Talks and Panels Abstracts 2026
Mount David Summit 2026 Schedule
| Name | Title | Abstract |
|---|---|---|
| Marin Ackermann | Research in Latin American and Latinx Studies I | Fátima Rojas Núñez: Illicit Markets, Internal Demand: Examining the Rise of Drug Consumption in Mexico: Rising illicit drug consumption in Mexico is often framed as a derivative of transnational trafficking dynamics. Yet, observed trends cannot be explained solely through the strategic behavior of Drug Trafficking Organizations (DTOs). This thesis argues that increased drug consumption emerges through a reinforcing feedback loop shaped by economic conditions, state policy decisions, social dynamics, and the organizational heterogeneity of local market actors, such as narcomenudistas. By examining the growth of domestic drug markets as a locally embedded and historically contingent process, this thesis illustrates how drug consumption in Mexico has transformed over the past thirty years. Marin Ackerman: Left to Right? How Collective Memory Is Shifting Contemporary Politics in Latin America Collective memory is a powerful political tool that can be shaped to promote a particular narrative. By defining who belongs and who does not, it reinforces us versus them divisions within society. In post-dictatorship countries such as Argentina, Chile, and Brazil, collective memory varies across different socio-economic groups. Drawing on interviews and existing memory studies in Latin America, we can examine how these competing narratives about the military dictatorships continue to shape political identities and help explain the region’s recent shifts from left-leaning to right-leaning governments. Elections and Erosion An exploration of the role of elections in the facilitation of democratic erosion in Latin America through case studies from Brazil, Mexico, Guatemala, and Nicaragua. The research identifies how existing conditions, such as the attacks on elections, laws, procedures, institutions, and their outcomes, shape democratic resilience. Lucy Bartres Rodríguez: “La Jaula de Oro”: Mixed-Status Family Tensions and Dynamics in the United States: Over 5.1 million US citizen children live with at least one undocumented family member. Consequently, legal vulnerability shapes everyday life and familial dynamics. The disproportionate burdens faced by mixed-status Latinx families remain understudied, yet are key in thoroughly understanding the effects of immigration enforcement in the United States. Drawing on memoirs, oral histories, and public testimonies, this research highlights the lived experiences of Latinx children to examine how US immigration policy reorganizes social power within mixed-status families. Thus, illustrating how legal precarity produces chronic fear and restricts mobility, while redistributing caregiving and financial responsibility from parent to child. |
| Blessing Ajayi | From One Reality to Another: An Analysis of Four Short Films from the GDR | Four short animated films from “Animation Before Unification: 16 Shorts from East Germany” are analyzed to understand how animation reflected snapshots of society in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Explicit discussion around controversial issues was prohibited in the GDR. Through the categorization of each short, in which figure-style and plot-plausibility are based on proximity to real life, and analysis of each interpretation, I determine what is conveyed in each piece, the methods used to achieve this, what this reflects about the society at that time, and how conversations around controversial issues under censorship were approached through animation. |
| Mo Al-jabry | THEA 299: Process & Production-Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ EVERYBODY | This panel will share their in-depth exploration into the process of creating this semester’s departmental production, EVERYBODY by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. These students were part of a new course, THEA 299 Process & Production. They will present on how their creative and scholarly research allowed them to learn about innovative theater practices and to apply techniques from other curricular work in their particular role as an actor, costume designer, assistant director, stage manager, dramaturge, or stage manager. They ill also discuss how their understanding of collaboration deepened. |
| Molly Allison | Contemporary Social Issues: Sociological Perspectives | Molly Alison: “What Do You Really Need Today?”: Stigma, Governance, and Provider Practice of Syringe Service Programs in Lewiston/Auburn, Maine Kylie Musante: The Pain is Unbearable”: Investigating Physical Pain Associated with Grief and Implications for Clinical Intervention Kate Rentzepis: Communicating the Unthinkable – Contextual and Generational Differences in Physician Disclosure of “Bad News” Lucy Green: The Empty Campus Effect: Socioeconomic Consequences of University Closures Nathaniel Zuckerberg: How the Site of a Mass Shooting Became the Center of a Community; The Story of Just-In-Time Recreation in the Wake of the 2023 Lewiston, Maine Shooting |
| Lucy Batres Rodriguez | Research in Latin American and Latinx Studies I | Fátima Rojas Núñez: Illicit Markets, Internal Demand: Examining the Rise of Drug Consumption in Mexico: Rising illicit drug consumption in Mexico is often framed as a derivative of transnational trafficking dynamics. Yet, observed trends cannot be explained solely through the strategic behavior of Drug Trafficking Organizations (DTOs). This thesis argues that increased drug consumption emerges through a reinforcing feedback loop shaped by economic conditions, state policy decisions, social dynamics, and the organizational heterogeneity of local market actors, such as narcomenudistas. By examining the growth of domestic drug markets as a locally embedded and historically contingent process, this thesis illustrates how drug consumption in Mexico has transformed over the past thirty years. Marin Ackerman: Left to Right? How Collective Memory Is Shifting Contemporary Politics in Latin America Collective memory is a powerful political tool that can be shaped to promote a particular narrative. By defining who belongs and who does not, it reinforces us versus them divisions within society. In post-dictatorship countries such as Argentina, Chile, and Brazil, collective memory varies across different socio-economic groups. Drawing on interviews and existing memory studies in Latin America, we can examine how these competing narratives about the military dictatorships continue to shape political identities and help explain the region’s recent shifts from left-leaning to right-leaning governments. Elections and Erosion An exploration of the role of elections in the facilitation of democratic erosion in Latin America through case studies from Brazil, Mexico, Guatemala, and Nicaragua. The research identifies how existing conditions, such as the attacks on elections, laws, procedures, institutions, and their outcomes, shape democratic resilience. Lucy Bartres Rodríguez: “La Jaula de Oro”: Mixed-Status Family Tensions and Dynamics in the United States: Over 5.1 million US citizen children live with at least one undocumented family member. Consequently, legal vulnerability shapes everyday life and familial dynamics. The disproportionate burdens faced by mixed-status Latinx families remain understudied, yet are key in thoroughly understanding the effects of immigration enforcement in the United States. Drawing on memoirs, oral histories, and public testimonies, this research highlights the lived experiences of Latinx children to examine how US immigration policy reorganizes social power within mixed-status families. Thus, illustrating how legal precarity produces chronic fear and restricts mobility, while redistributing caregiving and financial responsibility from parent to child. |
| Leah Belber | Research and the Public Good: Multidisciplinary Explorations | How can undergraduate research contribute to community well-being and the common good? This year’s Community-Engaged Research Fellows hail from diverse disciplines, but they share an interest in the public purposes of higher education and the potential of research to build on community strengths and address community needs. This session will feature community-engaged projects targeting a range of issues and developed in collaboration with diverse community partners. |
| Parker Benningfield | Coming Soon To a Theater Near You: The 2026 Bates Film Festival | This panel discussion will focus on the planning of the 2026 Bates Film Festival and will conclude with students announcing the slate of official selections for the 2026 festival. |
| Aidan Bergeron | Coming Soon To a Theater Near You: The 2026 Bates Film Festival | This panel discussion will focus on the planning of the 2026 Bates Film Festival and will conclude with students announcing the slate of official selections for the 2026 festival. |
