On May 8th, 12 CICI Discovery Graduate Fellows presented their work at the annual Discovery Symposium at Sutardja Dai Hall, alongside the 56 Undergraduate Scholars who participated in their year-long research clusters. The undergraduates, with graduate students’ mentorship, gained valuable experience sharing interdisciplinary approaches to research questions and methodologies. Their work over the year supported Graduate Fellows’ dissertation research.
The CICI Fellows’ projects, whose titles ranged from “Vernacular Cultural Critique in the Postcolonial Caribbean” to “Crafting Magic in Late Imperial Chinese Literature” to “Farmworker Justice and Climate Change,” showcased the wide range of scholarly engagement this year. Undergraduates shared culminating excerpts of their research contributions, including close readings of bilingual poetry, findings from asylum seeker testimonials, and montage short films.
CICI Director Debarati Sanyal, in her opening remarks, highlighted the successes of this new collaboration, which will continue in the 2026-27 academic year: “You’ve turned what was a program on paper into a living, breathing intellectual community of undergraduate and graduate researchers.” The panels featured thematic groupings such as “Justice, Imagination, Spirituality, and Magic” and “Labor and Institutional Change.” CICI clusters presented alongside clusters from other Discovery Hubs in the program, effectively broadening the interdisciplinary conversations, which flourished during the Q&A and continued during the reception.
Most CICI clusters opted for panel-style presentations, while the remaining clusters presented their work in poster format. A recording of the presentations—including clusters led by Fellows Yvonne Lin, Cheng-Chai Chiang, Filip Sestan, Britt Dawson, Mariagrazia De Luca, J’Anna-Mare Lue, and Leo Dunsker in Session 1, and Andy Haas and Ja'Nya Banks in Session 2—is available here
Marlena Gittleman is a Future of Higher Education Postdoctoral Fellow with the Center for Interdisciplinary Critical Inquiry.
