Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Dr. Alison Krӧgel Faculty Spotlight, Rachel Jaeger

DU Undergraduate Research Journal Archive

An interview with Dr. Alison Krӧgel of the University of Denver's Department of Spanish Language, Literary & Cultural Studies.

Du Undergraduate Showcase Abstracts: Research, Scholarship, And Creative Works, Kabe Aberle, Nadia Kako, Kateri Mcrae, Brooke Agulnek, Sky Palmon, Yasmine Ramirez, Francisca Aguirre Beltran, Ashley Juarez, Bridget Kim, Tessa Appel, Sterling Kerr, Spencer Ingley, Gabe Meyer, Robin Tinghitella, Dale Broder, Lily Baeza, Chloe Beers, Julia Coakley, Whitney Kelsey, Sydney Gainforth, Gabi Wing, Audrey Martin, Aaliyah Amore Berry, Brooke Watley, Kiruthika Venkatesan, Rachel Bienstock, Annabella Brotherston, Madison Bryant, Mia Burgener, Emma P. Lieb, Rachel A. Johnson, Jennifer L. Hoffman, Kania Campbell, Kiena Campbell, Courtney Cassidy, Sage Krzyzkowski, Maddox Jones, Skylar Abookire, Luke Hawkins, Sunnah Yoon, Andrea Chu, Yan Qin, Nyah Cubbison, Brian Gearity, Daniel Mcintosh, Mariely Cruz, Edward Garrido, Grady Dionne, Nicole Doris, Lyndsie Salvagio, Ann-Charlotte Granholm-Bentley, Anna Dymov, Hannah Eckert, Gabrielle Welsh, Erica Larson, Charlie Ernst, Anna Zhou, Sarah Watamura, Larissa Fedorovich-Klein, Georgie Fields, Kimberly A. Guevara, Aven Mccall, Ben Peltier, Feruz Yahia, Patrick Flores, Jadyn Floyd, Sophia Forcier, J. Von R. Monteza, Peter Sokol-Hessner, Gwendolyn Geiger, Scott Nichols, Camryn Gunter, Kendal Hengst, Charlie Bednarz, Issy Garside, Addison Baker, Rachel Mina, Brooke Hermanson, Amanda Klingler, William Highfill, Sydney Jaques, Kerstin Lewey, Allison Grossery, Daniel Linseman, Ethan Lim, Jagger Livengood, Owen Mantelli, Gabby Pappas, Abby Mcdonald, Madeleine Dierking, Eve Miller, Emma Loeber, Anna Marlow, Michael Kerwin, Ella Mathews, Hillary Hamann, Khadija Mohamed, Vivian Nguyen, Gabri Notov, Ifunayachi Ogbonna-Ukuku, Sunil Kumar, Charles Baysah, Sarah Olson, Don Sullivan, Anna Paradiso, Jay Parrish, Mira Pronobis, Alisha Pravasi, Kerstin Haring, Diego Ramirez, Christopher Reardon, Juliana Ramirez, Casey Doherty, Ella Kestner, Teagan Weindel, Cate Billings, Pablo Torre-Walter, Lucy Rand, Samantha Reynolds, Mark Siemens, Khadeeja Rashid, Laine Satterlee, Piper Heilbronner, Lily Pound, Ben Whitehurst, Anna Respet, Lizzie Lesoing, Sydney Hertel, Aya Saad-Masri, Brooke Ballenger, Max Proske, Hannah Rosenberg, Ellia Nakahara, Sophia Espinoza, Ivan Woolhouse, Simon Ruland, Gorkem Er, Timothy Sweeny, Melaku Saketa, Michela Schenk, Maren Lynch, Madi Hamm, Grace Schroeder, Michelle Rozenman, Rana Seif, Jackson Hall, Marisela Simental, Daniel Paredes, Aaron Mena, Preston Spaan, Evelyn Stovin, David Andrew Swartz, Anh Tran, Daniel Pittman, Luke Farchione, Emily Boyer, Ukari Verner, Lacey Conrad, Jonathan Velotta, James Weiner, Jagger Gossett, Noah Sherry, Sam Proud, Ben Block, Avi Narayana, Zoey Weiss, Alyssa Wilson, Gabrielle Walsh, David Zonana, Keely Wright, Kena Riveria, Lillybelle Deer, Jena Doom, Elysia Davis, Isabelle Yaremenko, Caitlyn Young

DU Undergraduate Research Journal Archive

Abstracts from the DU Undergraduate Research Showcase.

