Summer Scholars 2020 Poster Session: Meaning from Chaos

I think it’s safe to say that this was a summer like no other.

As the seriousness of the pandemic sank in, academia as a whole scrambled to reassemble norms and expectations to fit this new reality: How can we move instruction online? How do we evaluate students when their reality has been so thoroughly disrupted? What does it even mean to be in college if we don’t have the late-night study sessions and bucolic scenes on The Quad and dining halls and libraries and parties and dances and graduations that populate the narratives and rituals to which we are so attached? And—more to our point here—how do you do research when no one is allowed in the lab or the library?

What this summer has assured me of—and what I hope the incredible projects below assure you of as well—is that knowledge will find a way. When faced with the changes wrought by COVID-19, these students and their mentors rose to the occasion, revising their research plans to meet the new reality as it was unfolding before them. Research plans that had relied on in-person fieldwork moved to Zoom or shifted to establishing greater contextual knowledge. Lab-based projects turned into literature reviews, which ironically gave the students deeper training in their discipline than they had anticipated, making them into stronger teachers and researchers.

Our ongoing national reckoning on race also shaped the direction and focus of student research, from our conversations in weekly Zoom meetings to the content of artistic projects, researchers found themselves confronting larger questions about the impact of their discipline on the world at large, and how they hoped to shift the course of academic study so that it could have a greater stake in justice and equity.

The pursuit of knowledge always has been—and should be—shaped by our historical context. As the world around us changes, so must the questions we ask and the methods we use to do so. I couldn’t be prouder of how this phenomenal group of students has risen to the occasion of this crisis. I’m not going to lie: as we move into the winter and an unsteady political future, hope can be pretty hard to come by. But these students—their creativity, their determination, their insight—give me so much hope. If they can meet an uncertain future with curiosity and intelligence, it’s the least we can do to do the same. I hope you’ll agree.