糖心vlog视频 President’s Summer Fellowship
The President’s Summer Fellowship offers students a chance to think big and tackle a summer project that combines intellectual pursuit, imagination, adventure, personal transformation, and service to the greater good. The program was established in 2012 and is made possible with generous support from Dan Greenberg '62 and Susan Steinhauser.
President's Summer Fellows 2026
Reed is proud to announce the winners of the President’s Summer Fellowship for 2026.
Alice Flynn '27
Drawing the Line Between Religion for Children and Religion from Children: An Exploration of Modern Theological Education from a Child’s Eye
Contributing to the emergent field of literature on children’s theology, I will conduct a study into what aspects of Christianity matter for young children attending Christian summer camps and schools by asking them to describe their religious experience in a way that is accessible to them: through drawing. Popular accounts of children in Christianity typically center around children as religious symbols, pedagogical tools for theological educators, and children’s roles in the church relative to adults. These accounts, while important, do not encapsulate how Christianity is experienced by children. This lack of attention paid to children’s experience of religion stems from a lack of religious and academic accounts focusing on children's religious experience voiced by themselves. Children are often thought of as being too inarticulate or “un-churched” to be taken seriously as Christian persons with robust religious identities. The lack of religious perspectives from a child’s-eye view is not inconsequential; without understanding how religious upbringings shape children’s notions of identity and morality, it is impossible to fully understand how cultural identities materialize and solidify through the process of religious education. This project aims to shed light on the development of Christian children’s religious identities by emphasizing children’s voices.
Caroline Menten '27
Returning Against the Current
In partnership with NRS (Northwest River Supplies) and Columbia Land Trust, I will engage critically with the Columbia River as both a lived and imagined landscape by paddling 430 miles from Astoria, Oregon, to Lewiston, Idaho. At the end of this journey, my paddling partner and I will produce a short film, zine, multiple published articles on NRS’s Duct Tape Diaries, and short-form video content. I am excited to experience what happens when my interactions with the river and salmon change from being a guide, to being guided by them. Along with this embodied change, I wish to explore how language can act to limit and realize ways in which we interact with the Snake River Chinook salmon. How does the English language characterize beings as inanimate, and how can it work to subvert it? Moreover, how can we move forward with conservation when the words we use have so much behind them? Finally, we wish to link imagined disparate sections of this river in one cohesive paddle; everyone has their own Columbia and Snake River, but by connecting them we begin to form a more holistic understanding of our shared environment, of our river.
Diya Pingali '27
Conversion as Material Struggle: Ambedkar, Religion, and Caste Abolition
On October 16, 1956, B. R. Ambedkar led nearly 400,000 followers in a mass conversion to Buddhism, marking a decisive break from his previous strategies of reforming Hinduism. For those in South Asia and its diaspora, where caste continues to fundamentally shape social life, this event raises enduring questions about the relationship between our own cultural identities and caste. Following Anand Teltumbde, this project understands Ambedkar’s embrace of Navayana Buddhism as a historically specific form of materialist praxis. From this perspective, I will investigate how the analytic separation between the “religious” and the “secular” has shaped interpretations of Ambedkar’s thought, and how religious movements have been used more broadly as tools of material emancipation. In particular, I will focus on the relationship between Dalit culinary traditions and religious life to develop a more material account of religion’s social impact. To do this, I will conduct a textual analysis of Ambedkar’s writings in dialogue with scholarship on caste, colonialism, secularism, and liberation theology in order to identify the conditions under which religious mobilization can produce durable emancipatory transformations. This project will culminate in a research paper to be presented at Reed’s Religion Symposium in fall 2026.
