Senior Spotlight

Lucas Veloria Spotlights Savannah Henderson

Tell us a bit about what personally motivated your project.

I read Eloquent Rage by Brittney Cooper and in the book, she mentioned how fat Black women have a harder time finding jobs, romantic partners, etc. This made me reflect on my own experiences with dating/ job interviews/building social networks. I realized that there was more to my identity than being just a Black woman and when you added size into the conversation, it became much more complex. I have always seen research as a pathway to personal healing and growth, so wanting to explore fatphobia against Black women came from a desire to understand my experiences and heal my relationship with my body as well as encourage others to think more intensely about the role of size in shaping personal and professional experiences.

What advice would you give to juniors (or future Mellons) about conducting independent research?

I would tell juniors to build a personal relationship with their mentor. I say this because roadblocks will come up during the research process, whether intrapersonal or external. Having a good relationship with your mentor gives you the space to talk about things outside of research and connect as individuals, not just scholars. My relationships with Dr. Vetta Thompson, Dr. Rebecca Lester, and Dr. Rebecca Wanzo really helped me remember that my worth as an individual was not only tied to my research. They gave me space to talk about personal concerns/ struggles and ask them questions about their lives. Having a good relationship with your mentor is indispensable and your work will be better because of it.

As of this current moment, what kind of scholar do you see yourself becoming?

I am not sure if I know exactly what kind of scholar I see myself becoming, but I know that in whatever I do I will continue to center the voices of Black women. I always see myself as wanting to write, but I remain unsure about what avenues I will take to continue writing. These next two years I really want to focus on making my work more accessible, so that whatever field I go into that remains centered. But for the next two years, I am giving myself space to adapt to the opportunities I am presented with and to what feels right in the moment.

What’s one of the most memorable experiences from your time in Mellon Mays at Washington University?

One of my most memorable experiences in Mellon was the conference this past October at UChicago. We did not get to do a conference in person junior year, so it was fun to travel and present research so personal to me. I felt significantly less nervous my senior year than my junior year to present, so I was able to enjoy the experience more. I enjoyed the first night most because we spent the night laughing at dinner together and then went to Wingstop and Taco Bell later that night.

What is your greatest takeaway from being a part of the Mellon Mays program?

My greatest takeaway from Mellon is to trust the process and not tie my sense of self to academic achievement. At multiple points throughout the past two years, I was unsure if a thesis would be possible or the best course of action. When I went through difficult periods, I would often stop working on my project until life calmed down a bit. Because of this, I wondered if I would be able to finish my thesis on time, but it got done and is the piece of work I am most proud of. This taught me that taking care of myself always needs to come before productivity and that my work will be better because of it.

What do you believe the future of your discipline(s)/ interdisciplinary field to be?

What do you theorize will be the future of this academic field(s) and their real-life implications/importance?

Marc Ridgell:

I plan to be a scholar of Black Queer/Trans Studies who specializes in urban space, late capitalism, and media/performance studies. The recent attempts to ban critical race theory, feminist theory, and queer theory in states like Florida encourage me to keep researching and centering the voices of Black trans and queer people who experience life across urban landscapes.

I believe that Black Queer Studies is contending with two main ideas (of many). First, I believe that scholars in Black Queer Studies are recognizing the predatory effects of late neoliberalism on their own personhood (as Black/queer scholars in the academy). Second, scholars are reckoning with the interlocking identities of what it means to (ethically) be “Black,” “queer,” and/or “trans” in our contemporary world that prioritizes identity politics and has commodified theories like Kimberlé Crenshaw’s “intersectionality.”

As a scholar-in-training who engages in the field of critical geography, I hope to keep up with the times. Media and the fast-growing digital age, as well as climate change, continually impact Black queer geographies. Therefore, I am so fascinated with my future as a sociological and/or anthropological ethnographer, as I get to detail how Black LGBTQ+ people are responding to their systems and geographies in the contemporary moment.

Annie Chang:

Sociology is a field that can lead to great insights into how we navigate the world around us, but its standing as an academic field doesn’t remove it from perpetuating harmful ideologies. Sociology’s position in academia means that we take its findings as legitimate facts, which can be problematic when we question who’s doing research on what communities, especially privileged researchers who go into marginalized communities in order to publish their next article. In accordance with that, Sociology is a discipline that has traditionally been dominated by white academics, leading to the creation of frameworks or theories centered around the white gaze. More attention is now being paid to intersecting oppressions of race, gender, and class, and the field has definitely diversified in recent times. Including more academics from diverse backgrounds is important to decenter a white gaze, but I believe it’s more crucial that we consider our own positionality as people and as researchers. Within communities that we study, we have a certain privilege to come into that community; Sociology can grow if we center the subjects we study as researchers in their own right, as it’s their lived experience that provides the foundation of our work.