Dissertations: June 2025
Dissertations Defended
Art History and Archaeology
John Beeson
Culture war formations: Globalization, imagined communities, and art in the late twentieth century
Advisor: Alexander Alberro
Biological Sciences
Chinyere Ibikunle
Comprehensive multimodal profiling of atherosclerosis reveals Bhlhe40as a novel regulator of vascular smooth muscle cell phenotypic modulation
Advisor: Muredach Reilly
Chemistry
Justin Powers
Defining genetic drivers of pancreatic cancer progression through in vivo CRISPR screening and multi-omicprofiling
Advisors: Brent Stockwell and Christine Iok In Chio
Xin Gao
Stimulated Raman scattering microscopy: Theory and applications in nano imaging
Advisor: Wei Min
Classics
Elizabeth Heintges
Vergil's Sicily: Reflections of crisis and reintegration in the late Republican civil wars
Advisor: Katharina Volk
Geoffrey Harmsworth
Celebrity and urban politics in the imperial Greek polis
Advisor: John Ma
Communications
Paul Berthe
Empathy in frames: Assessing the impact of ethnic concordance in animated cartoons on HIV/AIDS stigma among South African young adults
Advisor: Anya Schiffrin
East Asian Languages and Cultures
Tenggeer Hao
The mind medium: A yin-yang philosophy of media
Advisor: Ying Qian
Palden Gyal
Shifting terrians of authority: Religio-political governance in the Sino-Tibetan borderlands, 1650-1911
Advisor: Gray Tuttle
Deanna Nardy
Countervisions of postwar Japan
Advisor: Takuya Tsunoda
English and Comparative Literature
Christine Prevas
Architectures of gender and the American haunted house
Advisor: Jack Halberstam
Benjamin Hulett
Memory traces: Indigenous thought in early American natural histories
Advisors: Jenny Davidson and Joseph Albernaz
Emma Hitchcock
Dead stones and dumb trees: Old English logics of dispossession
Advisor: Patricia Dailey
French and Romance Philology
Katherine Manansala
Authoring the nation: Revolutions in literary property and the invention of France
Advisor: Emmanuelle Saada
Soraya Limare
Transnational afterlives of the Haitian revolution: Between history and fiction
Advisor: Madeleine Dobie
Zachary Desjardins-Mooney
The child and the norm: Psychoanalysis, psychiatry, and maladapted youth in postwar France
Advisor: Camille Robcis
History
Sahar Bostock
Desert developmentalism: Infrastructure, agriculture, and the colonization of Southern Palestine, 1850-1950
Advisors: Marwa Elshakry and Rashid Khalidi
Latin American and Iberian Cultures
Eduardo Andrés Vergara Torres
Geometrías radicales: Experimentación formal y militancia política en el cine, la música y la arquitectura de los largos años sesenta en América Latina
Advisor: Bruno Bosteels
Tamara Hache
Infraestructuras de guerra: Espacios, imágenes y grafias en Argentina, Urugay, y Brasil (1850-1895)
Advisor: Ronald Briggs
Physics
Shengjia Zhou
Constraints on effective field theories without Lorentz invariance
Advisor: Alberto Nicolis
Political Science
Samuel Frederick
The enemy is within: Elite affective polarization in American politics
Advisor: Gregory Wawro
Yujing Fan
Party loyalty and women's representation in electoral authoritarian regimes
Advisor: Kimuli Kasara
Isaac Stethem
Planetary peoples: Historical continuity and contemporary spaces
Advisor: Karuna Mantena
Zara Riaz
Essays on migration and political participation
Advisor: John Marshall
Nicole Peisajovich
The puzzle of leadership in Democratic theory
Advisor: Nadia Urbinati
Slavic Languages
Yulia Kim
Violence as device: The poetics and politics of Russophone literary culture
Advisor: Jessica Merrill
Ararat Sekeryan
Russia as woman: The aftermaths of Slavic body in Russo-Turkish space
Advisor: Valentina Izmirlieva
Sociology
Zheng Fu
Relational power: A networked perspective on power in authoritarian China
Advisor: Peter Bearman
Statistics
Ari Blau
Reducing label dependence in animal behavior modeling: Diverse supervision strategies for improved generalization
Advisor: Liam Paninski
Hane Lee
New measures of political polarization and congressional social ties
Advisor: Michael Sobel
Theatre
Adrian Guo-Silver
Anonymous subjects: Performing anonymity across media 1890-1948
Advisor: William Worthen