Welcome to my page, I am a '27 from central New Hampshire! I came to Dartmouth for the liberal arts curriculum and have shifted my studies after exploring what the College offers. In addition to blogging, I work as an Interfaith Trip Fellow with the Tucker Center for Spiritual and Ethical Life. I enjoy mountain biking, running, skiing, singing, and drawing.
Academic Program
Anthropology for Public Health, Religion, and International Studies.
This discussion and reading-based class was incredible and relevant! Content ranged from the historical impact of the printing press to AI in the workforce and transhumanism, and all of the topics were grounded in religion and some of the frameworks religion provides. I pondered on ideas from this class all the time.
I was captivated by the first class meeting of the term reading Ovid's 'Metamorphoses' and eventually chose to focus on it for my research paper at the end of the term. All of the readings captivated my attention, however, Kafka, Han's 'The Vegetarian', and Kristeva were the authors that made the biggest impression on me. The class discussions resulted in wonderful insights relevant to humanity at a macro level. My favorite aspect was our professor instructing us to focus on the ideas before picking apart the writing style.
This class made me think about the bigger picture of health in a systems focus. Ultimately this class helped me realize that there are a lot of structural health system challenges in the U.S. and around the world. I particularly liked learning about the histories and anthropological side of things. Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) were my favorite topic in the class because the frameworks are very limited, so some do not receive enough focus and funding.
My Spanish language study abroad was wonderful. In addition to improving my Spanish proficiency, I learned a lot about the culture and history of Spain- especially in the autonomous community (region) of Cantabria where Santander is located. My favorite class on this trip was literature, every class had a different theme relevant to the history and culture of Spain and this was explored with movies, videos, and readings that resulted in some great insights during class discussion. The homestay aspect and excursions bolstered the conversational and cultural aspects of the LSA.
This class sits at the center of the two interests that I have chosen for my modified major, anthropology and environmental studies. There are a few reasons I love this class. First and foremost, there is a Social Impact Practicum (SIP) fieldwork aspect to it (I wrote a post about this!) which means I can experience local communities and have a tangible impact. Next, my professor has a wonderful design for the content and structure of the class. Also, I am genuinely excited to learn about the content and perspective this course utilizes by considering the many dimensions of disaster. I particularly like exploring the historical factors that turn a scenario into a disaster, and how that can be prevented.
I initially signed up for this class because I enjoy photography, I needed to fulfill my art distributive requirement, and I thought it would be relevant to my study of anthropology. I quickly realized that I would be getting a lot more from the course in terms of thinking through historical processes, ascribing value, and the different ways in which people can go about trying to make change in the world. This class has allowed me to develop my practical skills along with my knowledge and lean into some creativity at the same time!
I have had some of my classes in past terms visit the Hood Museum as part of the course experience, but this term all three of my classes had visits, so it caught my attention. Sometimes the visits are to the galleries with a curator, and other times the visit is with a specialist in the Bernstein Center for Object Study. Two of my courses spent some time in the Center for Object Study this term, Rural Anthropology and Photographer as Activist, and the photography course also visited the galleries. I am also taking Religion and Compassion, and that course only visited the gallery. Sessions in the Center for Object Study are curated towards course themes and content, and gallery visits are selected if they are relevant to certain courses.
This was one of the works we viewed for my Rural Anthropology course in the Bernstein Center for Object Study. It depicts a logging operation in the Catskill Mountains of New York.
My Religion and Compassion class visited this exhibit with the curator.
The main photo for this post, a dragon sculpture, was important in the context of the exhibit because the curator explained that the perception of dragons in East Asia is as whimsical creatures in harmony with humans. This was the exhibit we visited for the Religion and Compassion course. One of the other works in the exhibit that caught the attention of my class was one that, from a distance, appears to be traditional landscape art, and when you get up close you can see destruction and chaos.
This work in the Attitude of Coexistence exhibit moves and is supposed to emulate the sun. It is motion-activated and the timing of the movement mimics a human heartbeat, so it is quite captivating.
The Cara Romero photography exhibit was particularly inspiring to sit with while taking my Photographer as Activist course since it was super relevant to course themes of the artistic process and balancing aesthetics with creating meaning and sending a message. It was very informative and interesting to have a tour with the curator of the exhibit alongside audio recordings for select pieces if we found ones that we wanted to learn more about. The audio recordings are a new technique at the Hood being explored with this exhibit. The opportunity to learn course content, especially for courses not dedicated to art, through the lens of art is a particularly unique opportunity at Dartmouth.
In my photography as activism class we were fortunate to get a tour of a recent major exhibit of Cara Romero at the Hood with the curator for indigenous art, Jamie Powell.
Inspired by my fall term recap post, I wanted to share a similar recap at the end of these nine weeks of the winter term. Read on to see what I've been up to!
