My Rollercoaster of Research

Posted on August 25, 2025 by al223

Photo Credit: Amanda Elvarsdóttir

This summer I got to see what conducting research is really like, and it wasn’t like in the movies – it was even better. Unlike the movies, there were no bubbling beakers, or lab coats, all I had was a monitor, a mouse and a desk. At first this may sound unimpressive, but I beg to differ when I know all about the ride I took with these tools while at my lab. 

Now I’ve never conducted research before. Didn’t know a single thing about how it worked, or what I should research when I arrived at my lab. This was the first dip of my rollercoaster, and dang was my stomach flipping from anxiety because of it. However, as a recipient of a National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduates (NSF REU), I had the amazing honor of being partnered with a professor who mentored me and walked me through how it works to conduct research. I was even luckier to be partnered with a graduate student who really took me under her wings and supported me while we worked on our project together. This was the first up of the rollercoaster. 

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The Two Languages of the Mind: Where Precision Becomes Its Own Poetry

Posted on August 18, 2025 by al223

Kumayl Alloo CC’25. Photo credit: Kumayl Alloo.

There is a silence that lives in the brain. It lingers long before disease makes itself visible—before tremors betray the hand, before movement slows into stiffness. In Parkinson’s disease, that silence is often filled with shadows of a different kind: anxiety, depression, the quiet erosion of motivation. These nonmotor symptoms can appear years, even decades, before a diagnosis.

Most of what the world knows about Parkinson’s revolves around its motor features. The shuffling gait, the trembling fingers—these are the images we carry. But beneath them is a deeper story: that the mind changes long before the body falters, and that those early changes are neither well understood nor well treated.

My research lives in this hidden chapter.

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Senior Spring Reflections: The Early Days

Posted on February 10, 2025 by al223

Alan and Janus were neighbors on John Jay floor 10 for the 2021-22 academic year. This was their view when they first came to Columbia! Photo Credit: Alan Chen.

As the Class of 2025 prepares to take on its last semester of college this spring, Rose Research Fellows Alan Chen and Janus Yuen (CC‘25) discuss how they first found their way to their programs of study and areas of focus. This is part of an ongoing series between Alan and Janus on how Columbia has uniquely shaped their journeys over the past four years.

Tell us about yourselves.

Alan Chen (AC): I’m currently a senior in Columbia College studying history and philosophy. In the history department, I focus on modern France and on the history of the family. In the philosophy department, I largely study political philosophy and ethics. 

Janus Yuen (JY): I’m a senior in Columbia College, also majoring in history. I am specializing in 19th century U.S. History out of convenience, since we have so many amazing classes in that area in our department. But the heart of my intellectual interests is in early American history within the intellectual, religious, and economic context of the early modern Atlantic world. 

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Hunting for the Right Archives

Posted on January 27, 2025 by al223

An inventory list from one of my archival collections. Photo Credit: Alan Chen.

In my last blog post, I wrote about the preparation that goes into preparing to write a senior thesis, especially in Columbia’s history department. Since then, I’ve received a few questions on archives: how to locate them; how to plan an itinerary around them; and how a day spent at the archives might look. In the third installment of my de facto series on archives and Columbia’s archival research fellowships, I aim to answer a few of these questions in a Q&A format. As the prospect of writing a senior thesis looms on the horizon for many third-years, I hope this helps clarify a few things—both for those applying to research fellowships and, more broadly, for those generally interested in archival research.

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A Beginner’s Guide to Sharing Your Research (Part 1: Journals and Publications)

Posted on January 20, 2025 by al223

My article published in the 2024 issue of see/saw, the History of Art Journal at U.C. Berkeley.
Photo credit: Madeleine Cesaretti

Have you been working on a research project for a few semesters—or even years—and finding yourself ready and willing to share your work? Are you looking to develop your ideas further and to get connected with others in your field? If these questions resonate with you, you might find it a good time to start investigating ways of sharing your work as an undergraduate researcher. Read on to learn more about avenues of doing so, such as undergraduate research journals, conferences, and more. Each of these paths can be meaningful ways not only to strengthen your writing and presentation skills but also to connect with others and engage with the broader academic community. Today I will primarily focus on journals and publications.

This past spring I published my first academic article in the inaugural issue of see/saw, the History of Art Journal at U.C. Berkeley. My article “Environmental Relationality & Representation: The Ecological Imagination of Giovanni Bellini’s ‘St. Francis in the Desert’” grew from a term paper I had worked on for an earlier class, “Medieval Science, Craft, & Art” with Professor Gregory Bryda. After revising my paper and being accepted into the journal, I worked with the group’s editorial team to further hone my piece for publication. Publishing in this journal allowed me to connect with students across the country at U.C. Berkeley during the peer-review process and at their publication symposium. I have been able to expand on my ideas in the time since by now having work that can be shared with established professionals in related fields. It is exciting to find one’s writing circulating with a broader audience and possibly sparking their interest in turn. (My article is linked here if those reading might be interested as well.)

