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Featured Senior Projects From the Middlebury College Anthropology Department

Roxanna Alvarado ‘25
From “Sexy Bingo” to “Spicy Bingo”: A Transnational Comparison of Student-Led Sexual Health Education and Activism in Canada and the United States
Universities serve as key sites for sexual health education and promotion, influencing young adults’ healthcare seeking and well-being both over the short term and potentially for a lifetime. Sexual health education design and delivery also vary significantly depending on national and institutional settings. This research project focused on sexual health education programming on three campuses in Canada and the United States, drawing on four months of ethnographic research with peer advocates, educators, and scholars. On one hand, public universities face steep structural challenges, including funding limitations and difficulties in engaging commuter students. Across public and private institutions, peer educators highlight how student self-advocacy and lived experiences shape program effectiveness, reinforcing the importance of culturally responsive, student-centered approaches. These findings underscore the need for more ethnographically informed programs that prioritize pleasure, agency, and intersectionality, and that use humanities methodologies such as intercultural storytelling, participatory learning, and the critical revision of dominant scripts. At the same time, my findings highlight the need for tailored initiatives that address political and geographic barriers in sexual health education, and that lean into more resource-sharing and cross-border collaboration. (Supervised by Prof. Bright).

Turner Britz ‘25
Balancing Innovation and Integrity: The Impact of LLM-Based AI on Secondary Education in Addison County, VT
This thesis explores the role of Large Language Model-based Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies within rural secondary schools in Addison County, Vermont. Based on survey data and semi-structured interviews, this study analyzes how AI is perceived, utilized, and negotiated by both students and teachers. The findings reveal a diverse range of AI use, with specific patterns of adoption. Teachers engage with AI primarily for instructional support, yet their approaches vary. Some leverage it to streamline content creation while maintaining pedagogical authority; others use it to fill knowledge gaps; some abstain due to concerns about losing control over their teaching practices. Students’ AI use similarly spans a spectrum, ranging from academic dishonesty, to grade prediction, to more constructive applications like seeking feedback on their work. Drawing on frameworks of labor analysis, educational habitus, and Actor-Network Theory, this project illustrates how students and teachers navigate the tension between harnessing AI’s potential and maintaining control over its unpredictable influence. Ultimately, this study neither advocates for nor condemns AI in educational spaces but emphasizes the need for a critical understanding of AI’s capabilities and limitations. I argue that users must remain aware of AI’s lack of consciousness and consistency, and I caution users that overreliance could ultimately undermine their own agency and intellectual achievement. This research calls for structural interventions to equip educators and students with the knowledge necessary to use AI effectively and ethically in secondary education. (Supervised by Prof. Pinar)

James Laudenslager ‘25
The Aryan Myth
In this paper, I argue that the Nazis’ ability to craft and manipulate pre-existing notions of ‘Aryan’ or ‘Indo-Germanic’ superiority developed long before the 20th century, during the Enlightenment era. This is what set them apart from other political factions in inter-war Germany and allowed them to garner support within Germany and abroad. I argue that it was the Nazi’s ability to draw upon and manipulate the Aryan myth – not just as a racial doctrine, but as a political tool – that allowed them to transcend class, ideology, and even national borders. My argument consists of three case studies: a predominantly agricultural and Protestant community known as ‘Pomerania,’ a 1934 survey of Hitler voters, and foreign volunteers who came to Germany to fight with the Waffen SS. I examine how the Nazis strategically constructed and weaponized the Aryan myth to unify disparate social groups, justify exclusionary policies, and legitimize their expansionist ambitions. (Supervised by Prof. Fitzsimmons)

Hanna Medwar ‘25
Primary Health in Comparative Transnational Perspective: A Critical Ethnographic Study of Danish and American Healthcare Systems
In global healthcare systems science, there has been significant research on barriers to primary care and how those are structurally, culturally, and nationally unique. At the same time, there are aspects of primary care that are shared across national borders. Increasing demands on public healthcare worldwide are stretching primary settings to accommodate the care of more advanced and chronic conditions, such as mental health, neurological conditions, cancer and other disease screening, palliative care, substance use and addiction, and sexual and reproductive healthcare. Drawing on ethnographic research with healthcare providers, educators, and scholars in Denmark and the US, this thesis explores themes of temporality, therapeutic landscapes, and structural dissonance in provider relationships and practices of care. Specifically, I focus on primary care settings in Addison County, Vermont and Copenhagen, Denmark to observe changing political and organizational aspects of care. This work is concerned with healthcare systems comparison, as it also goes beyond structural differences to explore diverse lived experiences of primary care. Alongside this analysis, I aim to understand how practitioners grapple with tensions between “clinical” and “holistic” approaches to placemaking and care. This type of ethnographic research seeks to also contribute to a broader understanding of medical humanities scholarship, creating new spaces for academic exchange at Middlebury and beyond. (Supervised by Prof. Bright)

