Thank you so much!

Your work sounds really impactful, and I love the way that you serve your community in the Youth Leadership Council by leaning on your own experiences, while still preserving your humility. I especially resonate with the fear that focusing on difficult topics will lead to hopelessness. But I think that the fact you're asking these difficult questions shows how much you care about your students' dreams, and that care is a form of hope. Looking forward to hearing more from you soon.

Thank you so much Elizabeth! So grateful to be here together, you inspire me.

Thank you for your kind words! Looking forward to hearing more about your work.

Thank you for your beautiful video Elaheh! I love how you incorporated community into your Laidlaw project and are working to address biases in media and academia. The significance of your work spans across fields. I’m really excited about your project and would love to read/watch/see whatever final output you’ll create.

Cara this is such an astute observation! I’m so grateful that you could bring this to my attention and to the attention of our community. This idea of bias in linguistic curricula and economic determinism is especially important now in the face of extreme dehumanization of immigrants and international students in this country.  This example shows the depth of this dehumanization while highlighting how we put people into boxes of economic determinism that supersedes any supposed “meritocracy.” I’m also curious if we can look at this from an intersectional lens as well. I couldn’t help but notice that the first textbook made for Latin American immigrants has two lines that say, “Can he drive a car” and “Can Luisa take care of children.” This shows that the text is assuming that Latin American women will get jobs where they have to do caretaking tasks and Latin American men will get jobs where they’re required to drive. I’m curious if you think in your more informed opinion whether, beyond this small sample, there is any linguistic and economic determinism based on gender within this greater determinism. I’m really excited about your work and can't wait to see what you will do! Do you have any ideas for future projects about this? Do you think you’ll incorporate this into your second summer?

Hi Kamtoya! It’s really interesting what you were saying about how creation myths heavily overshadow destruction myths. For me, this is reminiscent of the denial of destruction we have in our society from climate change to global armed conflict. I’m curious how the retelling of myth reflects and shapes our denial of real destruction. 

At the same time, I’m curious how these destruction myths shape and alter the connotations of destruction in our society and cross-culturally. While destruction in current events is horrible, there may be other types of destruction that are actually regenerative. Where I’m from in Oregon, there are really bad wildfires that sometimes even spread to residential areas and towns. Part of the reason the issue is so severe is because for a long time firefighters tried to put out every fire that arose. After some of the worst fires which displaced a lot of people, the towns started finally listening to Indigenous community leaders in the region who advocated for small controlled burns which wipe out dead vegetation undergrowth. These small fires before peak fire season limit the amount of available vegetation to burn in a real wildfire and limit its spread. This practice has been conducted in Native American communities for generations. All of this to say that the Western/European view of destruction as only bad can actually lead to a lot of issues, and I’m really curious about how different cultures view destruction in their myths.

For the project, the music is being used for emotional learning. In my social neuroscience class last semester, we learned how emotion varies by region and culture, but a lot of researchers don’t agree on how emotion actually works and how to classify these differences. Because of this, I think people’s reaction to the music may vary by culture, but I’m not exactly sure how. At the same time, the music I’m using is a little unique because it invokes the sonata form from classical music while also drawing from traditional Russian music and the avant-garde. I think the first step to addressing this issue in my research is being honest about it like you said. I’m hoping once I finish this project and solidify whether the psychological effects exist and how they work, I can use the second summer to hopefully learn about music from more regions/cultures and hopefully apply this music to future research. Thank you so much for your insightful comment!