The Ai Mirror: How To Reclaim Our Humanity In An Age Of Machine Thinking By Shannon Vallor, D. Michael Cox

Critical Humanities

Book Review of The AI Mirror: How to Reclaim Our Humanity in an Age of Machine Thinking by Shannon Vallor

Doubly Erased: Lgbtq Literature In Appalachia By Allison Carey, Lis Regula

Critical Humanities

A book review of Allison Carey's Doubly Erased: LGBTQ Literature in Appalachia

Directional Poetics: An Interview With Ed Simon On Pittsburgh, Appalachia, And The Memories Of Geography, Ed Simon, Scott C. Mcdaniel

Critical Humanities

An Interview with Ed Simon

Where The Fog Hangs: An Interview With Elaine Sheldon Mcmillion On Appalachia, Filmmaking, And The Power Of Small Acts, Elaine Mcmillion Sheldon, Scott C. Mcdaniel

Critical Humanities

An Interview with Elaine Sheldon McMillion

Fire In The Hole: Appalachia’S Elemental Narrative In Harlan County, Usa And King Coal, Somak Mukherjee

Critical Humanities

In Elaine McMillion Sheldon’s documentary King Coal (2023) coal is being referred to as a matter that is “not dirty or clean, but elemental.” The acclaimed film centers on the complex histories and cultures of coal in Central Appalachia, based on the perspective of Sheldon, a coal miner’s daughter, and a West Virginia native. The elemental nature of coal is explored in the film by situating coal less as a resource and more as a mythic foundation for the community's cultural history. This article puts King Coal in conversation with Barbara Kopple's seminal Harlan County, USA (1976) which narrates the …

Appalachian Archipelagos: "Writing From Measureless Location” In C.S. Giscombe’S Geopoetics, Jay Butler

Critical Humanities

This essay begins with a speculative gesture: what if we read Appalachia not as a bounded, landlocked region, but as an archipelago—where coherence lies not in contiguity, but in multiplicity and geopoetic drift? Drawing on the poetry of C.S. Giscombe, which spans the Caribbean to Appalachia and unsettles geographic conventions by inhabiting “measureless location” – not as a metaphor but as a method, materially grounded yet elusively meaningful – and guided by R.A. Judy’s Sentient Flesh and its theory and practice of para-semiosis and poiesis-in-black, this essay follows Giscombe’s pragmatic and prismatic geopoetics as it upends dominant frameworks of …

Planetary Thinking: Hellbenders As Emissaries Of Appalachia, Tierra R. Curry

Critical Humanities

Hellbenders are prehistoric salamanders that have thrived in cold rivers since before the continents divided. Once found throughout Appalachian watersheds, due to exploitation and habitat degradation only a few dozen healthy populations survive. Monstrous yet fascinating, hellbenders were often reviled historically, but in recent decades they have gained iconic status and are now celebrated as charismatic indicators for clean rivers. Hellbenders are symbols of the wild because of their ancient history, elusive nature, and contribution to ecosystem resilience. The same forces that drove the decline of these amphibian sentinels have sacrificed public health in Appalachia. Their demise echoes the struggle …

“Here’S To The Long Haul: Dark Green Religion And Planetary Thinking In Appalachian Environmental Movements”, Joseph Witt

Critical Humanities

Environmental humanities scholars have worked to develop alternative frameworks for understanding and relating to Earth’s systems in the hope of reforming the exploitative and extractive practices and attitudes characteristic of the Anthropocene. For example, Dipesh Chakrabarty argued that addressing climate change necessitated appreciating the entanglements between global (human) and planetary (Earth systems) scales. While Chakrabarty noted that ancient and Indigenous cultures may have retained approaches necessary for this work, he was skeptical of the ability of modern secular intellectual traditions focused on global justice perspectives to ultimately facilitate a planetary non-anthropocentric ethic. However, by only briefly engaging with themes of …

