Thesis carrel crunch

Thesis Carrels by Kaylie Stokes
Thesis student Hannah Gilbert’s carrel.

 

 

Hannah Gilbert

AOC: Environmental Studies and Anthropology

Thesis: qʷidiččaʔa·tx̌ / Makah: Cultural Self-Representation and the Struggle for Human Rights

“My thesis is on cultural self representation as it relates to human rights struggles, and my case study is on the Makah which is a group of American Indians in Washington that are trying to restart their traditional whaling practice, now that the whale that they hunt has been removed from the endangered species list. I went to their reservation and interned at their museum and researched how they represent themselves in various ways like through the exhibits and public speaking. I’m looking at how those methods are able to impact and maybe swing public opinion to their favor so that they can restart their practice.”

Tips: “The biggest first step is to pick a topic that you really are interested in and you won’t get sick of spending a bunch of time on, and to not buy into the hype that the thesis process is horrible because if you don’t buy into that hype and you focus and think of it like one step at a time it’s a much less miserable process.”

Carrel: “So I decorated my thesis carrel like almost immediately just because I was super excited about it. So I have pictures of trips I’ve been on and like cards from my mom and other friends that are inspirational. And then I have my abstract and the New College calendar and some other work I’ve done about the Makah and little cards that talk about my central themes for my thesis so it can be like a reminder. It’s a combination of comforting non-academic things and academic things. I really love having a carrel so I don’t have to lug my stuff around and I don’t have a desk in my off-campus house, so I basically live here.”

 

Olivia Levinson

AOC: Philosophy and Psychology

Thesis: The Three Horsemen of the Epistemic Apocalypse: Implicit Biases Regarding Gender, Reason and Emotion in Philosophy

“For philosophy I’m working with epistemic injustices, which is when people are denied the ability to be established as knowers based off of certain categories that they fall into. And I’ve developed a theory about a form of epistemic injustice that nobody has really talked about yet called inquisitory injustice – when people are denied the ability to participate in group inquiry or just to be participatory members of the decision making and question asking process of knowledge. And then for psychology I’m creating an empirical study where people who have taken philosophy have taken implicit association tests regarding gender, reason and emotion and trying to see why there is such a big gender disparity within philosophy and to sort of have an empirical grounding in order to try and fix that.”

Tips: “Just spit it out there and then worry about if it makes sense later on and edit a lot. Also don’t be afraid to ask for help. There was one time when I needed caffeine and I put something on Facebook about it and next thing I knew I had like three different people bring me coffee.”

Carrel: “I have my notes from my friends on the sides, and I let my friend who lives off-campus store her massive textbooks on my top shelf. Underneath my curtain I have a mess, but there’s writing utensils, honey, hot sauce – always Cholula – a selection of essential oils and I have a bag of clothes and different sweaters, and there’s always chocolate. Oh, a snuggie. That’s really important. I can’t tell you how grateful I am to have a snuggie in my carrel.”

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