| Paige Bilich | Research and the Public Good: Multidisciplinary Explorations | How can undergraduate research contribute to community well-being and the common good? This year’s Community-Engaged Research Fellows hail from diverse disciplines, but they share an interest in the public purposes of higher education and the potential of research to build on community strengths and address community needs. This session will feature community-engaged projects targeting a range of issues and developed in collaboration with diverse community partners. |
| Megan Billings | A Tea Party at the Prado: Reintroducing Isabella de Farnesio Through Children’s Literature | This multimedia thesis centers on the creation of a children’s book inspired by the El Prado en femenino exhibition at the Museo del Prado in Madrid. The project addresses the omission of Isabella de Farnesio’s story from narratives about the museum’s history. Through a fictional narrative, two young girls attend a tea party with the queen and they travel through the museum, where they encounter artwork from Spain’s early modern period. Along the way, they learn about four Spanish artists from the time such as Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, Jusepe Ribera, Diego Velazquez and how women are represented in their paintings. By combining storytelling, historical context, and art analysis, this thesis uses children’s literature as an accessible medium to introduce female figures and encourage engagement with representations of women in art history. |
| Siena Bird | Coming Soon To a Theater Near You: The 2026 Bates Film Festival | This panel discussion will focus on the planning of the 2026 Bates Film Festival and will conclude with students announcing the slate of official selections for the 2026 festival. |
| Emmon Blackburn | Botany and Tradition: China’s Ongoing Relationship with the Plant Sciences | Today, China stands as one of the leading countries in science and development. In biology, China leads in publications and research across a variety of topics. But how exactly did China come to be such a strong academic force, and what has their history with the plant sciences looked like? From their early years with traditional botany and medicine, to the transformative years in the 19th and 20th centuries, biology in China has undergone very rapid and unique change. This study highlights the events and people that fueled this change in order to understand China’s current position in biological research. |
| Evan Boxer-Cook | The Equinoctial Hour in Antiquity: Which Hour is Ours? | From the mid Roman Republic onward, the seasonal hour (one twelfth of a given day’s light) governed the urban world. Beneath it, tucked within specialized spheres and the law of the state itself operated the equinoctial hour (the length of a seasonal hour at the equinoxes—60 minutes). This project investigates the equinoctial hour, parsing material culture and literary sources to determine its lifecycle from Classical Greece to Imperial Rome. From changes in sundial design to documented uses in both public and specialized affairs, this project maps the fluctuating favor of the equinoctial hour. |
| Verina Chatata | What the Smell!?: Predicting Glomerular Topography from Glomeruli Tuning | Sensory brain regions are organised topographically, with properties such as pitch and texture systematically represented across the brain’s surface. Colour perception, for example, produces consistent neural activity patterns in visual areas, translating sensory input into perception. Conversely, odour representation is difficult to decode due to its multidimensional nature. This project examines the topographic organisation of glomeruli, the primary processing units of odour. In collaboration with the Wachowiak lab, we build on in vivo neural ‘odour maps’ generated from glomeruli in mice. Using machine learning, we investigate how glomerular spatial arrangements within the olfactory bulb correspond to specific odorant responses. |
| Audrey Cole | Literature, Politics, and Place: Exploring the Political Life of Latin American Fiction through the Works of Roberto Bolaño | What does it mean to follow a writer across the landscapes that shaped him? And what happens when his homeland no longer quite claims him? Tracing the legacy of Roberto Bolaño through Chile, Peru, and Mexico on our Phillips Fellowship trip this past summer, we encountered the lingering shadow of the 1973 coup, the paradox of pride and guilt in post-Pinochet Chile, and Bolaño’s uneasy status as both national icon and outsider. Through this immersion in Bolaño’s written works and the places they were set in, we opened up new clarity and new questions about how literature operates across time, borders, and translation. |
| Gemma DeCarolis | Post-hurricane vegetation coverage impacts on sea turtle nesting behavior | Nathaniel Zuckerberg: How the Site of a Mass Shooting Became the Center of a Community; The Story of Just-In-Time Recreation in the Wake of the 2023 Lewiston, Maine Shooting |
| Ava Elghanayan | Pinkwashed Progress: Queer Representation and Corporate Strategy in Netflix’s Ginny & Georgia | Netflix brands itself as committed to representing all people, and has notably created many television shows that contain characters in the LGBTQ community. Yet, many of these representations are both progressive and regressive. As a profit-driven corporation, Netflix’s primary goal is economic gain. The phenomenon known as pinkwashing describes this practice. Pinkwashing is leveraging symbolic support for queer communities to expand audiences and profit. This is evident in the third season of Ginny & Georgia, where the character Abby explores feelings for a non-male character for the first time. While this representation of queerness marks a step forward for LGBTQ visibility, the series simultaneously conflates her queerness with her mental health struggles. By framing Abby’s queerness as a symptom of instability, Netflix reinforces damaging tropes in order to appear progressive, exemplifying pinkwashing. |
| Audrey Esteves | Part II: 2026 Studio Art Thesis Presentations | AVC Studio art senior’s present an artist talk about their studio practice, research and the work they will be presenting at the 2026 Seniors student show at the Bates Art Museum. |
| Katie Fahey | Literature, Politics, and Place: Exploring the Political Life of Latin American Fiction through the Works of Roberto Bolaño | What does it mean to follow a writer across the landscapes that shaped him? And what happens when his homeland no longer quite claims him? Tracing the legacy of Roberto Bolaño through Chile, Peru, and Mexico on our Phillips Fellowship trip this past summer, we encountered the lingering shadow of the 1973 coup, the paradox of pride and guilt in post-Pinochet Chile, and Bolaño’s uneasy status as both national icon and outsider. Through this immersion in Bolaño’s written works and the places they were set in, we opened up new clarity and new questions about how literature operates across time, borders, and translation. |
| Jeremy Felton | Part II: 2026 Studio Art Thesis Presentations | AVC Studio art senior’s present an artist talk about their studio practice, research and the work they will be presenting at the 2026 Seniors student show at the Bates Art Museum. |
| Sammy Freeman | What’s Law Got To Do With It? Politics Senior Theses that Explore Law and Legal Questions | In this session, come learn about senior thesis projects undertaken by politics majors where the central questions have focused on U.S. legal change, legal mobilization, constitutional meaning, and doctrinal development. Topics covered include abortion access as a constitutional right beyond the Fourteenth Amendment, weapons and militia regulation beyond the Second Amendment, and the possible fracturing of the contemporary ascendent conservative legal movement. |
| Isabel Fronzaglia | Empire, State Power, and Resistance in 20th Century History | This panel brings together senior History majors to share their original thesis research on topics in 20th-century empire, state power, and resistance. The 20th century was shaped by the rise of new ideologies and the emergence of powerful new political formations in America and overseas. By examining the life of Lucy Parsons, the politics of rental policy in New York City, American news coverage of the 1968 Prague Spring, and Bedouin statelessness in the Emirate of Transjordan, these papers examine how people shaped and were shaped by the politics and political formations of the 20th century. |