Planetary/Peripheral Appalachia, Matthew Halm

Critical Humanities

One of the characters in William Gibson’s science fiction novel The Peripheral describes the timeline-manipulating technology around which the story turns as a way of “third-worlding” the past. By sending information back and forth across time, the users of the technology, in our future, outsource work to inhabitants of their past (our near-present). An entire world becomes the “third world” for another world, home to cheap labor and expendable resources. The characters this happens to in the novel live in Appalachia, a choice that works in part to ground the otherwise cosmic scale of timeline manipulation and global catastrophe while …

Planetary [] Appalachia: Editor’S Introduction, Scott C. Mcdaniel

Critical Humanities

Editor's Introduction to Volume 4 Issue 1

We Need A Belmont Report For Ai, Kevin Patton

Philosophy Faculty Publications

The Belmont Report has a place of great importance in American biomedical research ethics. This paper argues that a similar kind of report, and the legal infrastructure that birthed it, is needed in the United States if we are to preempt a great many of the potential issues that are on the horizon with artificial intelligence (AI). What makes the Belmont Report so important is not just that it established a new basis for how medical professionals ought to treat their patients and experiment participants; it did so with the force of law. Establishing an equivalent legal framework for AI …

Craig L. Robinson

African American Funeral Programs

Craig_L_Robinson.pdf - Funeral program for Craig Robinson

Latine Students’ Stem Identity Development: Reflecting On Implicit Biases, Imposter Syndrome, Self-Efficacy, And Support Systems, Alyssa G. Cavazos, Valerie Leija, Javier Cavazos Vela

Writing and Language Studies Faculty Publications

This study used an equity ethic framework and a STEM identity model to contextualize and understand Latine students’ perceptions of STEM identity development. The purpose of this study was to investigate how Latine undergraduate students who engaged in STEM coursework perceived their learning experiences and stories of resilience through an equity ethic framework. Data were collected through interviews with 19 Latine college students attending a Hispanic-Serving Institution. Findings revealed the following themes related to Latine students’ STEM identity development and lived experiences in STEM coursework: implicit biases, imposter syndrome, self-efficacy, and support system and resources. Findings highlight the need for …

Neural Associations Between Fingerspelling, Print, And Signs: An Erp Priming Study With Deaf Readers, Brittany Lee, Sofia E. Ortega, Priscilla M. Martinez, Katherine J. Midgley, Phillip J. Holcomb, Karen Emmorey

Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Articles and Research

Fingerspelling is a leading predictor of reading ability for deaf people who use a signed language, but few neuroimaging studies have examined how it supports reading. We used event-related potentials to investigate how fingerspelled words prime printed words. Twenty-four skilled deaf adult readers completed a Go/No-Go task while viewing printed English word targets following related and unrelated primes in one of three conditions: printed English words, American Sign Language (ASL) signs, and fingerspelled words. N400 priming effects were strong across all three conditions. Early N400 effects were similar for printed word primes and fingerspelled word primes, suggesting shared orthographic representations. …

The Scylla And Charybdis Of Paternalism And Moral Complicity, J.L.A. Donohue

Philosophy Faculty Publications and Presentations

In some circumstances avoiding complicity seems to require acting paternalistically, while avoiding paternalism seems to require moral complicity in another's wrongful projects. In order to solve the conflict we will need to investigate the concepts of paternalism and moral complicity and, more importantly, our moral interest in them in the first place. Why do the wrongs of paternalism and moral complicity matter to us? And what does this tell us about what it means to set out to treat others well, where that includes both respecting their agency and helping them to act rightly? I will suggest that adopting a …

Book Review: River Fiction Of India: Intersectional Flows Of Narratives, Geographies, And Histories, Nilay Patel

Critical Humanities

Book Review of

River Fiction of India: Intersectional Flows of Narratives, Geographies, and Histories,

edited by Subhadeep Ray

London & New York: Routledge, 2025

306 pp.

