
Evan Suzuki
Pronouns: He/him
Hometown: Whidbey Island, WA
Concentrations: English Literature, Dance, and Theatre
Faculty: Lyde Sizer
Course: Literature, Culture, and Politics in U.S. History, 1776-1976
Conference project: An Exploration of Rock Opera in the 1960s and 1970s.
Description: An original rock opera written as an experiential account of the cultural and political work of the rock opera form in the U.S. during the late 20th century.
Faculty: Una Chung
Course: Self-Experimentation: Cultures of New Media
Conference project: “I will not make any more boring art”: Ontologies of Shame
Description: Theoretical, free-form writings on shame affect in the consumption of digital media “artifacts” like Riverdale, TikTok, Snapchat, and Co-Star.
AJ McCormick
Pronouns: They/them
Hometown: Wilbraham, MA
Concentrations: Political Science/Psychology
Faculty: Janet Reilly
Course: Scholars at Risk
Conference project: Advocacy Report on the Uyghur Crisis
Description: Through the semester the class scholars at risk were broken up into advocacy groups where we each took on a different type of advocacy regarding the Uyghur crisis. The ending project was an advocacy report based on the semester’s work and was sent to the NGO Scholars at Risk.
Nicole Mondrus
Pronouns: she/ hers
Hometown: Weston, CT
Concentrations: Animation and Biology
Faculty: Scott Duce
Course: Concept Art: The Medea Project
Conference project: Medea: A Russian Folk Tale
Description: My conference project was a reimagining of the greek myth of Medea as an illustrated Russian storybook.
Hazel Pritchard
Pronouns: She/her
Hometown: Milwaukee, WI
Concentrations: English Literature
Faculty: Tim Kreider
Course: I’m Not Making This Up: Writing Creative Nonfiction
Conference project: Loose Leaf: A Tea Collection
Description: Inspired by the presence of tea in my family life (I’m British), I wrote a series of vignettes intertwining the history of tea and colonialism, Chinese and Japanese tea rituals, and personal anecdotes.
George Scott
Pronouns: He/him
Hometown: NYC, NY
Concentrations: Environmental Science
Faculty: Michelle Hersh
Course: Environmental Metagenomics
Conference project: A Metagenomic Analysis of the Saw Mill River: Microbial Communities and Enterococcus
Description: This conference project was about gaining a better understanding of the microbes in an urban river heavily disturbed by pollution through obtaining genetic information from water samples.
Michael Scuotto
Pronouns: He/they
Hometown: Easton, PA
Concentrations: Theatre and Literature
Faculty: Christine Farrell
Course: FYS: The Art of Comic Performance
Conference project: Quarantine: A Comedy
Description: Amidst shelter-in-place orders, standup comedian Cohen and his sister Sloane get stranded at an Airbnb with a teenager named Nova and their uncle Rick, a Pennsylvania congressman. Clumsiness, angry political debate, and standup comedy ensue.
Lois Shaw
Pronouns: They/them
Hometown: San Francisco, CA
Concentrations: Game Design and Interactive Narrative
Faculty: Nelly Reifler
Course: The Rules—And How to Break Them
Conference project: Momentum
Description: Momentum ... is an interactive short story about fate, escape, and gambling, written and coded in Twine Harlowe.
Breanna Stegel
Pronouns: She/her
Hometown: Salt Lake City, UT
Concentrations: Public Policy
Faculty: Sally Herships
Course: What’s Your Story? A Radio Journalism Class
Conference project: 25 Years Later: Race Relations in Yonkers
Description: This podcast episode explores race relations in the City of Yonkers, 25 years after the famous Yonkers desegregation trial. I spoke to residents in a historically black neighborhood, the lawyer representing the NAACP in the case (Michael Sussman), the author of the novel about the desegregation case (Lisa Belkin), and the executive director of the Municipal Housing Authority of Yonkers (Joseph Shuldiner).