Ruby Neustadt ‘25
The Town’s College and the College’s Town: Institutional Landholdings and their Impact on College-Community Relationships in Middlebury Vermont
This project focuses on Middlebury, Vermont and asks how Middlebury College’s landholdings shape its relationship with the town’s residents. Drawing on political ecology, anthropological theory, and environmental studies, I argue that institutional land use in small college towns reflects and reinforces broader dynamics of power, class, and access. Through ethnographic research – including interviews, community mapping sessions, and historical analysis – I explore how college land can act as both a benefit and a barrier for the relationship between an educational institution and its surrounding community. While certain land uses foster collaboration and public benefit, others expose tensions rooted in exclusion, bureaucratic opacity, and socioeconomic inequality. By treating land as a politically charged and relational space, this study reveals the need for more transparent, reciprocal, and justice-oriented approaches to institutional land stewardship in higher education, or what I call “town-gown land justice.” (Supervised by Prof. Sheridan)

Emily Stone ‘25
Access to Oncology Diagnostics and Therapeutics in a Transnational Perspective: A Comparative Ethnographic Study in Denmark and the United States
This project examines how cancer care is delivered in Denmark and the United States, focusing on different interpretations of “fast-track” healthcare and the role of social trust. Through participant observation in healthcare settings, 20 interviews with healthcare professionals, and extensive document analysis, I explore how cultural values and political structures shape cancer treatment approaches. The research reveals that while Denmark’s “fast-track” system guarantees rapid access to cancer diagnostics and treatment through standardized “cancer packages,” the US focuses on expediting drug development and regulatory approval. These differences reflect deeper cultural values: Denmark prioritizes universal access and collective wellbeing, while the US emphasizes innovation and individual choice. The study found that Denmark’s success in delivering efficient cancer care despite minimal patient-provider relationship building in hospitals is supported by high levels of social trust and relational care in the primary care setting. In contrast, market-driven approaches in American oncology settings create a greater need for patient-centered care and stronger primary-to-specialty provider relationships. The findings suggest that cancer healthcare outcomes are deeply influenced by societal trust and political and economic factors. While Denmark’s model demonstrates how universal healthcare can be efficiently delivered, implementing similar reforms in the US would require addressing fundamental political and economic inequalities. This research contributes to our understanding of how healthcare systems reflect and reinforce broader societal values and structures. (Supervised by Prof. Bright)

Maggie Winters ‘25
The Stories We Tell about Justice: Crime Dramas, Domestic Violence, and the Divide between Fiction and Reality
This thesis examines the discrepancies between the portrayal of domestic violence in television crime dramas and the realities experienced by survivors, perpetrators, and legal professionals. Drawing on in-depth one-on-one interviews, case studies, and academic research, it explores how media narratives simplify the complexities of domestic violence, shaping public perceptions, legal outcomes, and societal attitudes. The first chapter analyzes the depiction of victims, perpetrators, and legal processes in television crime dramas to reveal patterns of oversimplification and stereotyping. Chapter 2 delves into the real-world experiences of domestic violence using interviews with Addison County lawyers and activists to demonstrate how systemic barriers, economic challenges, and the procedural rigidity of the justice system shape legal outcomes. The third chapter highlights the implications of these discrepancies, including their influence on juror biases, survivor self-perceptions, and broader societal attitudes toward justice. This thesis concludes by advocating for more accurate and nuanced media portrayals, recognizing their potential to educate, raise awareness, and foster greater understanding of domestic violence. (Supervised by Prof. Sheridan)