ISBN: 978-1-032-66253-4 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-032-98346-2 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-003-59818-3 (ebk)

An Interview With Anthony Viola, Anthony Viola, John Van Kirk

Critical Humanities

Anthony Viola interviewed by John Van Kirk

The Human Catalyst And Extractivist Fiction: A Close Reading Of Siddhartha Sarma’S Year Of The Weeds And Pundalik N Naik’S The Upheaval, Elwin Susan John Dr

Critical Humanities

Literary narratives have been abetting the various global faces of climate crisis, ever since the disciplines of humanities and social sciences have become vocal about the Anthropocene. The discussions have been mostly centered around the discourses of capitalism, imperialism, rights and subalterity. By reading some of these foundational grips on ecological crisis, the present essay analyses literary narratives on mining and extraction in India from the standpoint of a human catalyst; which is defined as an entity that can cause a chain reaction, that may or may not result in the annihilation of the initial catalyst. The essay will begin …

The Extraction Unconscious: Solar-Powered Utopias In Catching The Sun (2015) And In The Name Of Lithium (2021), Isidora Cortés-Monroy

Critical Humanities

By comparing the depictions of future energy regimes in the two ecodocumentaries, Catching the Sun (2015) and In the Name of Lithium (2021), this article explores representations of post-carbon futures from the US and Argentina. Read closely alongside Frederic Jameson’s notions of utopias, the article delineates the extent to which a solar powered future challenges and reiterates current neocolonial extractivist structures. Basing myself on Patricia Yaeger’s concept of an “energy unconscious,” I argue that these solar utopias maintain an “extraction unconscious” that continues to produce sacrifice zones where primary commodities needed for the energy transition can be found. By analysing …

Towards An Indigenous Climate Epistemology: Bringing The Newa Literary Tradition Of The Swasthani Vrata Katha In Conversation With The Festival Tradition Of The Macchindra Nath Jatra, Shangrila Joshi Dr.

Critical Humanities

This paper brings into conversation two Newa cultural traditions to articulate notions of climate adaptation, resilience, and mitigation, to illustrate how ways of knowing, ways of being, and ways of governing are inherently linked. These articulations offer a framework for developing what the author calls an Indigenous Climate Epistemology. The two cultural traditions reviewed include: a 17^th century Newa literary tradition that advocates for keeping oil in the ground, and that instructs ordinary people to engage in ritual acts seemingly designed to develop personal and community resilience; and a 1700 year old annual community festival designed to avert catastrophes …

On The Edge Of The Abyss: Cultural Responses To Extractivism In The Andes, Jack Martinez Arias

Critical Humanities

This work examines the contemporary cultural productions of Cerro de Pasco, a city in constant destruction due to an ever-expanding open pit mine that has grown to over a mile wide since the 1950s. Drawing on Latin American environmental humanities and discursive analysis, I conduct a close reading of poems, stories, performances, and audiovisual works by local artists responding to this largely overlooked apocalyptic scenario. By analyzing narrative strategies such as repetition and irony, I identify recurring themes and establish common concerns related to extractivism, urban extinction, illness, and death. This study seeks to understand how these cultural productions envision …

The Radical Potential Of Ecopoetics: Ecological Intimacy In Forrest Gander’S Twice Alive, Thomas Storey

Critical Humanities

Ecopoetics is a contested term, one defined by its capaciousness. Through its focus on deep ecology, it draws together the world system and the individual, the collective and the singular, and the global and the placed-based within its dialectical framework, without resolving any of these oppositions. Instead, the apparent contradictions underlying ecopoetics offer productive material for a poetic praxis that aims to foreground the complex connections that string together nature, culture, politics, and society. Forrest Gander’s Twice Alive engages with these contradictions in an attempt to foreground the intimacy of ecological thinking, and its basis in personal connections that are …

Introduction: Volume 3 Issue 2, Critical Humanities

Critical Humanities

An Introduction to Vol 3, Issue 2

Imposter Syndrome And Degree Completion Among Marginalized Graduate Students, Ryan A. Finner

