Thesis and Field Exam Symposium 15

The 15th Annual Thesis and Field Exam Symposium was held in SAC 300 on Wednesday, May 7, 2025, and featured research presentations by Ariel Hooks, Nosike Okafor, Jaxon Parker, Samantha Philipps, and Jeanbry Torres. 

Ariel Hooks presented on a thesis comparing the noir novel Laura (1942) with the videogame Bioshock Infinite: Burial at Sea (2013-14), and argued that both narratives provide avenues through which their "dangerous, monstrous female heroine can travel to assert authority over her aesthetic portrayal and her voice." 

Ariel's audience followed up with a variety of questions, including one about the difference between a reader and a player. Ariel responded that she thinks there isn't much difference--"it's just someone fully engaging with the art that they're presented with." 

Nosike Okafor presented on "The Liberatory Function of Death in the Poetry of Ernest Jones." Jones was a Chartist, who, according to Nosike, felt for the plight of working class British people in spite of his wealthy background. Nosike compared Victorian attitudes to death with popular practices and traditions from his native country of Nigeria. Nosike noted that his thesis is a work in progress, and that he is currently focused on contrasting conventional middle-class Victorian attitudes toward death and grieving with the radical critiques of the Chartists, and using this social analysis to illuminate Jones's poetry. 

Jaxon Parker noted that his defense was to be held in two days, "so I don't know for sure yet if I'm passing, but I'm feeling really good about it" (he did wind up passing). Jaxon presented on "The Novel at the Imperial Turn of the Century: Historicism, Antidevelopment, and the New Women of the British Empire." He described his interest in the bildungsroman and the historical novel, and that "these forms had teleological assumptions about historical change that lead to the nation state." Moreoever, "colonized writers used the bildungsroman and historical novel to break the teleology of these forms and talk about combined and uneven development." Jaxon explored the way that novels from India, Ireland, and South Africa "were writing about new women but telling very different stories."

Samantha Philipps presented on "Comics Studies." She entered the program with the intention of doing a thesis and was initially encouraged to pursue it, but after having attended a few conferences, she decided to switch to a field exam since she was interested in pursuing the field of comics studies, and she didn't want to feel compelled to explore a new field while simultaneously constructing an argument about it. She wound up discovering a field so deep that she feels she is still only scratching the surface, and began her presentation by humorously announcing, "I failed in this field exam." 

Sam went on to break down comics studies (and comics) according to a schema divided into origin, cultural production, system, materiality, and sociological approaches, and noted her interest in "what is unique about comics that no other field can speak to." 

Sam was asked a variety of questions, including why most comics scholars seem to be in English departments. "On a very surface level," she replied, "it is because English departments welcome them." 

Finally, Jeanbry Torres presented on "Guerillas and Bananas: Sites of Neoliberal Empires." Jeanbry noted that he felt drawn to write on a brand-new book, Alan Grostephan's The Banana Wars, which only came out a few months ago, and was encouraged by his advisor Michael Dowdy to put that work in conversation with Paul Hlava Ceballos's book of poems banana [ ]. Jeanbry was interested in themes of violence and displacement in both texts, and how economic systems allow for violence in our everyday lives. He articulated how, in an older construction, 'the military is the right arm of the nation state,' but that in these texts, paramilitaries are the right arm of large corporations, which have supplanted the nation state. 

We are grateful to all the students and faculty who presented at and attended this event. It was interesting to hear the results of our students' research, and it was fun to watch the ways that these projects echoed and spoke to one another over the course of the symposium. 

You can read about our previous symposia on the YAWP as well! We have covered symposia 14, (lucky) 13, 12, and 11.