Current Ph.D. Students

Amir Adem

Istifaa Ahmed

Research Interests Minoritarian performance and aesthetics, Queer/trans subjectivities, The human/inhuman, The erotic/body/flesh, Fugitivity, Speculative fiction, Black feminisms, Queer of color critique, Performance studies

Erin Aoyama

Dissertation Title: "Remembering is Just Another Way of Knowing': Place, Culture, Hauntings in the Afterlives of Japanese American Redress."

Research Interests Asian American Studies, Relational Ethnic Studies, Public Humanities, 20th Century Intellectual and Cultural History, Memory Studies

Bryant Brown

Research Interests 20th and 21st century Black diasporic literature, Experimental aesthetic praxes, Anticolonial cultural production, Timbre and sound studies, Queer theory, Abolitionist movements

Alexander Chun

First Year Student

Research Interests Queer of Color Critique, Asian/American studies, Media Studies, Performance Studies, Speculative Fiction, Queer Sexualities

Looghermine Claude

First Year Student

Samia Cohen

Dissertation title: "Watershed Metropolis: The Providence River and Its Lifeworlds"

Research Interests Environmental humanities, Feminist science and technology studies, U.S. built environment , Infrastructures , Autoethnography

Caroline Cunfer

Dissertation title: "Unthinking Sex: Cultural Sites of Compulsory Sexuality and the Politics of Desire"

Research Interests Feminist Theory, Queer Theory, Cultural Studies/Theory, Science And Technology Studies, Critiques Of Sex-Positive Feminism, Asexuality, Politics Of Sex And Desire

Thomas Dai

Research Interests Contemporary nonfiction and poetry, Queer theory, Asian American studies, Literature of space and place

Liam Dean-Johnson

Research Interests Queer theory and queer of color critique, Performance studies, Affect theory, Popular music and sound studies, Metaphysics and ethical philosophy, Esoterica and the occult

Jennifer Dolan

Dissertation title: "The Embattled Self: Willpower and Self-Making in 20th Century American Culture"

Research Interests Cultural History, Self-Help Literature, Gender, Middle-Class Culture, History of Psychology, Narrative

Isaac Essex

Yuanyuan (Angela) Feng

Dissertation title: "Chinese/American Writers as Transpacific Public Intellectuals"

Research Interests Asian American community politics and culture, Asian American literature, Chinese diaspora in the Americas

Matthew Kateb Goldman

Dissertation title: Transiting Metropolitan "Man" : Queer Infrastructures of Human Being in the New York City Subway

Research Interests Cities and built environments, Queer of color and minoritarian critique, Politics of knowledge, Aesthetics and the "human", Infrastructures

Sherente Harris

Research Interests Indigenous History, Cosmology, Art, & Semiotics Twospirits Narragansett People, Lifeways, and Sovereignty.

Kristen Iemma

Research Interests Information science, Knowledge organization, Memory studies

Jacquelynn Jones

Research Interests 19th and 20th century visual and material culture, Black feminist theory, Racial-mixture, History of photography, Public humanities

Makana Kushi

Research Interests Race in Hawaiʻi, Comparative ethnic studies, Indigenous education

Allyson LaForge

Research Interests Native American and Indigenous studies, Histories of the native northeast, Decolonizing methodologies, Public humanities, Material culture

Carolyn Lau

First Year Student

Jonathan MacDonald

Dissertation title: "Expert Advice: Mediating Social Science's Public Aspirations, 1930-1965"

Research Interests Cultural and Intellectual History, Science and Technology Studies, Media studies, The History of Social Science, Educational and Prescriptive Media

Claritza Maldonado

Research Interests Caribbean sStudies, Afro-Latinx studies, Sound and aesthetics, Poetry and spoken word, Puerto Rico and diaspora

Karen Marks

Edwin Rodriguez

Research Interests Central American studies, El Salvador, Transnationalism, displacement, and migration

Nicole Sintetos

Research Interests Asian American studies, Science, technology and society, 20th century immigration history, Environmental history, Public humanities

Mark Tseng-Putterman

Research Interests Transnational Asian American studies, Cold War studies, U.S. militarism, social movements, comparative ethnic studies

Katharina Weygold

Dissertation title: "African American Women and Haiti During the U.S. Occupation, 1915 – 1934"

Research Interests Black Internationalism, U.S. empire, Women’s and Gender Studies, Transnational American Studies, Public Humanities

K Yin

Research Interests Queer and Trans of Color Critique, Minoritarian Aesthetics, Asian/American Cultural Production, Affect, The Speculative, The Transpacific, Flesh, Ghosts, and Monsters