As the Class of 2024 approaches the end of their final semester at Tufts, some have concluded this year with a senior thesis, a culmination of their academic journey. These students have worked incredibly hard throughout the year to complete extensive papers and capstone projects in their respective courses of study.
Julio Dominguez is a senior double-majoring in sociology and international relations. Dominguez wrote his senior thesis on how second-generation Latinos balance their ethnicities and sexuality.
“I’m looking at how they balance and navigate these different identities,” Dominguez said. “[Queer Latinos are] very marginalized since their forms of masculinity are not aligned with hegemonic masculinity … [and] Latino circles … tend to be very homogenous thinking, especially in terms of culture and expectations.”
For his thesis, Dominguez pulled from his own lived experiences.
“I, myself, am a queer, second-generation Latino. My parents are also foreign-born,” Dominguez said. “I’ve always had these tensions, and there’s a lot of literature on the subject.”
Dominguez views these cultural expectations as something that causes queer individuals to hide or conceal their sexuality. When researching these themes, he focused on literature relating to queer identities, masculinity and belonging.
“I attempted to look at masculinity as a very multifaceted topic in the sense that there’s so many different types of masculinity that people can perform or embody,” Dominguez said. “Gender itself exists in a hierarchy. … At the top is this form of hegemonic masculinity that essentially perpetuates these marginalizations of other masculinities.”
To incorporate more perspectives into his thesis, Dominguez also interviewed 12 people about their personal experiences.
“In terms of recruitment, I couldn’t find too many people … there was sort of a lack of community for them,” Dominguez said.
Dominguez also noted that a hookup culture contributes to this lack of community.
“Generally, many queer second-generation Latino men aren’t friends with many people of the same community,” Dominguez said. “[And there is a] stigma of like, ‘Oh, they’re messy,’ and many of them have hooked up with each other.”
Dominguez recommends pursuing a senior thesis, especially on a topic that is particularly important to you.
“I was able to employ my own positionality [and] perspectives on different issues,” Dominguez said. “It was very empowering.”
Dominguez will be working for the nonprofit organization Teach for America for two years, and is interested in attending graduate school after.
Olivia Calkins is a senior majoring in chemical engineering and minoring in both food systems and cellular agriculture. Calkins was first introduced to the idea of cultivated meat while taking an introductory biomedical engineering course with professor David Kaplan during her freshman year.
“I took a BME class with Dr. David Kaplan, and on the first day, he was talking about how he works on cultivated meat, which is growing meat in a lab to essentially completely replace animal agriculture,” Calkins said. “That helps not only the environment, but also my personal interest in animal welfare. And then I was like, ‘This is the perfect combination.’”
After reaching out to Professor Kaplan, Calkins got to work in his lab during her freshman summer. Within the Kaplan Lab, Calkins developed a particular interest in insect cell culture, which develops insect cell lines for food purposes. Specifically, the lab works with the tobacco hornworm caterpillar.
“The reason why insect cells are so beneficial to this field is because they’re able to grow at ambient room temperature, and they can withstand fluctuations in pH, and if you are thinking about growing meat for so many people, you want cells that are so adaptable,” Calkins said.
This interest in insect cells eventually developed into a full-fledged senior thesis.
“Specifically, my thesis is focused on scaling up insect cells [and] making them more adaptable to be able to grow,” Calkins said. “I really just wanted to tie [my research] all together in this one nice project and then share with everyone.”
Calkins’ senior thesis includes a written paper and a defense, which consists of a presentation of her research and time for questions from professors.
“I’ve been really focused on building this story over the past year,” Calkins said. “It’s been such a good learning opportunity for me to actually have independence and control over my projects.”
After graduation, Calkins plans to dedicate time to exploring a potential specialization before entering a Ph.D. program.
Becca Kaplan is a senior double-majoring in English and political science. Kaplan recently completed her English senior thesis entitled “Split at the Root: A Critical Analysis of the Intersectional Feminism of Adrienne Rich and Audre Lorde.”
“[I was] specifically looking at Adrienne Rich and Audre Lorde, and how intersectionality, which is really a new term, came to fruition in practice much earlier,” Kaplan said. “So, for Audre Lorde, she is both black and queer and also a feminist. For Adrienne Rich, she is a feminist but also Jewish and queer. So [I am] talking about their work and seeing how all of those identities are intertwined and expressed in their poetry and their prose.”
Kaplan originally became interested in Adrienne Rich’s poems after taking an English course titled American Women Writers.
“We were reading her poetry and I was like, ‘This is amazing, and totally speaks to something that I felt in my life,’” Kaplan said. “So, I bought the whole book, read all of that poetry and just became kind of obsessed with her.”
Similar to Dominguez, Kaplan was inspired by her own experiences.
“It was really cool to see some of my own identities in their work, and how I can relate to what they’ve written,” Kaplan said. “I think that was really the inspiration for [my thesis]: how Judaism and queerness has impacted my own version of feminism, and seeing how that has worked for these two women.”
Kaplan’s paper is around 40 pages, but English theses can range from 35 to more than 80 pages.
“It’s a very different project than anything I’ve done,” Kaplan said. “This is so much longer, so the focus is not just the one thesis that you’re carrying all the way through. It’s essentially a bunch of mini essays together that all have a general overarching theme.”
Kaplan plans to work after graduation but hopes to later return to school for a Ph.D. in English.
Spanning sociology, English and engineering, each thesis is a unique reflection of these seniors’ passions and learnings from the past four years.
