On Friday June 28th, 2024 starting at 10:30 AM Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellows met in an online forum under the guidance of Dr. Calvin Warren. Our fellows shared their research projects and engaged with questions about methodological approaches and the ways that their research will continue to develop during their time in the fellowship.
Jonissy Kadima – “Intersectionality Unveiled: A Personal Exploration of Identity, Belonging, and its Limitations”
Jonissy’s project strives to examine the use of identity and collective struggle as a structure around which folks organize.
Taylor Colorado Merino – “Existir es Resistir: Liberation is a Creative Practice for Our Collective Survival”
Taylor’s research focuses on how Black, Brown, and Palestinian individuals use their imagination in service of their vision for a better world and how creative practices serve as essential strategies for fostering resilience and solidarity.
Sabrina Reyes – “‘Brooklyn, the borough YOU really don’t know but NOW love'”
Sabrina’s research explores gentrification in Brooklyn, New York. What is gentrification exactly? How does gentrification look and feel? What is community making and unmaking? And what is necessary to make culture and community preservation possible?
M. Egberongbe – “The Difference in the Salience of Transgender Identity Across the Black Diaspora”
M’s research seeks to fill gaps in academic discourse on Black trans identities, providing a richer understanding of how cultural and societal differences influence identity perception. By highlighting the unique narratives of Black trans individuals, M. aims to create resources for young Africans questioning their gender identities and contribute to a more inclusive body of knowledge.
Jaanaki Radhakrishnan – “Nature-Based Play Education as Liberation Methodology”
Jaanaki’s project explores how individuals in alternative education spaces experience, understand, and actualize the generation of liberated identities and frameworks of community. All across Atlanta, there are Black spaces of alternative education that seek to create ways of being beyond the systems of capitalism and white supremacy under which we live. The primary aim of this study is to understand how nature-based play interacts with these spaces to create the opportunity to heal racial trauma and reinvent Black identities and systems of community.
Deanna Sharpe – “Accent and Dialect Acquisition among Children with Autism Exposed to In-Home Social Language Variation”
The social and communication deficits associated with autism spectrum disorder are known to impact social and language development. Deanna’s study aims to determine if children with autism ages 2-5 years can acquire accent and dialect when exposed to in-home social language variation despite those deficits that characterize ASD using quantitative and qualitative methods, including the Pairwise Variability Index, spectral analysis, and matched guise survey testing.
