#68: Ellison’s Invisible Man with Juno Kerelis ’24, English

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Juno Kerelis ’24 was the third student podcast producer on Burn Your Draft, and we’re so happy to get to speak to them on the other side of their time at Reed. If you’ve been listening since Juno hosted the podcast, you may have noticed little musical interludes during some of the episodes. Most of those were composed by Juno! Thank you for your work on the podcast, and for coming to talk to us about your year studying the Invisible Man.

Reed community members can read Juno’s thesis, “Yams Extending Infinitely Across Time: A Blues Philology of Ellison’s Invisible Man” online in the Electronic Theses Archive.

#67: Antimicrobial Innovation with Josie Bicknell ’24, Biology

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Josie wrote a pharmaceutical development thesis about looking for a new way to develop antibiotics. She also tells us about her interest in biology and chemistry and looking for bridges between the disciplines, and how chemistry can be used to do things like examine snake poop to learn about snake evolution.

Reed community members can read Josie’s thesis, “A Codrug for Resistant Coinfection: The First Clinically Relevant Antimicrobial-Antiviral Ionic Cocrystal” online in the Electronic Theses Archive.

#66: Psychosexual Gothic Romance with Jordan Kappler ’24, English

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Jordan spent a year writing an analytical thesis on Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, which Jordan calls a “psychosexual gothic romance novel” in the introduction of her thesis. She also talks to Avis about the surprising amount of time she spent learning about British estate taxes while studying this novel.

Reed community members can read Jordan’s thesis, “Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca: The Poetics, Places, and Gender Politics of the Lesbian Gothic” online in the Electronic Theses Archive.

#65: Carb-Conscious Planes with Aroon Das ’24, Economics

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Aroon tells us a bit about airline economics under potential carbon taxes, wanting to become an entrepreneur, and deciding to come to Reed because it seemed mysterious.

Reed community members can read Aroon’s thesis, “Airline Profitability & Fleet Strategies in a Carbon-Tax Environment” online in the Electronic Theses Archive.

#64: Return if Found with Courtland Dorris ’24, Anthropology

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Photo of Courtland, grinning at the camera.

Courtland talks about her thesis work on the federal law called the National American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, the controversies surrounding it, and the new regulatory changes to the law that just went into effect in 2024. She also tells us how a high school teacher helped her find Reed.

Reed community members can read Courtland’s thesis, “Returning to Repatriation: An Examination of the Evolving Forces Behind the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act” online in the Electronic Theses Archive.

#63: Confounding Variables with He Bai ’24, Mathematics

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He Bai ’24 tells us about how she chose math and statistics as her fields at Reed, what drew her to Reed in the first place, and how the Squidward Constant came to be in her thesis.

Reed community members can read He’s thesis, “Extending Targeted Function Balancing to Models without Linear Representations,” online in the Electronic Theses Archive.

#62: A Russian Emigre Poet with Nina Gopaldas ’24, Comparative Literature

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Burn Your Draft is back from summer break! Check out this interview with Nina Gopaldas ’24, whose thesis involved translating poetry by a Russian refugee named Olga Skopichenko who lived in a refugee camp in the Philippines for a short time after World War II. Nina also tells Avis about her journey to Reed as a transfer student and about how she started college as an applied math major specializing in mathematical finance and became a comparative literature major at Reed.

Reed community members can read Nina’s thesis, “‘Take a Hundred Lines for the Memory of Those who Lived on Tubabao’: The Poetics of Exile and Displacement in Olga Skopichenko’s Verse,” online in the Electronic Theses Archive.

#61: ESG Signaling with Tina Bardot ’23, Environmental Studies

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We’ve got one last interview for summer and then we take a break until school starts back up in the fall. Check in with Tina about corporate ESG (environmental, social, and governance) and unwinding with rock climbing.

Reed community members can read Tina’s thesis, “ESG Beyond Investing: Spillover Effects in Sustainability Signaling,” online in the Electronic Theses Archive.

#60: Mildly Morally Wrong with Ashley Ledbetter ’24, Philosophy

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Do you want to listen to this episode? Or do you want to want to listen to this episode? Ashley tells us a bit about first and second order desires in her thesis studying moral responsibility. She also shares with us how she selected her major and shares some of her own struggles with mental illness in her time at Reed.

Reed community members can read Ashley’s thesis, “How Mental Illness Impacts Moral Responsibility,” online in the Electronic Theses Archive.

#59: Performing Gendered Speech with Joray Foster-Wexler ’23, Linguistics

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Joray tells us about the joy of digging into academic papers in their fall semester, and the fun of using the software in the linguistics lab to analyze the trove of interviews they were working with. There was also a kitten.

We’d also like to welcome Avis Corea ’27 to the team. Avis is our new student producer on the podcast, and this is the first episode she’s produced for us. Welcome, Avis!

Reed community members can read Joray’s thesis, “Linguistic Erasure Hertz; a post-binary discussion of F0 performance in read speech,” online in the Electronic Theses Archive.