Líle Casey ‘24
The Tarkhan Dress, (Re)Constructed
The Tarkhan dress was discovered in 1977 in a bundle of linen textile fragments excavated in 1912 from Mastaba 2050 of the Tarkhan funerary complex, 37 miles south of modern day Cairo. The bundle had been erroneously labeled ‘funerary rags’ and sat, unstudied, in storage until conservation work separated the bundle of textile fragments, revealing the small dress. Carbon-14 analysis in 2015 dated the dress to 3366-3120 BCE, making it the world’s oldest extant woven garment. The Tarkhan dress is in remarkable condition for its age and the majority of the construction seams are still intact, providing a wealth of information about the sewing methods of Predynastic Egyptians. The stitching, however, represents a fraction of the hours of labor needed to make the finished garment, and one of the few steps in the process where we can almost definitively determine the methods used. The hundreds of hours involved in the flax harvest, spinning, weaving, cutting, and pleating processes are invisible when simply looking at the Tarkhan dress. In order to explore the mysterious pleating process and estimate the labor hours involved in the production of the dress, several potential methods of pleating were tested to determine which one created results most visually and structurally similar to the pleats on the sleeves of the Tarkhan dress. In addition to the pleating experiments, several methods of hand spinning were attempted in order to gain greater insight into those processes, and a full (re)construction of the garment was made using the finger pleating method the experiments found to be most similar to the original. The findings of this study indicate that the construction of the Tarkhan dress, from spinning to stitching would likely have taken at least 173 hours and that the sleeve sections of the dress may have been removed each time the garment was laundered in order to reset the pleats in the manner they appear on the dress. (Supervised by Prof. Fitzsimmons)

Amun Chaudhary ‘24
Reimagining Sociopolitical Relationships in a Dubai Kathak Studio
Tapasya Dance Studio is a Kathak Studio located in Dubai, UAE. Situated in a modern hub in the Global South, home to two generations of female dancers, and led by Mumbai-born guru Vaishali Ji, the studio has played an important role in my life, contributing to much of my lived experience in the South Asian diaspora, as a dancer, woman, and scholar. In this thesis, I turn to autoethnographic and narrative approaches in ethnography to unpack the studio as it has been observed and experienced through me, exploring the political possibilities of the studio and the subversive work that dance in homosocial, diasporic spaces can do for sociopolitical subject-making and the coming together of South Asians in the diaspora. The thesis is organized into four chapters: “Space,” “Guru,” “Relation,” and “Body,” and tells the story through these four registers, inviting readers to understand creative spaces in the diaspora as potent feminist and political sites for future generations of South Asians, dancers, and scholars. (Supervised by Prof. Bright)

Charlie Deichman-Caswell ‘24
Threads of Verse: Mapping San Francisco’s Postwar Poetry Networks 1945-1965
In the years directly following the end of the Second World War, a new counterculture formed in San Francisco, exemplified by a burgeoning poetry scene. Within this fresh, vibrant poetic community, social networks formed. Recently, anthropological studies of social groups have incorporated nuanced perspectives of space and sense of “place” into their analyses. This exploratory study examines how San Francisco’s postwar poetry networks were informed by the creation of and use of space. I ask, how did San Francisco’s spatial identity interact with the identities of individuals? Who were the main actors in poetry networks, and what role did social capital play in establishing key figures? How did power dynamics within poetry networks dictate patterns of inclusion and exclusion? I put field theory and social networks into conversation with spatial theory and placemaking theory in an attempt to form a view of social network formation that lends itself as much to the actors involved as it does to the spaces in which the poetry circles functioned. Data collection was almost entirely achieved using a historical analysis of secondary and primary sources. This analysis resulted in a spatially oriented view of San Francisco’s poetry networks as they evolved through three distinct temporal periods: 1945-1953, 1953-1956, 1956-1965. These periods are characterized by the shifting dynamics of two poetry circles: that of Kenneth Rexroth and that of Jack Spicer. As poetic networks transformed, social and often sexual hierarchies dictated the flow of ideas that would constitute this new counterculture. So too were social capital and power dynamics influenced by the accessibility and use of spaces in which postwar poetry was created and shared. These circles, finally, were as much bound by shared beliefs and group identity as they were by their attraction to a city which had embedded within itself a profound countercultural character. (Supervised by Prof. Tran)

