2017-2018 Senior Fellows

Hometown: Cape Neddick, ME

Project Title: Time Out of Mind: Reclaiming the Context of Termination of Algonquian Tribes in Southern New England and Wisconsin

Description: My project is an examination of inconsistencies in the application of the laws and criteria of federal recognition and their apparent neglect of tribal historical contexts.  "Time out of Mind" frames the conversation as a case study on termination by contrasting the experiences of the Brothertown Indian Nation of Wisconsin and the Narragansett Indian Tribe of Rhode Island.  Though both tribes underwent a process of termination in the nineteenth century, the Narragansett were granted recognition, whereas the Brothertown Nation’s application was denied due to the severance of the federal relationship. While this is just one example of terminated tribes reaching different recognition outcomes, this case study offers a window into the confusing and inconsistent implementation of recognition laws while sketching a history of tribal termination and federal recognition.  

Extracurricular Activities: On campus I am involved with Native Americans at Dartmouth, Christian Union and C&G, I volunteer at the NAP and work there as a Native American Peer Advisor.   During my free time, I work in Senior Citizen advocacy and care, I also enjoy musical composition (piano and organ), cooking, writing and Martial Arts/self-defense instruction.

Future Plans: I am currently applying to Graduate school and hope to one day become a History professor with a focus in Native American law and policy.

Hometown: Kaohsiung, Taiwan

Project Title: Machines with Good Taste: A Novel on Rational Creativity

Description: With machines projected to write best-selling novels within 25 years, my project Rational Creativity is a sci-fi and fantasy novel that investigates the relationship between music, literature and mathematics. The marriage of mathematics and the creative arts has gained recent traction from a boom in machine learning/artificial intelligence, yet scientists, composers, artists, writers and philosophers have long connected these fields. Rational Creativity has a few objectives—1) to connect aesthetic ideas old and new, 2) to contrast rational and creative decision making (if such a difference exists), and 3) to explore a world where humanity’s last bastion, creativity, has been claimed by machines.

Extracurricular Interests: I produce research in digital music at the Bregman Media Labs and decision science as a Byrne Scholar in the Math Department. I currently serve as the captain of the Club Table Tennis team and the president of the Dartmouth Taiwanese Association. I serve Earl Grey and cookies in the Sanborn Library on weekday afternoons.

Future Plans: Follow the footsteps of Isaac Asimov-- attend graduate school to research creative/rational decisions while writing fiction.

Hometown: Little Rock, Arkansas

Project Title: Citrus: A Theatrical Exploration of Black Women

Description: Citrus is a choreopoem that I’m writing, designing and building costumes for. Written from my perspective as a southern black woman, this project explores the lives of women of color in the United States while simultaneously illuminating clothing trends from the late 19th century through the early 21st century. The depiction of this dress highlights the disintegration of ethnic representation of clothing that was caused by mass production, and undermines dominant representations and stereotypes of dress worn by black women throughout history. My goal is to fully produce this play, and create a piece of art that acknowledges and thanks minority women of the past, sheds light to the complexities of modern day life, and empower these women for the future.

Extracurricular Interests: On campus, I’m a member of soul scribes and absolutely love developing my spoken word poetry skills. When I’m not writing I’m working in the theater department’s costume shop and learning as much as I can about costume design, costume construction, and the management aspects associated with designing costumes for theater. In my free time I love to create art and research artists of the world for inspiration! Beyond those activities, I also spend a lot of time at my favorite table in Collis.

Future Plans: I’m pursuing a career as a costume designer, and possibly a playwright. Ultimately, I hope to start a non-profit organization that provides skill building and resources for minorities achieving careers in visual, culinary, and performing arts.

Hometown: Hanover, NH

Project Title: The Voice of Iris: From literary action to social change in Chile

Description: Inés Echeverría Bello (1869-1949), who was best known by her pseudonym Iris, was one of the most influential and prolific Chilean female writers of the early 20^th century. Iris's story and work greatly contributed to the larger process of feminization and modernization of Chile, yet very few scholars have ever studied this part of Chilean history. As an aristocrat and academic, her writings and lifestyle greatly influenced the push for suffrage for women in Chile and redefined social meanings of femininity. Iris was one of the few women answering the questions of what a modern Chile would look like and what the role of women within it was. The answers to the questions that remain about her life, what made her so revolutionary for the time, and how she could excite so much social change in Chile lay within her unpublished memoirs and other extensive documentation. My project will contextualize the memoirs by historically reconstructing the period in which Iris was working, place her within the greater feminist work nationally and internationally, and position the many pieces of Iris's thoughts within the themes of the time, her travels, and the content of the conferences and articles she was simultaneously giving. Using Iris's private and public life to understand women's history, this project touches upon themes of independence, social unrest and turmoil, religion and Spiritism, politics, femininity, empowerment, family values, Chilean feminist social change, development, and much more.

Extracurricular Interests: I care a lot about social justice and am an active member of the Aquinas House Catholic Community on campus, volunteer with ASPIRE for kids on the Autism spectrum, visit with patients at the DHMC through Ears, am involved with volunteer efforts and symposiums such as Physicians for Human Rights as part of the Nathan Smith Society, lead the Primary Care Progress initiative on campus, and have been part of SEAD and the Foundations for Social Impact Design Committee Program. I also enjoy getting to engage with different ideas as a part of Telling My Story, Link Up for women, the Committee on Standards through the Office of Community Standards & Accountability, as a tour guide, a First Year Undergraduate Advisor, and with the Global Health Fellows program. Finally, I am fascinated by the intersection between medicine and the humanities and have collaborated with Professors Craig and Lahey to put together a new course on Rites of Passages in the Anthropology Department. Finally, I really enjoy exploring the outdoors in the sun and spend a lot of time swimming, biking and running with my teammates on the Dartmouth Triathlon Team.

Future Plans: This project is an extensive case study that aims to reconstruct and contextualize Iris's thinking and writing in order to understand who she was and how she evoked such a dimension of social change. The best practices of community health medicine today do the same thing for its patients; doctors must put together the pieces of information of narratives and physiological markers to best understand their patients and how to advise a treatment plan. What interests me in this Senior Fellowship project therefore similarly draws me to medicine. While applying to medical school, I will have the opportunity to work with my mother to combine my Senior Fellowship project with her editing, translating and processing of Iris's memoirs to create the final contextualized and annotated version of the book publishing Iris's memoirs. We will also work to preserve and organize Inés Echeverría Bello's material left to my mother so that it can best be accessed by future scholars.