| Elizabeth Gallegos Rodriguez | Research in Latin American and Latinx Studies Student II | Aaron Martínez: Dollarization, Dependence, and Distributional Consequences in El Salvador: This thesis examines the distributional consequences of dollarization– the official adoption of the U.S. dollar as legal tender–in El Salvador from 1990 to 2020. Using a Synthetic Control Method, I construct a counterfactual trajectory of the Gini coefficient if El Salvador had not dollarized. Results suggest dollarization alters inequality. An increase in income inequality would imply that the benefits of stability accrue to higher-income individuals and firms, excluding informal earning sectors. Interpreted through the lens of dependency theory, these findings highlight how renouncing monetary autonomy may constrain redistributive policy, reflecting the structural dependence of peripheral economies on core financial powers. Ty Stearns: State Power in the Salt Flats: The Shifting Politics of Resource Nationalism under the MAS Party: This thesis examines why Bolivia’s Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) shifted from a sovereign, state-centered model of resource nationalism to a softer, foreign-partner approach to lithium development. Using process tracing across the MAS era (2006-2025), drawing on evidence from legislative records, media coverage, technical experts, and scholarly writings, I show that chronic shortfalls in state capacity render sovereign lithium industrialization unattainable. This led to MAS’s attempt at a softer nationalist mode, with foreign partnerships to fill capacity gaps, which addressed some short-term capacity problems but exacerbated long-term development issues and increased social pushback Elizabeth Gallego Rodriguez: Beyond Familismo: Exploring the Gender Gap in Latinx College Enrollment One out of every four schoolchildren in the US is of Latinx heritage, but only 25–30% of Latinx adults hold college degrees. In the past decade, Latinas’ college enrollment reached record highs, while Latino men’s enrollment saw a consistent decline. This thesis asks: What perceptions do Latinx young adults have about higher education? How do gendered economic pressures and social capital availability shape educational aspirations and actual matriculation? I argue that although familism encourages all Latinx students, access to alternative career paths and a collective lack of social capital are critical in assessing this enrollment gap. Elizabeth Holcombe: “Paths to Belonging: Venezuelan Immigrant Integration in Colombia” This research involves investigating the factors that contribute to Venezuelan migrants’ perceptions of belonging and integration in four different municipalities in Colombia. I look at both institutional structures of reception within Colombia, and migrant’s individual characteristics as determinants of variation in levels of perceived integration. |
| Connor Gerraughty | “In case I don’t see ya, good afternoon, good evening, and goodnight!” Synoptic Surveillance and Contemporary Viewer-Audience Relationships in The Truman Show | “In case I don’t see ya, good afternoon, good evening, and goodnight!” Synoptic Surveillance and Contemporary Viewer-Audience Relationships in The Truman Show presents a detailed analysis in surveillance studies using Peter Weirs 1998 film The Truman Show. Through the use of a two-sided synoptic surveillance system, Truman and his audience enact power over each other through viewership. Simultaneously, this functions as both a commentary on the state of surveillance in America in the late 1990’s, and a harsh contrast to how far it has come today. |
| Aratrika Ghosh | Part I: 2026 Studio Art Thesis Presentations | AVC Studio art senior’s present an artist talk about their studio practice, research and the work they will be presenting at the 2026 Seniors student show at the Bates Art Museum. |
| Sean Gilliam | Diffusion-Based Signal Reconstruction for Silicon Photomultiplier Detectors | Liquid xenon particle interactions generate photons that produce voltage pulses on silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs), but these signals are obscured by noise and require extensive post-processing. Here we evaluate denoising diffusion probabilistic models (DDPMs) as an alternative to classical filtering and existing machine-learning denoisers for SiPM pulse reconstruction. We train a DDPM on synthetic clean SiPM pulses while injecting standardized empirical noise into the forward diffusion process, decreasing the search space of the model compared to classical DDPMs. Our results show that DDPMs can reconstruct SiPM signals in low signal-to-noise regimes, highlighting their potential for detectors with well-characterized noise processes. |
| Shelter Gimbel-Sherr | Coming Soon To a Theater Near You: The 2026 Bates Film Festival | This panel discussion will focus on the planning of the 2026 Bates Film Festival and will conclude with students announcing the slate of official selections for the 2026 festival. |
| Alexis Gonzalez | Representation and Exploitation: The Tension Between Dignity and Commodification in Willie Chavarría and Carlos Jaramillo’s Heart of the Valley | This thesis examines Heart of the Valley (2025), a short film set in Huron, California, a Central Valley farmworking town shaped by migrant labor. Latinx agricultural communities are often depicted in media only through labor, poverty, or crisis. This film instead foregrounds intimacy, family, masculinity, and memory. However, it was released alongside a fashion line inspired by the town, complicating its celebration of community. Through close analysis of cinematography, voiceover, color, and pacing, I argue that the film both dignifies and aestheticizes Huron, raising urgent questions about visibility, authorship, power, and ethical representation in contemporary media. |
| Lucy Green | Contemporary Social Issues: Sociological Perspectives | Molly Alison: “What Do You Really Need Today?”: Stigma, Governance, and Provider Practice of Syringe Service Programs in Lewiston/Auburn, Maine Kylie Musante: The Pain is Unbearable”: Investigating Physical Pain Associated with Grief and Implications for Clinical Intervention Kate Rentzepis: Communicating the Unthinkable – Contextual and Generational Differences in Physician Disclosure of “Bad News” Lucy Green: The Empty Campus Effect: Socioeconomic Consequences of University Closures Nathaniel Zuckerberg: How the Site of a Mass Shooting Became the Center of a Community; The Story of Just-In-Time Recreation in the Wake of the 2023 Lewiston, Maine Shooting |
| Eli Greenwald | Coming Soon To a Theater Near You: The 2026 Bates Film Festival | This panel discussion will focus on the planning of the 2026 Bates Film Festival and will conclude with students announcing the slate of official selections for the 2026 festival. |
| Yifan Gu | Reweighting approach to sign problems in quantum Heisenberg spin systems. | The goal of this project is to examine quantum phase transitions in Heisenberg model system. When frustration is introduced to the model, we will encounter a sign problem which the reweighting approach will be useful. Reweighting is a Monte Carlo technique where it reuses a set of sampled configurations by assigning each one a weight, so that measurements taken at one set of parameters can be “translated” into estimates for nearby parameter values without running a new simulation. The presentation introduces how this reweighting approach works when we face a sign problem and outlines the main numerical and conceptual obstacles that arise when extending reweighting techniques to quantum spin systems. |
| Ella Hannaford | Part I: 2026 Studio Art Thesis Presentations | AVC Studio art senior’s present an artist talk about their studio practice, research and the work they will be presenting at the 2026 Seniors student show at the Bates Art Museum. |
| Katie Heumann | Research and the Public Good: Multidisciplinary Explorations | How can undergraduate research contribute to community well-being and the common good? This year’s Community-Engaged Research Fellows hail from diverse disciplines, but they share an interest in the public purposes of higher education and the potential of research to build on community strengths and address community needs. This session will feature community-engaged projects targeting a range of issues and developed in collaboration with diverse community partners. |
| James Hillers | Agent-Based Modeling of Sponge and Algae Endosymbioses | Marine invertebrates from the phylum Cnidarian regularly engage in mutualistic endosymbiotic relationships with algae from the clade Symbiodinium. These interactions are important for the survival of the sponge and proliferation of the symbiont. In this talk, I present an agent-based modeling approach to studying the population dynamics of multiple algal symbionts in single cells. Simulations indicate that this allows for comparatively unfit symbionts to persist in spite of competition against more fit counterparts. As well, it highlights the importance of consecutive mitotic events for the establishment and maintenance of populations of cells. |