Elio Farley ‘24
Pedagogies for Flourishing: Queer Health Futures in Addison County
How can we engage more inclusive pedagogies to support and co-lead with LGBTQIA2S+ youth in our community? In this project, I explored models of student-led health education and pedagogy, and then folded my research into the design of a one-day teacher training with members of The Body Online Lab. In this training I invited participants to take a reflexive and expansive journey into wellness, exploring what it means to flourish beyond the confines of traditional educational borders. My workshop and final report provided content on LGBTQIA2S+ health, structural needs, and tools for flourishing in Vermont today, including hands-on activities for more culturally congruent health education. (Supervised by Prof. Bright)

Jessica (Zhanqi) Hong ‘24
An (Imaginary) Journey to Prosperity: The Evolution of Villagers’ Sociality of Development in a Chinese Village
This thesis illustrates the social lives of Longtang Village in Guizhou China, where a community-based tourism (CBT) development campaign unfolded in 2018 and terminated in 2022. While no place in rural China has been free from development in the past two decades, Longtang’s CBT project was an unusual case as it was sought and carried out largely by enthusiastic villagers. Tracing the evolution of the CBT project and Longtang villagers’ participation from the project’s arrival to a year and a half after its official termination, the thesis approaches this development project as part of Longtang villagers’ sociality and examines how their sociality of development has been conditioned by specific factors. The thesis finds that Longtang villagers initially participated in the CBT project because of a unique vision of prosperity and approach to it; “prosperity at home through collective tourism.” This vision aligns with the villagers’ desire for prosperity rooted in their social-economic context. When the CBT campaign repeatedly failed to meet these promises, villagers became discontented. They gradually stopped contributing to the project, which ultimately led to the project’s termination. In the aftermath of the project, villagers continue to deal with the remnants of the campaign and its institutional, ideological, and economic effects in their everyday lives. While the villagers’ pursuit of prosperity persists, the previously collective vision of development and the means to it has become fractured and individualized. The process provides insight into not only the transformative impacts of a development campaign well beyond the projects’ official time span, but also villagers’ social lives in contemporary rural China. (Supervised by Prof. Oxfeld)

Patricia Hughes ‘24
Intimate Strangers: An Ethnographic Story of Female Connection and Collective Effervescence in Nightclub Bathrooms
An understudied but often experienced part of “going out” is that of the nightclub bathroom. My research project was set in female-identifying restrooms at bars, clubs, and parties in New York, Montreal, New Orleans, and Middlebury. I studied the composition of club goers, the role of a space’s design in the interactions that occur there, and the content of conversations in bathroom spaces. To better experiences of liminality, connection, and effervescence in these liminal nighttime settings, I drew on the work of Victor Turner, Emile Durkheim, and other theorists, as well as research methods of auto-ethnography and participant observation in a range of nightclub venues. Research results included a visual narrative presentation at the 2024 Spring Student Symposium and a short final report in which I compiled the work of the semester and other online sources I found. (Supervised by Prof. Bright)

Annie Leithead ‘24
Reimagining the Place of Care: Networks, Public Advocacy, and School-Based Medicine in Rural Vermont
Youth in Vermont face culturally specific socioeconomic, geographic, and medical access barriers consistent with and divergent from other districts in the US. School-based health centers (SBHCs) are a proven strategy for the promotion of healthy behaviors, reduced absenteeism, and timely medical care. In this ethnographic study, I carried out 14 semi-structured qualitative interviews and in-depth participant observation in school health settings in 2023-24, focusing on the sociocultural perceptions and experiences of school healthcare providers during and following COVID-19. With a primary focus on stakeholder experiences with the implementation of SBHCs at two schools in rural Vermont, I used sociocultural thematic analysis to identify four primary themes for discussion: the role of networks, school as a medical home, mental health and the pandemic, and the unique challenges of rural communities. (Supervised by Prof. Bright)

