In this spotlight, the department speaks with Carolyne Nguyen about her Honors thesis in sociocultural anthropology. 

"For my thesis, I am exploring how historically industrial communities reassert agency over their heritage and navigate the changing cultural and economic landscape of post-industrial America. My project centers on themes of class, place, identity, and heritage in a region where the decline of the coal industry has profoundly shaped its current landscape. Over the summer before my senior year, I conducted ethnographic fieldwork across West Virginia, a state whose economy has been long rooted in industries such as coal and steel. I also reflect on my own intersectional positionality as a West Virginian, Asian American, and student anthropologist at Brown. 

Using local festivals across the state as fieldsites, I explore how communities demonstrate resilience against the socioeconomic and psychological consequences of deindustrialization through collective ritual performance. Drawing on Victor Turner’s theories of ritual processes and liminality, I examine these festivals as a suspension in time that allows participants to temporarily be “betwixt and between” social roles and everyday realities, constructing a communal space of belonging, support, and pride."