| Reese Hillman | What’s Law Got To Do With It? Politics Senior Theses that Explore Law and Legal Questions | In this session, come learn about senior thesis projects undertaken by politics majors where the central questions have focused on U.S. legal change, legal mobilization, constitutional meaning, and doctrinal development. Topics covered include abortion access as a constitutional right beyond the Fourteenth Amendment, weapons and militia regulation beyond the Second Amendment, and the possible fracturing of the contemporary ascendent conservative legal movement. |
| Elizabeth Holcombe | Research in Latin American and Latinx Studies Student II | Aaron Martínez: Dollarization, Dependence, and Distributional Consequences in El Salvador: This thesis examines the distributional consequences of dollarization– the official adoption of the U.S. dollar as legal tender–in El Salvador from 1990 to 2020. Using a Synthetic Control Method, I construct a counterfactual trajectory of the Gini coefficient if El Salvador had not dollarized. Results suggest dollarization alters inequality. An increase in income inequality would imply that the benefits of stability accrue to higher-income individuals and firms, excluding informal earning sectors. Interpreted through the lens of dependency theory, these findings highlight how renouncing monetary autonomy may constrain redistributive policy, reflecting the structural dependence of peripheral economies on core financial powers. Ty Stearns: State Power in the Salt Flats: The Shifting Politics of Resource Nationalism under the MAS Party: This thesis examines why Bolivia’s Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) shifted from a sovereign, state-centered model of resource nationalism to a softer, foreign-partner approach to lithium development. Using process tracing across the MAS era (2006-2025), drawing on evidence from legislative records, media coverage, technical experts, and scholarly writings, I show that chronic shortfalls in state capacity render sovereign lithium industrialization unattainable. This led to MAS’s attempt at a softer nationalist mode, with foreign partnerships to fill capacity gaps, which addressed some short-term capacity problems but exacerbated long-term development issues and increased social pushback Elizabeth Gallego Rodriguez: Beyond Familismo: Exploring the Gender Gap in Latinx College Enrollment One out of every four schoolchildren in the US is of Latinx heritage, but only 25–30% of Latinx adults hold college degrees. In the past decade, Latinas’ college enrollment reached record highs, while Latino men’s enrollment saw a consistent decline. This thesis asks: What perceptions do Latinx young adults have about higher education? How do gendered economic pressures and social capital availability shape educational aspirations and actual matriculation? I argue that although familism encourages all Latinx students, access to alternative career paths and a collective lack of social capital are critical in assessing this enrollment gap. Elizabeth Holcombe: “Paths to Belonging: Venezuelan Immigrant Integration in Colombia” This research involves investigating the factors that contribute to Venezuelan migrants’ perceptions of belonging and integration in four different municipalities in Colombia. I look at both institutional structures of reception within Colombia, and migrant’s individual characteristics as determinants of variation in levels of perceived integration. |
| John Hull | Partisanship on Foreign Policy During the Trump Era: Examining Donald Trump’s Polarizing Impact on American Attitudes Toward the War in Ukraine | The United States has supported Ukraine since 1991, however, American attitudes toward Ukraine have become increasingly divided along partisan lines since 2022. Public opinion surveys illustrate that despite a bipartisan consensus toward backing Ukraine’s war effort in 2022, Republican support for Ukraine has decreased while Democratic support has remained high. Understanding the factors fueling American polarization toward Ukraine is crucial both for policy makers when calculating future proxy wars, and for scholarly research on American foreign policy preferences. Using data from the Cooperative Election Study, I conduct a series of tests to measure Trump’s impact on American attitudes toward Ukraine. |
| Leslie Jimenez | Research in Latin American and Latinx Studies I | Fátima Rojas Núñez: Illicit Markets, Internal Demand: Examining the Rise of Drug Consumption in Mexico: Rising illicit drug consumption in Mexico is often framed as a derivative of transnational trafficking dynamics. Yet, observed trends cannot be explained solely through the strategic behavior of Drug Trafficking Organizations (DTOs). This thesis argues that increased drug consumption emerges through a reinforcing feedback loop shaped by economic conditions, state policy decisions, social dynamics, and the organizational heterogeneity of local market actors, such as narcomenudistas. By examining the growth of domestic drug markets as a locally embedded and historically contingent process, this thesis illustrates how drug consumption in Mexico has transformed over the past thirty years. Marin Ackerman: Left to Right? How Collective Memory Is Shifting Contemporary Politics in Latin America Collective memory is a powerful political tool that can be shaped to promote a particular narrative. By defining who belongs and who does not, it reinforces us versus them divisions within society. In post-dictatorship countries such as Argentina, Chile, and Brazil, collective memory varies across different socio-economic groups. Drawing on interviews and existing memory studies in Latin America, we can examine how these competing narratives about the military dictatorships continue to shape political identities and help explain the region’s recent shifts from left-leaning to right-leaning governments. Elections and Erosion An exploration of the role of elections in the facilitation of democratic erosion in Latin America through case studies from Brazil, Mexico, Guatemala, and Nicaragua. The research identifies how existing conditions, such as the attacks on elections, laws, procedures, institutions, and their outcomes, shape democratic resilience. Lucy Bartres Rodríguez: “La Jaula de Oro”: Mixed-Status Family Tensions and Dynamics in the United States: Over 5.1 million US citizen children live with at least one undocumented family member. Consequently, legal vulnerability shapes everyday life and familial dynamics. The disproportionate burdens faced by mixed-status Latinx families remain understudied, yet are key in thoroughly understanding the effects of immigration enforcement in the United States. Drawing on memoirs, oral histories, and public testimonies, this research highlights the lived experiences of Latinx children to examine how US immigration policy reorganizes social power within mixed-status families. Thus, illustrating how legal precarity produces chronic fear and restricts mobility, while redistributing caregiving and financial responsibility from parent to child. |
| Bissan Kablawi | Part I: 2026 Studio Art Thesis Presentations | AVC Studio art senior’s present an artist talk about their studio practice, research and the work they will be presenting at the 2026 Seniors student show at the Bates Art Museum. |
| Noah Katz | Coming Soon To a Theater Near You: The 2026 Bates Film Festival | This panel discussion will focus on the planning of the 2026 Bates Film Festival and will conclude with students announcing the slate of official selections for the 2026 festival. |
| Simon Klompus | Part II: 2026 Studio Art Thesis Presentations | AVC Studio art senior’s present an artist talk about their studio practice, research and the work they will be presenting at the 2026 Seniors student show at the Bates Art Museum. |
| Lena LaPierre | “‘The Children’s Republic’: Bulgarian Soft Power, Cultural Politics, and the 1979 Banner of Peace Assembly” | In 1979, Bulgaria reached out from behind the Iron Curtain to launch the Banner of Peace—a massive UNESCO-endorsed youth initiative that included a series of international children’s art festivals, a newspaper, a monument, and domestic competitions. This study focuses on the inaugural 1979 festival, arguing that the Bulgarian Ministry of Culture used the event to promote a specific narrative about the country’s past—as the heir of a rich and ancient cultural heritage—and about its future as a pioneer, leading a modern and transnational children’s cultural movement. By performing these visions of a national cultural past and future, Bulgaria attempted to win hearts and minds abroad and sell an enticing nationalist narrative of Bulgarian cultural exceptionalism to its citizenry. Analyzing previously unstudied Bulgarian-language sources such as internal planning records, speeches, children’s art, festival ephemera, publicity materials, newspaper articles, government decrees, photographs, and letters, this thesis looks beyond the goals of the Party elites who created this initiative, exploring the perspective of festival attendees using the materials made for international and Bulgarian audiences. Chapter One explains the various motivations behind this complex and sometimes confusing initiative. Chapter Two analyzes how Banner of Peace navigated Bulgaria’s cultural past, its national identity, and the festival’s internationalist character. Chapter Three delves into the eccentric transnational children’s culture movement that organizers and participants created for and at the festival. Together these chapters reveal how Banner of Peace advanced Bulgaria’s own domestic and international agendas and reveal that satellite states could carve out limited agency for themselves. |