Sophia McDermott-Hughes ‘24
A Village Divided: Violence and Identity along the Spanish-Moroccan Border
The villages of Benzú and Belyounech are one interconnected community split by the arbitrary drawing of the border between Spain and Morocco. Benzú is located in Ceuta, a Spanish enclave on the African continent poised between Morocco and the Mediterranean. A few feet away in Morocco, across a series of high fences and barbed wire, lies its twin, Belyounech. I demonstrate the profound ways this border alters the lives, futures, and deaths of the communities it bisects. The border lying between these villages transformed from one that functionally did not exist to the site of rupture along global geopolitical fault lines, and is now enforced by one of the most extensive border-security apparatuses in the world over the course of the last three decades. I examine how the global migrant crisis tangibly intervened in these village to change people’s access to social and economic opportunity and the way they view their communities, their nation-states, and the border itself. I hope this study of an extreme case, where the local impacts of border partition appear in dramatic relief, serve as a helpful illustration and provide an analytical lens for understanding the dynamics unfolding in border communities around the world. (Supervised by Profs. Ayoub and Sheridan)

Gracie McDevitt ‘24
Pediatric Epilepsy Care in the World of the Child: Promoting the Child Patient’s Agency in the Clinic, the Home, and the School
In this project, I employ an anthropological lens to examine patient agency in pediatric epilepsy and identify how care can be better tailored to the child patient across spaces. I draw on concepts of concealment, explanatory models, and critical cultural relativism to analyze triadic patient-parent-physician communication and translation of the medical space in pediatric epilepsy. Additionally, I considered how autonomy in the clinical setting affects care at school and home. My literature review revealed that there is a lack of ethnographic research focused on children and a disconnect between pediatric epilepsy care in the clinic, at school, and in the home. This research reveals a need to translate the clinical space for children through active listening and responsible hearing and the importance of providing space for children to share their stories of epilepsy informally. Alternative forms of communication, such as painting, drawing, or music, may effectively bring the medical setting into the child’s world. Furthermore, the clinic must be deemphasized as the central space of pediatric epilepsy care. Understanding children’s agency in epilepsy treatment across multiple spaces is essential to improving self-management of seizures and, thus, lessening the burden of illness on patients and families. Moreover, examining the experience of pediatric epilepsy through an ethnographic lens illuminates how the social roles that children inhabit translate to the care they receive, offering suggestions for how medical and relational care can be better suited to the needs of the pediatric population. (Supervised by Prof. Bright)

Jaime Medina-Balcazar ‘24
How the Prevailing Abstinence Model Has Failed Righteous Dopefiends
The Abstinence Model, also known as the Minnesota Model, frames abstention from drug use as the sole goal of treatment. Created in a state mental hospital in 1949 by psychologists who had no experience treating substance abuse disorders, the Abstinence Model does not take into consideration the political economic conditions that prevent people from accessing treatment as well as culturally nuanced ways drug users make meaning in their lives and build social worlds around relationships of drug use. Why do we continue to see an increase in drug-related deaths despite the availability of rapid and effective therapies like naltrexone? Why is it so difficult to acquire, receive, and continue substance abuse and addiction treatment services? Why have the intricate and nuanced struggles of substance abuse and addiction become a political playground and skewed to justify the criminalization and dehumanization of certain bodies? In this research study, I investigate structural and cultural deficits in current abstinence models and compared those with more emergent, culturally and structurally responsive models. (Supervised by Prof. Bright)

Tessa Mott ‘24
Navigating the Birth (Work) Body: The Invisible Labor, Delivery, and Insights of Birth Justices by New England Birth Workers
This analytical and creative project investigates the collective ideologies and practices of seven birth workers in Maine and Vermont. Divided into three chapters, mirroring the three stages of labor and birth (early labor, delivery, and placenta), the text unpacks the holistic ideologies and practices of these birth workers as their care model operates in resistance to that of the broader American medical establishment. The birth body, at the intersection of individual, social, and political bodies (the Three Bodies Paradigm), acts as an analytical trope with which to understand particular enactments of birth justice by mother and midwife, especially as active, plural, and intersectional justices and resistances. In this way, the birth workers practice as facilitators of birth in opposition to the oppressive and hegemonic knowledge/power of biomedicine, tapping into the self-knowledge/power and constructive intuitions of the birth giver and birth worker. These midwives decenter themselves in practice by ‘sitting on their hands,’ and exercising a ‘midwife vanishing’ to empower and refocus visibility to the birth giver. Additionally, they act as facilitators of physical and bodily space to uphold feelings of safety, love, and healing in those spaces. The birth work body is formulated to conceptualize the inherent labor and justice work (individually, socially, and politically) of these birth workers. This text further explores their care model of ‘continuity of care’ and how that operates in conflict with their own ‘compassion fatigue’ and care. The particularity of place in Maine and Vermont influence how the midwives enact continuity of care and how specific state licensure effects their practices, as a social and political body. To conclude, the project proposes potential collective enactments and educations of birth and birth work to acknowledge to pluralistic, intersectional, and subjective nature of birth and birth justice in this country. (Supervised by Prof. Sheridan)