Meili Britton '28
Resisting Through Remembrance: Representing Nikkei Advocacy Through Origami Tessellations
When Executive Order 9066 was signed in 1942, over 120,000 Japanese-Americans were forced into internment camps without due process. It took the federal government more than forty years to formally acknowledge this injustice against the Nikkei community. That delayed reckoning did not erase the trauma, but ignited a determination among Japanese-Americans to ensure such violations of civil liberties would never happen again. Today, that determination continues through intergenerational advocacy. Nikkei activists have mobilized nationwide to resist through remembrance. Our work has become especially urgent amid the current administration where immigrant communities are frequently targeted through inflammatory and unfounded claims. In this climate, the history of internment is not distant; it is a warning. This project seeks to understand how and why Nikkeis transform historical trauma into collective action and community-wide solidarity. I will engage in archival research, interviews with Nikkei advocates, and visit former internment sites along with Little Tokyo. Alongside this research, I will create origami tessellations incorporating materials gathered from these spaces, archival fragments, interview transcripts, historical documents, and personal artifacts to be displayed in Little Tokyo. Each folded unit will represent an individual story, while the tessellated whole will symbolize the collective effort to preserve our memory.
Reed Jadzinsky '27
Three Stories on Lithium Politics in Latin America
This summer, I will travel to the Lithium Triangle in South America to write a collection of interconnected novellas capturing the experiences of indigenous communities displaced by lithium extraction. Drawing on interviews with residents from this region, and taking inspiration from the literary tradition of magical realism, I will use lyrical prose focused on the natural environment to convey the urgency this topic demands. I am interested in the politics of the Lithium Triangle, specifically how indigenous communities located in this part of the world experience exacerbated droughts, lack of access to water, and displacement because of national policy regarding lithium extraction. National governments frequently prioritize economic growth over the wellbeing of these communities, creating inequitable living conditions. Through the use of narrative fiction, I plan to use an interdisciplinary approach to make this topic more accessible to the general public, since it is not widely discussed outside of economic policy briefs.
Vicky Shen Gao '27
From Women’s Script to Heritage Space: Nüshu, Cultural Commodification, and Rural Planning in Jiangyong, China
This project studies the transformation of Nüshu—the world's only women-created phonetic script system—in Jiangyong, China. As a previously private practice among rural women under patriarchal constraints in the ancient era, Nüshu has become a government-supported intangible cultural heritage (ICH) since the early 2000s, facing dual pressures of preservation and commodification. This study centers primarily on the Nüshu Ecological Museum, which was renovated and reopened to the public in late 2025, representing Nüshu as a governable public ICH and influencing rural spatial politics as well as the life of the local community. Through participant observation, interviews, and organizational ethnography exploration, I will examine how the museum is designed to curate an authentic voice of Nüshu through its exhibitions, tourist interactions, and commodified cultural products. Moreover, how the tourism-oriented rural planning could have reshaped residents’ living experiences will also be explored. This ethnographic work deepens my anthropological training in gender, spatial politics, and heritage discourses, as well as prioritizing an ethical, community-oriented knowledge production that benefits the interlocutors.
William Johnston '27
Documenting the Art of Steven Oshatz
I am documenting the artistic work of Steven Oshatz. Steven was a painter, born in New York City and educated in Los Angeles, who then spent nearly six decades as a fixture of the art scene in Eugene, Oregon. Steven participated in fifteen group shows and nine solo shows, appeared in newspaper articles, and was commissioned for public installations and theater sets. He worked on painting, drawing, photography, murals, and ran a nationally recognized silk-printing studio. Despite his significant artistic accomplishments, there is little documentation of Steven’s work. I will be compiling a catalogue raisonné of his art as well as working to put on retrospective shows. The catalogue raisonné will be hosted online, and I will be printing a 100–200 page curated excerpt in a small edition to be donated to Oregon museums and libraries.
Xavier da Silva '27
Sincere Faith: On Modern Lois and Timothys
“I’m reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that lived in your grandmother Lois, and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure lives in you.” (2 Timothy 1:5)
Inspired by the imagery of faith across generations, my project asks: how is faith lived, remembered, and transmitted across generations within contemporary Brazilian families? Rather than trying to answer this question through institutional or statistical analysis, I will focus on lived experience. Over the course of the summer, I will travel to Brazil and spend time cooking and sharing meals with grandmothers and their grandchildren. I will then conduct three rounds of interviews, one with the grandmother, one with the grandchild, and one joint conversation exploring how their perspectives on faith change and intersect. Based on these interactions and conversations, I will write a series of short memoir-style portraits honoring the sincere faith of each grandmother. By documenting these narratives, I hope to better understand how faith is sustained through intimate family relationships and to honor the women whose everyday practices quietly shape the spiritual lives of future generations.