| Sarah Lieber | Race, Power, and Belonging in American History | This panel brings together senior History majors to share their original thesis research on topics in American History. From Maine to Mexico, colonial societies have been shaped by interactions between indigenous Americans and settlers, and by the struggles of marginalized people to assert belonging in those societies. These papers explore these topics in the context of rural Maine, the Androscoggin River, Louisiana, and colonial Mexico. |
| Zhaoyi Liu | Precision Spectroscopy of 13CH4 near 1645 nm | As a potent greenhouse gas, methane is a major contributor to climate change. Effective monitoring and source attribution therefore rely heavily on precision spectroscopy. This presentation introduces a high-precision spectroscopic data-acquisition workflow and demonstrates how methane transmission data are processed and analyzed utilizing the Multi-spectrum Analysis Tool for Spectroscopy (MATS). Model-based fitting is employed to discuss current limitations on lineshape and parameter uncertainties. Prospective implications for source attribution between 12CH4 and 13CH4 of methane will also be discussed to provide an alternative pathway for future studies. |
| Sam Mallon | Coming Soon To a Theater Near You: The 2026 Bates Film Festival | This panel discussion will focus on the planning of the 2026 Bates Film Festival and will conclude with students announcing the slate of official selections for the 2026 festival. |
| Samantha Manogue | Samantha Learns a Lesson: Neoliberal Feminism and the Individualist Narratives of American Girl Dolls | “Samantha Learns a Lesson: Neoliberal Feminism and the Individualist Narratives of American Girl Dolls” presents an in-depth analysis of the American Girl doll narratives, specifically the second book in the first six dolls – Kirsten, Molly, Samantha, Felicity, Addy, and Josefina’s series. This thesis focuses on how the rise of neoliberal feminism in the 80s and 90s contributed to the book’s heightened use of individualist ideology. I argue that these personalized narratives of young girls within the contexts of United States history engage in neoliberal feminism, promoting individualism as a form of female liberation rather than collectivism, leaving systemic issues unchallenged. |
| Ruby Marden | THEA 299: Process & Production-Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ EVERYBODY | This panel will share their in-depth exploration into the process of creating this semester’s departmental production, EVERYBODY by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. These students were part of a new course, THEA 299 Process & Production. They will present on how their creative and scholarly research allowed them to learn about innovative theater practices and to apply techniques from other curricular work in their particular role as an actor, costume designer, assistant director, stage manager, dramaturge, or stage manager. They ill also discuss how their understanding of collaboration deepened. |
| Poppy Marsh | Across the Border: National Identity and Refugee Accommodation in Greece and Kenya | This thesis explores explanations for the variation in migration policy and border control methods in Greece and Kenya, states which have accommodated fairly similar migration flows since 1991. Incorporating examinations of the process of securitization of the border, public media rhetoric, and modern economic history, I consider three different explanations: political-economic conditions, racial constructions, and maintenance of the national narrative. I argue that the final explanation best addresses this puzzle, using each case country’s border policies and refugee accommodation laws as a dependent variable and the distinct articulation of each’s national narrative as the causal mechanism. This research is important because it underscores the exclusionary, violent nature of the nation-state, while looking to case countries like Kenya to consider how states can better accommodate migrants and refugees, as well as understand why case countries like Greece choose not to. |
| Aaron Martinez | Research in Latin American and Latinx Studies Student II | Aaron Martínez: Dollarization, Dependence, and Distributional Consequences in El Salvador: This thesis examines the distributional consequences of dollarization– the official adoption of the U.S. dollar as legal tender–in El Salvador from 1990 to 2020. Using a Synthetic Control Method, I construct a counterfactual trajectory of the Gini coefficient if El Salvador had not dollarized. Results suggest dollarization alters inequality. An increase in income inequality would imply that the benefits of stability accrue to higher-income individuals and firms, excluding informal earning sectors. Interpreted through the lens of dependency theory, these findings highlight how renouncing monetary autonomy may constrain redistributive policy, reflecting the structural dependence of peripheral economies on core financial powers. Ty Stearns: State Power in the Salt Flats: The Shifting Politics of Resource Nationalism under the MAS Party: This thesis examines why Bolivia’s Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) shifted from a sovereign, state-centered model of resource nationalism to a softer, foreign-partner approach to lithium development. Using process tracing across the MAS era (2006-2025), drawing on evidence from legislative records, media coverage, technical experts, and scholarly writings, I show that chronic shortfalls in state capacity render sovereign lithium industrialization unattainable. This led to MAS’s attempt at a softer nationalist mode, with foreign partnerships to fill capacity gaps, which addressed some short-term capacity problems but exacerbated long-term development issues and increased social pushback Elizabeth Gallego Rodriguez: Beyond Familismo: Exploring the Gender Gap in Latinx College Enrollment One out of every four schoolchildren in the US is of Latinx heritage, but only 25–30% of Latinx adults hold college degrees. In the past decade, Latinas’ college enrollment reached record highs, while Latino men’s enrollment saw a consistent decline. This thesis asks: What perceptions do Latinx young adults have about higher education? How do gendered economic pressures and social capital availability shape educational aspirations and actual matriculation? I argue that although familism encourages all Latinx students, access to alternative career paths and a collective lack of social capital are critical in assessing this enrollment gap. Elizabeth Holcombe: “Paths to Belonging: Venezuelan Immigrant Integration in Colombia” This research involves investigating the factors that contribute to Venezuelan migrants’ perceptions of belonging and integration in four different municipalities in Colombia. I look at both institutional structures of reception within Colombia, and migrant’s individual characteristics as determinants of variation in levels of perceived integration. |
| Adam Matos | Not a Lot of Fish in the Puddle: How Family Relational Modeling and Campus Culture Shape Romantic Relationships at Bates College | This thesis examines how Bates College students understand how their childhood family experiences shape their expectations, behaviors, and identities within romantic relationships in young adulthood. Using in-depth qualitative interviews with Bates upperclassmen, this project explores how students connect family relational modeling to their current approaches to dating and intimacy in a residential college environment. Seven central themes emerged from the analysis: family structure, components of identity, emotions, communication, vulnerability, independence, and the Bates social environment. Together, these themes show that students do not view their families as strict determinants of their romantic lives. Instead, they describe family as a starting point that provides both models to follow and patterns to resist. Overall, this study highlights that romantic development in college is an active and reflective process. Students continually reinterpret their pasts in order to understand what they want from love in the present. |