Anna Notaro ‘24
Interpersonal and Interspecies Dynamics in Conservation NGOs: A Narrative Analysis of Organizational and Sociocultural Structures
My project is an ethnographic and narrative analysis of my experiences volunteering at two conservation NGOs in very different parts of the world: Bolivia and Uganda. Throughout my analyses I discuss the differing organizational and sociocultural structures of each NGO, as well as how the two structures converge into similar storytelling practices. This is observed with a focus on both human-to-human and human-to-animal relationships at these organizations. My methods largely include autoethnographic diary entries I kept while working at both NGOs, as well as memories I have of interactions with different people and how those interactions influenced my interpretations of the NGOs. The importance of this study ultimately lies in the light it sheds on the interpersonal and interspecies dynamics that unfold in conservation NGOs, what influences these dynamics, and why they matter for the people and animals involved. (Supervised by Prof. Fitzsimmons)

Pearl Tulay ‘24
Weaving the Korowai: The Intersection of Ecosystem Restoration, Indigenous Knowledge, and Land Rights in Whakaraupō, New Zealand
This thesis focuses on several restoration projects around Whakaraupō (Lyttelton Harbor), a bay just south of Christchurch, New Zealand. It examines how negotiations over land, resources, and cultural revitalization come to the surface in these restoration projects. It also explores how these various projects work together and coalesce into Whaka-Ora Healthy Harbor, an initiative that unites the whole harbor under one shared, community-designed restoration plan. It considers the benefits of community engagement, collaboration, and education in restoration work. Additionally, it incorporates learning modules in each chapter, to give a potential method for learning the content covered in each chapter. Learning methods are informed by experiential education and participatory action research (PAR). By combining academic research with conversations, creative writing and pedagogical tools, this project enriches and broadens the topic from an esoteric research paper to something rooted in many places and people, and that has applicability in more than just the academic context. The learning modules will hopefully be incorporated in a new course for my study abroad program that will begin in spring 2025, and the material generated from the learning modules (particularly Chapter 4, creating an informational campaign for Whaka-Ora Healthy Harbor) could be used by restoration partners. (Supervised by Prof. Sheridan)

Albert Zhao ‘24
Negotiating Borders: The Interactions between Boundaries, Spaces, and Rural Migrant Workers in Shenzhen, China During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Ever since China’s Reform and Opening-up movement in 1979, rural migrant workers from all over the country have been drawn into cities. Their non-local status in the city, however, brings boundaries that segregate them from other social groups in the city. This has resulted in symbolic boundaries that deem them rural and backward, economic boundaries that render them with no formal contracts and labor protections, and institutional boundaries that prevent them from accessing public resources. These boundaries are frequently understood in China as part of “rural-urban disparity,” and are frequently discussed in existing literature. However, as highlighted by scholars, the COVID-19 pandemic has reshaped existing boundaries and created new ones. This study, therefore, aims to understand rural migrant workers and boundaries in the context of the pandemic. Most previous studies on boundaries and rural migrant workers adopt a “top-to-bottom” perspective, focusing on how boundaries restrict and exclude rural migrant workers but neglecting their agency in actively navigating and reshaping the boundaries. Through data obtained from ethnographic research methods, this study presents an emic understanding of rural migrant workers’ multilateral interactions with interpersonal, economic, physical, institutional, and symbolic boundaries during the pandemic. Based on three months of fieldwork in an oil painting factory in Shenzhen, this thesis concludes that boundaries were shaped by the unique context of the pandemic characterized by decreased interpersonal connection, depressed economy, rigid institutional and physical borders, and reversed symbolic systems. These boundaries restricted, excluded, dissected, and sometimes protected rural migrant workers. Depending on their diverse backgrounds, encounters, and experiences with boundaries, rural migrant workers negotiate, navigate, define, and utilize them. (Supervised by Prof. Oxfeld)