2021 Capstones

Adviser: Talya Zemach-Bersin

Second Reader: Katrina Garry
Yale College Dean’s Office

Abstract:  This paper combines literature on toxic masculinity, gender formation theory, and hegemonic masculinity to analyze best practices for interventions against toxic masculinity. After reading through theoretical understandings of gender, this paper develops recommendations for those wishing to develop their own gendered interventions through an analysis of existing interventions. 

Adviser: Anne Mishkind

Second Reader: Daniel Egan
Department of Music

Abstract:  Musical theater engages norms, ideas, and representations of identity in an ever-changing America. Millions of students, teachers, and audiences engage with high school shows each year. While more ‘serious,’ issues-driven shows often directly address socio-political themes and identities, the widely-produced contemporary canon of high school musicals most often features fantastical romantic comedies––shows which are considered to be apolitical, family-friendly, and ‘fluffy.’ I interrogate this assumption of playful neutrality through my perspective as a musical theater writer, specifically by critically examining the ‘politics of representation’: how ideas about identity (e.g., race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality) are subliminally circulated through storytelling techniques. My analysis fills a significant gap in theater scholarship by considering The Addams Family, Seussical, Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid, and Little Shop of Horrors, some of the most frequently-performed––but academically under-researched––high school musicals of the 2010s. Finally, I discuss critical educational interventions that allow high school theater educators and students to increase their awareness of the ‘politics of representation’ in order to more intentionally engage with and create musical theater. 

Adviser: Talya Zemach-Bersin 

Second Reader: Daniel HoSang
American Studies Program

Abstract:  Because the classroom is a locus of socialization and a microcosm of larger social contexts, it is often the place where students begin building their political consciousness. One of the best paths forward toward dismantling White supremacy, decolonizing our minds and practices, and creating new liberated futures comes in the form of building multiethnic, cross-racial coalitions that require people of different groups to center each other’s liberation demands in their own work. If the classroom is a locus for this change in students, then teachers have an opportunity to equip students with the tools to stand in solidarity with both peers and mentors. While there has been much research into anti-racist teaching practices, little research exists on the anti-racist practices and pedagogies of Asian American teachers in particular. The specific positionality of Asian American educators in the classroom affects their relationships with their students and the ways they may employ anti-racist, coalition building practices. This capstone illuminates the practices employed by eight Asian American public school educators on their own understandings of racial positions in the classroom as well as the difficulties and successes encountered in employing anti-racist, solidarity-building pedagogies. The capstone finds that through building a racial consciousness informed by the existence of both White supremacy and anti-Blackness, the Asian American educators create learning spaces with their students that approach anti-racist, liberatory education from entry points unique to the Asian American experience. Specifically, the educators co-conspire to resist oppressive systems with their students by reimagining their curriculum, creating distinctive homespaces for students, and adopting a posture of accompaniment with other people of color in pursuit of liberatory work. 

Adviser: Talya Zemach-Bersin 

Second Reader: Crystal Feimster
Department of African American Studies

Abstract:  This capstone is part 1 of a two part project which explores the Philadelphia public education system as it relates to Black Philadelphians. It tracks the city’s educational history, beginning with Brown vs. Board and 1954, explores the various integrationist projects of the late 20th century, and concludes with a discussion of the modern texture of schooling in the city. This is all done through the lens of family narrative, with a personal history interspersed throughout to bring color and context to those topics discussed. This chapter flows directly into the next, which is a conversation about a conceptualized Black  future for education in the city.  

Adviser: Talya Zemach-Bersin

Second Reader: Anne Mishkind
Department of Political Science

Abstract: Using contemporary education research and Black reparations theory as its baseline, this capstone considers the experiences of Black students within the education system, and employs analysis and imagination to create a reparative K-12 education reform framework. However, due to the complexities of Black reparations discourse and the nuances of education reform, this project both develops and engages a methodology entitled reparative hybridity to situate these seemingly disparate fields in conversation with one another. 