| Sarah McOsker | THEA 299: Process & Production-Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ EVERYBODY | This panel will share their in-depth exploration into the process of creating this semester’s departmental production, EVERYBODY by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. These students were part of a new course, THEA 299 Process & Production. They will present on how their creative and scholarly research allowed them to learn about innovative theater practices and to apply techniques from other curricular work in their particular role as an actor, costume designer, assistant director, stage manager, dramaturge, or stage manager. They ill also discuss how their understanding of collaboration deepened. |
| Franco Miele | Faith in Silence: Medium, Persecution, and God’s Representation | Silence is a historical fiction story about a Portuguese priest, Fr. Sebastian Rodrigues, searching for his mentor during the Tokugawa Shogunate in Japan. During this time in history, Christianity was banned by law and left many Christians subject to persecution. The story both explores what it would have been like to experience this, as well as Fr. Sebastian’s questioning of God’s presence. I explored how Endō Shūsaku’s novel and Martin Scorsese’s film of the same name represent Fr. Rodrigues’s relationship with God, and how are the differences between these representations shaped by medium, historical moment, and authorial background. |
| Ellie Millard | Hispanic Studies Portfolio Overview | My oral presentation will be a brief overview of my spanish journey through high school, the Hispanic Studies Department here at Bates and my travels abroad in Granada, Spain. I will discuss some of the key take-aways and lessons that I have learned about Hispanic and Latinx cultures and the power of language acquisition via reading, writing and oral forms in both academic and informal settings. I will finish off by sharing hopes for further language study and how I can use my Spanish skills moving forward after I graduate. |
| Whitney Miller | Empire, State Power, and Resistance in 20th Century History | This panel brings together senior History majors to share their original thesis research on topics in 20th-century empire, state power, and resistance. The 20th century was shaped by the rise of new ideologies and the emergence of powerful new political formations in America and overseas. By examining the life of Lucy Parsons, the politics of rental policy in New York City, American news coverage of the 1968 Prague Spring, and Bedouin statelessness in the Emirate of Transjordan, these papers examine how people shaped and were shaped by the politics and political formations of the 20th century. |
| Kylie Musante | Contemporary Social Issues: Sociological Perspectives | Molly Alison: “What Do You Really Need Today?”: Stigma, Governance, and Provider Practice of Syringe Service Programs in Lewiston/Auburn, Maine Kylie Musante: The Pain is Unbearable”: Investigating Physical Pain Associated with Grief and Implications for Clinical Intervention Kate Rentzepis: Communicating the Unthinkable – Contextual and Generational Differences in Physician Disclosure of “Bad News” Lucy Green: The Empty Campus Effect: Socioeconomic Consequences of University Closures Nathaniel Zuckerberg: How the Site of a Mass Shooting Became the Center of a Community; The Story of Just-In-Time Recreation in the Wake of the 2023 Lewiston, Maine Shooting |
| Marcel Nagy | THEA 299: Process & Production-Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ EVERYBODY | This panel will share their in-depth exploration into the process of creating this semester’s departmental production, EVERYBODY by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. These students were part of a new course, THEA 299 Process & Production. They will present on how their creative and scholarly research allowed them to learn about innovative theater practices and to apply techniques from other curricular work in their particular role as an actor, costume designer, assistant director, stage manager, dramaturge, or stage manager. They ill also discuss how their understanding of collaboration deepened. |
| Tosca Neumann | The Roman Empire, Interdisciplinary Approaches | Long a subject of study, the ancient Roman world still presents sites of new knowledge production and the potential for new understandings. This session showcases the work of senior Classical and Medieval Studies majors conducting new research engaged in the interdisciplinary study of the Roman world. |
| Drew Nyhus | Reinforcement Learning for Optimized Portfolio Allocation | This paper models portfolio allocation as a reinforcement learning (RL) problem, where the agent learns optimal behavior through feedback rather than prediction. Using internal ‘feature’ research, the model allocates within universe of thirty three large cap U.S. equities from the 2018 & 2025 version of the Dow Jones, dynamically adjusting allocations based on momentum, volatility, and sentiment driven features. By structuring the task as a contextual bandit problem, the system learns to balance risk and reward adaptively under uncertainty. The framework’s performance is evaluated against equal weight and news based baselines to illustrate the advantages of reinforcement learning in a non-stationary financial environment. Presentation is LaTeX pres, no option so PP/Other. |
| Claire Orfield | Coming Soon To a Theater Near You: The 2026 Bates Film Festival | This panel discussion will focus on the planning of the 2026 Bates Film Festival and will conclude with students announcing the slate of official selections for the 2026 festival. |
| Aoi Ozone | Coming Soon To a Theater Near You: The 2026 Bates Film Festival | This panel discussion will focus on the planning of the 2026 Bates Film Festival and will conclude with students announcing the slate of official selections for the 2026 festival. |
| Catalina Passino | Research and the Public Good: Multidisciplinary Explorations | How can undergraduate research contribute to community well-being and the common good? This year’s Community-Engaged Research Fellows hail from diverse disciplines, but they share an interest in the public purposes of higher education and the potential of research to build on community strengths and address community needs. This session will feature community-engaged projects targeting a range of issues and developed in collaboration with diverse community partners. |
| Matthew Peeler | What’s Law Got To Do With It? Politics Senior Theses that Explore Law and Legal Questions | In this session, come learn about senior thesis projects undertaken by politics majors where the central questions have focused on U.S. legal change, legal mobilization, constitutional meaning, and doctrinal development. Topics covered include abortion access as a constitutional right beyond the Fourteenth Amendment, weapons and militia regulation beyond the Second Amendment, and the possible fracturing of the contemporary ascendent conservative legal movement. |
| Kate Rentzepis | Contemporary Social Issues: Sociological Perspectives | Molly Alison: “What Do You Really Need Today?”: Stigma, Governance, and Provider Practice of Syringe Service Programs in Lewiston/Auburn, Maine Kylie Musante: The Pain is Unbearable”: Investigating Physical Pain Associated with Grief and Implications for Clinical Intervention Kate Rentzepis: Communicating the Unthinkable – Contextual and Generational Differences in Physician Disclosure of “Bad News” Lucy Green: The Empty Campus Effect: Socioeconomic Consequences of University Closures Nathaniel Zuckerberg: How the Site of a Mass Shooting Became the Center of a Community; The Story of Just-In-Time Recreation in the Wake of the 2023 Lewiston, Maine Shooting |
| Fatima Rojas Nunez | Research in Latin American and Latinx Studies I | Fátima Rojas Núñez: Illicit Markets, Internal Demand: Examining the Rise of Drug Consumption in Mexico: Rising illicit drug consumption in Mexico is often framed as a derivative of transnational trafficking dynamics. Yet, observed trends cannot be explained solely through the strategic behavior of Drug Trafficking Organizations (DTOs). This thesis argues that increased drug consumption emerges through a reinforcing feedback loop shaped by economic conditions, state policy decisions, social dynamics, and the organizational heterogeneity of local market actors, such as narcomenudistas. By examining the growth of domestic drug markets as a locally embedded and historically contingent process, this thesis illustrates how drug consumption in Mexico has transformed over the past thirty years. Marin Ackerman: Left to Right? How Collective Memory Is Shifting Contemporary Politics in Latin America Collective memory is a powerful political tool that can be shaped to promote a particular narrative. By defining who belongs and who does not, it reinforces us versus them divisions within society. In post-dictatorship countries such as Argentina, Chile, and Brazil, collective memory varies across different socio-economic groups. Drawing on interviews and existing memory studies in Latin America, we can examine how these competing narratives about the military dictatorships continue to shape political identities and help explain the region’s recent shifts from left-leaning to right-leaning governments. Elections and Erosion An exploration of the role of elections in the facilitation of democratic erosion in Latin America through case studies from Brazil, Mexico, Guatemala, and Nicaragua. The research identifies how existing conditions, such as the attacks on elections, laws, procedures, institutions, and their outcomes, shape democratic resilience. Lucy Bartres Rodríguez: “La Jaula de Oro”: Mixed-Status Family Tensions and Dynamics in the United States: Over 5.1 million US citizen children live with at least one undocumented family member. Consequently, legal vulnerability shapes everyday life and familial dynamics. The disproportionate burdens faced by mixed-status Latinx families remain understudied, yet are key in thoroughly understanding the effects of immigration enforcement in the United States. Drawing on memoirs, oral histories, and public testimonies, this research highlights the lived experiences of Latinx children to examine how US immigration policy reorganizes social power within mixed-status families. Thus, illustrating how legal precarity produces chronic fear and restricts mobility, while redistributing caregiving and financial responsibility from parent to child. |