2025 Symposium

Imposter Syndrome is a mindset that troubles many graduate students across various countries, degree programs, ethnicities, sexualities and genders. The term Imposter Syndrome refers to the feeling of being a fraud, despite achieving success and the persistent fear of being exposed as unqualified or undeserving. While this phenomenon affects many, it can appear much worse in marginalized populations, this is due to the lack of resources, support and representation of minorities in professional and higher education environments. This research focuses on marginalized graduate students and aims to figure out what key factors are leading to incomplete or delayed degree completion. …

Antes De Cook: El Descubrimiento Español De Hawái. Nuevas Perspectivas, David Cuevas Góngora

Homage to Alexander von Humboldt: Travels to and from Spain Throughout the Centuries / Homenaje a Alexander von Humboldt: Viajes hacia y desde España de todos los siglos

La historiografía más ortodoxa otorga el galardón del descubrimiento de las Hawái al capitán James Cook al frente del Resolution y el Discovery el 18 de enero de 1778 durante su tercer viaje. La noticia del hallazgo sembró las dudas y los desacuerdos; pues cómo era posible descubrir islas en esas latitudes sí los españoles llevaban surcando esas aguas más de 200 años entre exploraciones y la ruta de los galeones de Acapulco-Manila y viceversa; abierta desde 1565. Además de que la cartografía antigua señalaba islas con topónimos hispanos a lo largo del Pacífico Norte y, concretamente, en la misma …

Imagined Communities In The Orient: Mapping New Definitions Of Moroccan Spatiality Through Western Travelogues, Abdelaaziz El Bakkali

Homage to Alexander von Humboldt: Travels to and from Spain Throughout the Centuries / Homenaje a Alexander von Humboldt: Viajes hacia y desde España de todos los siglos

The portrayal of Morocco as an exotic location has often been related to the tradition of European Orientalism. From Daniel Defoe to Edith Wharton, the Western presence in Morocco has long been identified by means of several encounters, which has become a central attempt to identify and analyze the country as Oriental. Many of these encounters have resulted in diverse representations that have primarily framed Western ideas about the Oriental world. Morocco, which was identified as an international itinerary of early travelogues about North Africa, has long been a place of Western cultural anthropology and ethnographic surveys. In addressing new …

Páginas Del Diario Ruso Del Lingüista Bilbaíno Imanol Agiŕe Durante La Segunda Guerra Mundial, Guillermo Aguirre Martínez

Homage to Alexander von Humboldt: Travels to and from Spain Throughout the Centuries / Homenaje a Alexander von Humboldt: Viajes hacia y desde España de todos los siglos

En 1941 el lingüista y escritor bilbaíno Imanol Agiŕe (Bilbao, 1913–Madrid, 1983) se integra en la División Azul en calidad de intérprete. En este trabajo se dan a conocer extractos del diario que Agiŕe llevó durante el tiempo que tomó parte activa en la II Guerra Mundial (1941–1942). En el testimonio del autor se recogen escenas significativas abrigadas por descripciones costumbristas, reflexiones sobre la condición humana e incluso, puntualmente, evocaciones literarias –Cervantes, Gógol, Goncharov, Pushkin, Lérmontov o Chéjov–. Como apoyo documental se presentan algunas fotografías archivadas en uno de los álbumes fotográficos de Agiŕe, cuya trayectoria se contextualizará, así como …

De Vente A Alemania, Pepe A ¿Te Has Venido A Alemania, Pepe?: Aspectos Económicos Y Culturales De La Emigración En Dos Generaciones Distintas, Daniel López Fernández

Homage to Alexander von Humboldt: Travels to and from Spain Throughout the Centuries / Homenaje a Alexander von Humboldt: Viajes hacia y desde España de todos los siglos

En Vente a Alemania, Pepe, el epónimo protagonista decide seguir el camino de muchos de sus compatriotas y abandonar temporalmente España con la intención de ganar más dinero en el extranjero, una esperanza que se ve pronto frustrada. Décadas más tarde, la crisis económica que comenzó en 2008 parece haber dado lugar a una repetición de este capítulo tragicómico de la historia española. No obstante, existen diferencias notables entre ambas generaciones. La migración actual atañe a una generación muy distinta de la que se marchó en los años sesenta y setenta. Se trata, en muchos casos, de inmigrantes con una …