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In Book and Song: Finding Meaning in a New Medium

Posted on January 13, 2025 by al223

Björk performing with The Sugarcubes Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

As part of my Music Humanities course in the Fall, I was asked to write about an object of musical significance. The idea of the assignment is to allow students to summon what they have learned in the class to analyze something of their own choice. Now, I must mention that I am not musical at all. I play zero instruments and know next to nothing about music theory. On top of that, I am surrounded by musically talented people in my East Campus suite and in my friend groups. This has amounted to perhaps the most serious case of impostor syndrome I’ve felt in college… Needless to say, I had a hard time figuring out a musical object to analyze.

I decided to do some research about musical artists I knew I liked. I relistened to some of my favorite albums and tried to find anything unique about them that distinguished them as objects of singular musical significance. It wasn’t quite enough. I started to search on YouTube for my favorite singers, covers of my favorite songs, footage of performances I hadn’t seen—anything that yielded a possible thesis.

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Between Classroom and Core Studio: Professor Jennifer Rhodes on Education and the Arts

Posted on January 6, 2025 by al223

Sculpting with clay and painting with natural pigments at the Core Studio.
Photo Credit: Madeleine Cesaretti

On a warm Friday afternoon in September, I wandered into my first ever session of the Core Studio, an initiative spearheaded by Professor Jennifer Rhodes. Upon entry, Rhodes introduced the focus of the workshop: Clay vessels inspired by Enheduanna, the focus of the first week of Literature Humanities. Rhodes showed students the different activities available, including making air-dry clay objects and painting with natural pigments, and then left the space open for individual and group experimentation and material exploration. In November, I sat down with Professor Rhodes to talk about her work founding the project and her experience as a Literature Humanities instructor these past years. We spoke about her inspiration for the initiative, its mission and current structure, and future directions for the Core Studio.

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Researching in Small Archives: Sample Emails

Posted on December 16, 2024 by al223

Another Doodle. Newburyport Public Library, City Hall Documents, box 68, folder 3, 1815 [Newburyport Tax Assessors’ Directory], 17r.

In my previous blog post, I wrote about researching in small archives. This week I am sharing tips for making contact with small archives. While the art of the cold e-mail may differ somewhat depending on who you write, think of the below checklist as a general resource when it comes to drafting cold-emails to organizations:
Checklist for when I write cold-emails to organizations.
—Salutations
—Introduction: name; position; school; & brief project description
—Why I’m here: what led me here; what I’m looking for
—Timetable: when I would like a response by; when I am able to visit
—Open the conversation: “Please let me know if you have any questions!”; ways to contact me; introduce anyone I’ve CC’d
—Thanks!!
—Follow up: don’t be afraid to follow up with your emails! Sometimes they just get lost in busy people’s inboxes.

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Preparing to Prepare to Write a Senior Thesis in History

Posted on December 9, 2024 by al223

Not an extraordinary photo, but a meaningful one—taken on my first day at the Bibliothèque nationale de France – François Mitterrand. With the support of the history department’s fellowships (as described below), I was able to spend the first half of my summer conducting thesis research in Paris. Photo Credit: Alan Chen.

Officially, the preparation for writing a thesis in the history department begins in the spring prior to the yearlong process of writing a thesis. Every March or so, the department will reach out to declared history majors and call for senior thesis seminar applications, asking for a student’s academic record in the department; a brief explanation of one’s proposed topic; previous research done on one’s topic; a few primary and secondary sources of interest; and potential second readers.

As clear as the application was, there were still several things that I wish I had known before diving into the thesis preparation process. So, with the spring semester right around the corner, I want to use this blog post to break down the preparation that goes into the preparation for writing a thesis.

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In Defense of Dante

Posted on December 2, 2024 by al223

Paolo and Francesca, Anselm Feuerbach.
Photo Credit: Schack-Galerie

Students of Literature Humanities will encounter a speech in the fifth canto of Dante’s Inferno. The speaker is a woman named Francesca. She is telling Dante about how she fell in love with the man next to her, resulting in an adulterous affair and eternal damnation for them both in the circle of lust.

Her speech contains some of the most famous verses in all of the Divine Comedy:

“Amor, ch’al cor gentil ratto s’apprende,
prese costui de la bella persona
che mi fu tolta; e ‘l modo ancor m’offende.

Amor, ch’a nullo amato amar perdona,
mi prese del costui piacer sì forte,
che, come vedi, ancor non m’abbandona.

Amor condusse noi ad una morte.
Caina attende chi a vita ci spense.”

“Love, which quickly seizes the gentle heart,
took hold of him with the fair body
taken from me, for which I still grieve.

Love, which pardons no beloved from loving,
took hold of me so strongly,
that, as you see, it still has not left me.

Love led us both to a single death.
Deeper hell awaits the one who took our life.”

There’s a lot to unpack in these eight verses, but one element stands out: love. As the subject and starting point of three stanzas, “Amor” is the most important framing element in Francesca’s speech. It’s the primary referent in her explanation for her sin: she was taken control of by forces she was not able to resist.

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