Adviser: Anne Mishkind

Second Reader: Talya Zemach-Bersin
Education Studies Program

Abstract:  Inspired by the rich history of Black education, my project explores four different sites of Black radical leftist educational programs to ultimately theorize what separates these sites of liberatory education from traditional schooling methods. Through the thorough examples of the Highlander School, Citizenship Schools in South Carolina, the Mississippi Freedom Schools, and the Black Panther Oakland Community School, this project aims to outline the characteristics and methods that make them both a space of radical learning and reckoning for their students. By choosing to use examples that follows a timeline of Black liberation and freedom struggle in the 20^th Century, I hope to paint a narrative of how Black organizers, mobilizers, leaders, and educators built educational spaces outside of the public school system that did not serve their Black students. Finally, I will conclude with the lessons, methods, and theories that contemporary leftist groups have been reconciling with and being inspired from this history. My capstone aims to teach about the valuable lessons from the history of radical Black education so they can appropriately reconcile with how students are learning today. 

Adviser: Carla Horwitz

Second Reader: Ronald Angoff
Yale School of Medicine

Abstract:  Children’s health and education depend on a variety of social determinants, and their disparities are prevalent in the U.S. Given such a link between children’s health and education, and because children spend half of their days at schools, schools have been attempting to comprehensively meet children’s health needs through school health services. But these programs are not implemented in every school, and when implemented, they do not always lead to the desired outcomes. While scholars have attributed these school health shortcomings to a shortage of funding, to limited school staff capacity, to challenges of increasing buy-in, and to inadequate evaluation of programs, they have paid little attention to the lack of proper collaboration between medical and educational professionals. This capstone aims to illuminate the nature of proper collaboration between physicians and educational professionals for the creation and implementation of successful school health initiatives in the current era. To do so, this capstone analyzes primary and secondary sources to first establish the nature and significance of this gap. It then examines case studies of combating obesity, in particular nutrition and physical activity, to analyze modes of collaboration between physicians and educational professionals in school health services. Based on the analysis of twenty-eight cases, the capstone recommends a collaboration model for more efficacious efforts between medical and educational professionals that can contribute to more successful school health programs. 

Adviser: Mira Debs

Second Reader: Anne Mishkind
Department of Political Science

Abstract:  Utilizing a combination of available research and literature on Caribbean-Indigenous history and using fourteen interviews with Caribbean-indigenous activists, Puerto Rican educators, and scholars, this project examines the landscape of current curricula around Caribbean-Indigenous history and knowledge in Puerto Rican public schools. While scholars have had a number of debates regarding Indigenous self-identification, none have looked at the best ways to combine emerging research and current activism to provide Puerto Rican students with a more comprehensive understanding of Puerto Rico’s Indigenous history and culture. This capstone project determines what Puerto Rican students learn regarding Indigenous history in Puerto Rican public schools to then analyze how emerging research and activism can be incorporated into schools in an effort to provide a more accurate and inclusive representation of Puerto Rico’s Indigenous history. To answer both of these questions, literature (related to Puerto Rican Indigenous research, education and activism) was analyzed alongside interview data gained from interviews with fourteen individuals (a combination of scholars, educators and Caribbean-Indigenous activists). Altogether, this project will focus on how current and emerging research can be used alongside the work of activists to develop a set of best practices for Puerto Rican Indigenous education going forward. 

Adviser: Talya Zemach-Bersin

Second Reader: Tavia Nyongo
American Studies Program

Abstract:  My Education Studies capstone is a two-part creative project. This paper establishes the problem of the Black community’s complex relationship with the environment, how this relationship has been largely absent in children’s lit on the environment, and what my intervention into the literature is. The second part of this project is a middle grade graphic novel, The Adventures of Zora Jones, set in Los Angeles on Black environmentalism. This is important because there hasn’t been much writing for youth on Black people’s long history of engaging with the environment and on how racism is tied up in how we engage with nature. I hope to show all Black kids that there is more for Black folks interested in the environment than violence and pain, Black folks have in fact had meaningful relationships with the environment for years, and their own relationship can look like a million different things beyond the dominant narrative of who and what is considered “outdoorsy.” 

Key words: creative project, Black, youth, nature, environment, outdoors, outdoorsy, multigenerational, reclaim, graphic novel, future, dreams