| Nicole Rossilli | THEA 299: Process & Production-Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ EVERYBODY | This panel will share their in-depth exploration into the process of creating this semester’s departmental production, EVERYBODY by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. These students were part of a new course, THEA 299 Process & Production. They will present on how their creative and scholarly research allowed them to learn about innovative theater practices and to apply techniques from other curricular work in their particular role as an actor, costume designer, assistant director, stage manager, dramaturge, or stage manager. They ill also discuss how their understanding of collaboration deepened. |
| Sakina Saidi | Complex Langevin Approach to the Sign Problem in the 2D Heisenberg Model | My thesis presents a computational study of frustrated magnetism in the two-dimensional Heisenberg model. In a classical Heisenberg model, we study the magnetic phase transitions using Monte Carlo simulations. However, they fail in the quantum regime when frustration introduces a sign problem. To address this, I apply the Complex Langevin method, which extends stochastic simulations into the complex plane and allows the system to evolve with complex fields. This helps manage the oscillating signs that limit standard approaches. Using Bates College’s Leavitt high-performance computing cluster, I perform large-scale simulations involving millions of energy and state evaluations to analyze magnetic transitions. |
| Isabella Sandoz | Coming Soon To a Theater Near You: The 2026 Bates Film Festival | This panel discussion will focus on the planning of the 2026 Bates Film Festival and will conclude with students announcing the slate of official selections for the 2026 festival. |
| Zoe Schaedle | The Roman Empire, Interdisciplinary Approaches | Long a subject of study, the ancient Roman world still presents sites of new knowledge production and the potential for new understandings. This session showcases the work of senior Classical and Medieval Studies majors conducting new research engaged in the interdisciplinary study of the Roman world. |
| Maia Schifman | Part I: 2026 Studio Art Thesis Presentations | AVC Studio art senior’s present an artist talk about their studio practice, research and the work they will be presenting at the 2026 Seniors student show at the Bates Art Museum. |
| Kate Schulze | From Silk Roads to City Streets: Chinese Migration and the Making of a Multicultural City-State | From Silk Roads to City Streets: Chinese Migration and the Making of a Multicultural City-State examines how migration has continually reshaped Singapore’s identity, systems of belonging, and practices of multiculturalism from the nineteenth century to the present. Centering migration as both a historical force and an ongoing social process, this thesis asks how Singapore’s population diversity emerged, how the CMIO (Chinese Malay Indian Other) framework has constructed and regulated ethnic identities over time, and how longer histories of 华侨 (huáqiáo, Overseas Chinese) identity formation illuminate the foundations of Singaporean nation-building. Drawing on archival sources, community histories, and close readings of Tan Kah Kee’s The Memoirs of an Overseas Chinese 《南侨回忆录》, the thesis situates Chinese migration within a broader plural society shaped by Malay, Indian, and “Other” communities under both colonial and postcolonial governance. Tan Kah Kee’s educational, economic, and political activities reveal how Overseas Chinese identities were forged through transnational loyalties, language, and institutions long before the formalization of the CMIO system. At the same time, the project critically examines how state-managed multiculturalism flattened internal diversity while enabling new forms of creolization in everyday life, from housing and schooling to food and religious practice. By blending historical analysis with contemporary lived experiences, this thesis argues that Singapore’s multicultural identity is not static or state-produced alone, but continuously remade through mobility, negotiation, and the enduring legacies of migration. |
| Tristan Seavey | Race, Power, and Belonging in American History | This panel brings together senior History majors to share their original thesis research on topics in American History. From Maine to Mexico, colonial societies have been shaped by interactions between indigenous Americans and settlers, and by the struggles of marginalized people to assert belonging in those societies. These papers explore these topics in the context of rural Maine, the Androscoggin River, Louisiana, and colonial Mexico. |
| Maverick Selementi | Coming Soon To a Theater Near You: The 2026 Bates Film Festival | This panel discussion will focus on the planning of the 2026 Bates Film Festival and will conclude with students announcing the slate of official selections for the 2026 festival. |
| Nate Shore | Coming Soon To a Theater Near You: The 2026 Bates Film Festival | This panel discussion will focus on the planning of the 2026 Bates Film Festival and will conclude with students announcing the slate of official selections for the 2026 festival. |
| Sam Skinner | Empire, State Power, and Resistance in 20th Century History | This panel brings together senior History majors to share their original thesis research on topics in 20th-century empire, state power, and resistance. The 20th century was shaped by the rise of new ideologies and the emergence of powerful new political formations in America and overseas. By examining the life of Lucy Parsons, the politics of rental policy in New York City, American news coverage of the 1968 Prague Spring, and Bedouin statelessness in the Emirate of Transjordan, these papers examine how people shaped and were shaped by the politics and political formations of the 20th century. |
| Hope Stafford | Research and the Public Good: Multidisciplinary Explorations | How can undergraduate research contribute to community well-being and the common good? This year’s Community-Engaged Research Fellows hail from diverse disciplines, but they share an interest in the public purposes of higher education and the potential of research to build on community strengths and address community needs. This session will feature community-engaged projects targeting a range of issues and developed in collaboration with diverse community partners. |
| Ty Stearns | Research in Latin American and Latinx Studies Student II | Aaron Martínez: Dollarization, Dependence, and Distributional Consequences in El Salvador: This thesis examines the distributional consequences of dollarization– the official adoption of the U.S. dollar as legal tender–in El Salvador from 1990 to 2020. Using a Synthetic Control Method, I construct a counterfactual trajectory of the Gini coefficient if El Salvador had not dollarized. Results suggest dollarization alters inequality. An increase in income inequality would imply that the benefits of stability accrue to higher-income individuals and firms, excluding informal earning sectors. Interpreted through the lens of dependency theory, these findings highlight how renouncing monetary autonomy may constrain redistributive policy, reflecting the structural dependence of peripheral economies on core financial powers. Ty Stearns: State Power in the Salt Flats: The Shifting Politics of Resource Nationalism under the MAS Party: This thesis examines why Bolivia’s Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) shifted from a sovereign, state-centered model of resource nationalism to a softer, foreign-partner approach to lithium development. Using process tracing across the MAS era (2006-2025), drawing on evidence from legislative records, media coverage, technical experts, and scholarly writings, I show that chronic shortfalls in state capacity render sovereign lithium industrialization unattainable. This led to MAS’s attempt at a softer nationalist mode, with foreign partnerships to fill capacity gaps, which addressed some short-term capacity problems but exacerbated long-term development issues and increased social pushback Elizabeth Gallego Rodriguez: Beyond Familismo: Exploring the Gender Gap in Latinx College Enrollment One out of every four schoolchildren in the US is of Latinx heritage, but only 25–30% of Latinx adults hold college degrees. In the past decade, Latinas’ college enrollment reached record highs, while Latino men’s enrollment saw a consistent decline. This thesis asks: What perceptions do Latinx young adults have about higher education? How do gendered economic pressures and social capital availability shape educational aspirations and actual matriculation? I argue that although familism encourages all Latinx students, access to alternative career paths and a collective lack of social capital are critical in assessing this enrollment gap. Elizabeth Holcombe: “Paths to Belonging: Venezuelan Immigrant Integration in Colombia” This research involves investigating the factors that contribute to Venezuelan migrants’ perceptions of belonging and integration in four different municipalities in Colombia. I look at both institutional structures of reception within Colombia, and migrant’s individual characteristics as determinants of variation in levels of perceived integration. |
| Alex Takeyh | Thinking About Extinction in Wu Ming-Yi’s The Clouds are 2000 Meters Up | In my thesis, I examine how extinction has been written about in Taiwanese literature by analyzing Wu Ming-Yi’s Two Thousand Feet Up. In 2003, the Formosan clouded leopard, a keystone species and cultural symbol, went extinct. In combination with an understanding of the ecological significance of the species, supplemental readings of Wu’s work, along with an analysis of the novel, I argue that Wu Ming-Yi’s story emphasizes the intrinsic importance of non-human perspectives to the greater story of Taiwan, and that these perspectives, along with those of the different indigenous groups within Taiwan, cannot be ignored. |
| Ariya Tayal | Research and the Public Good: Multidisciplinary Explorations | How can undergraduate research contribute to community well-being and the common good? This year’s Community-Engaged Research Fellows hail from diverse disciplines, but they share an interest in the public purposes of higher education and the potential of research to build on community strengths and address community needs. This session will feature community-engaged projects targeting a range of issues and developed in collaboration with diverse community partners. |
| Grace Thomas | Part II: 2026 Studio Art Thesis Presentations | AVC Studio art senior’s present an artist talk about their studio practice, research and the work they will be presenting at the 2026 Seniors student show at the Bates Art Museum. |
| Sarah Tyebkhan | Odor ‘faces’? A latent space for olfactory maps | Our brains represent smells as ‘maps’, whose patterns of activity can signal what chemicals are present (aldehyde vs. ketone) and how we might interact with them (‘eating’ vs. ‘escape’). Here, we analyze 432 mouse activity maps that collectively describe a high-dimensional space of stimulus-evoked neural activity. While a latent axis such as age might organize a map of faces, latent axes such as edibility, toxicity, or other chemical or metabolic features may organize the space of olfactory maps. To determine these axes, and consequently, fundamental organizing features of olfaction, we apply dimensionality reduction techniques that reveal olfactory map space structure. |
| Elaine Wang | THEA 299: Process & Production-Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ EVERYBODY | This panel will share their in-depth exploration into the process of creating this semester’s departmental production, EVERYBODY by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. These students were part of a new course, THEA 299 Process & Production. They will present on how their creative and scholarly research allowed them to learn about innovative theater practices and to apply techniques from other curricular work in their particular role as an actor, costume designer, assistant director, stage manager, dramaturge, or stage manager. They ill also discuss how their understanding of collaboration deepened. |
| Shenandoah Waugh | Reconstructed Spaces: Memory Discourse through Ostalgie in Post-Reunification German Cinema | This thesis examines the discourses of Ostalgie, Heimat, and East German collective memory through four lesser-known German films. Through film language, these films portray spatial and cultural differences between East and West Germans. The films connect stories from an East German past to the politics of a unified Germany in the present. Each of the films asserts an East German identity that compels Germans to consider how the East can contribute to a unified German State. I claim that the four films studied in depth in this thesis use Ostalgie and Heimat to address political concerns of the present. |
| Eloise Wyatt | Empire, State Power, and Resistance in 20th Century History | This panel brings together senior History majors to share their original thesis research on topics in 20th-century empire, state power, and resistance. The 20th century was shaped by the rise of new ideologies and the emergence of powerful new political formations in America and overseas. By examining the life of Lucy Parsons, the politics of rental policy in New York City, American news coverage of the 1968 Prague Spring, and Bedouin statelessness in the Emirate of Transjordan, these papers examine how people shaped and were shaped by the politics and political formations of the 20th century. |
| Jonah Yaffe | Race, Power, and Belonging in American History | This panel brings together senior History majors to share their original thesis research on topics in American History. From Maine to Mexico, colonial societies have been shaped by interactions between indigenous Americans and settlers, and by the struggles of marginalized people to assert belonging in those societies. These papers explore these topics in the context of rural Maine, the Androscoggin River, Louisiana, and colonial Mexico. |
| Kira Yanagi | Coming Soon To a Theater Near You: The 2026 Bates Film Festival | This panel discussion will focus on the planning of the 2026 Bates Film Festival and will conclude with students announcing the slate of official selections for the 2026 festival. |
| Grace Yonchak | Financially Contingent Self-Worth as a Moderator of the Relationship Between Social Class and Well-Being | Study 1 of this thesis found that, for people with low social class, staking one’s self-worth on financial success (i.e., financially contingent self-worth; F-CSW) predicts lower well-being compared to people without financially CSW. However, there is no difference in predicted well-being at the high social class level between people with high versus low financially CSW. Since both financially CSW and low social class decrease autonomy, Study 2 examines if levels of autonomy (i.e., from having low social class, F-CSW, or both) explain the moderation pattern found in Study 1. |
| Luciana Zaiet | From the Ruhr to Santa Catarina: A 20th Century Genealogical Case Study of Germans in Brazil | This thesis explores German immigration to Brazil through a genealogical case study of my ancestor, Guilherme (Wilhelm) Piclum. It aims to reconstruct his story, blending oral history, family documents, and photographs with archival work and scholarly research. As some facts about Piclum’s life are impossible to confirm, I seek to fill the gaps in knowledge by using a subjunctive approach, speculating on possibilities with a basis on known facts. By retelling Piclum’s story, my goal is to humanize history and gain new perspectives into the experiences of German-Brazilians and German culture in Brazil. |
| Nathaniel Zuckerberg | Contemporary Social Issues: Sociological Perspectives | Molly Alison: “What Do You Really Need Today?”: Stigma, Governance, and Provider Practice of Syringe Service Programs in Lewiston/Auburn, Maine Kylie Musante: The Pain is Unbearable”: Investigating Physical Pain Associated with Grief and Implications for Clinical Intervention Kate Rentzepis: Communicating the Unthinkable – Contextual and Generational Differences in Physician Disclosure of “Bad News” Lucy Green: The Empty Campus Effect: Socioeconomic Consequences of University Closures Nathaniel Zuckerberg: How the Site of a Mass Shooting Became the Center of a Community; The Story of Just-In-Time Recreation in the Wake of the 2023 Lewiston, Maine Shooting |