I am a second-year master's student of Communications and Folklore & Ethnography (Certificate) at Penn State Harrisburg. My research interests lie in environmental communication at the nexus of activism, social justice, and political economy through the use of digital media, social networks, and ethnographic fieldwork to bolster long-term global environmental equity and sustainability. (→ More | → 中文)

Recent Highlights

Harrisburg Urban Growers (HUG) + Clean & Green Campaigns / Website Environmental Campaign
Visiting Experts' Network (VEN) / Website Digital Media Social Network COVID-19
SNA Lab @Harrisburg / Website Digital Media Social Network Political Communication
“A Study of the 1928 York Witch Trials.” / Abstract Historical Memory Exhibition
“Reflection: Finding Comfort and Discomfort.” Food and Foodways. / Abstract Ethnography COVID-19
“When at Home: A Phenomenological Study of Zoom Class Experience.” Technology and the Future of the Home Conference, November 6, 2020. / Abstract / PDF Ethnography COVID-19

Recent Writings

Reflection: Finding Comfort and Discomfort Through Foodways During the Covid-19 Pandemic

11 November 2020 This essay reflects on comfort food in the US as a response to stress during the pandemic. Not everyone finds food comforting, and discomforts being experienced highlight inequalities existing in American society and the mainstream food system as well as individual identities and situations. Using preliminary data from an international oral history project on the subject, we look at the category itself, which, as developed in the US, reflects an American morality attached to food along with a privileged position of having choices around food consumption.

The Haunting of Hex Hollow: A Study of Journalism, Historical Memory, and Vernacular Religion of the York, Pennsylvania, Witch Trials, 1900–2020

13 October 2020 In 1928, York, Pennsylvania was thrust into the international spotlight when three men murdered Nelson Rehmeyer, having become convinced he was a witch and had put dark spells on them. Community and legal responses to supposed witchcraft have continually captured scholarly and public attention, and this murder that took place at Hex Hollow, is no exception. Rehmeyer was a local farmer and known powwowing practitioner. According to David Kriebel, powwowing is a traditional medical practice—Brauche or Braucherei in the Pennsylvania Dutch dialects—common to southeastern and southcentral Pennsylvania.

When at Home: A Phenomenological Study of Zoom Class Experience

11 October 2020 This paper seeks to answer what characterizes people’s online teaching and learning experience during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. I conducted a one-month ethnographic study of five informants using Merleau-Ponty’s key phenomenological concepts to examine how current working and studying conditions challenge both students as well as educators’ temporal and spatial sensations and what strategies they take to cope with these challenges during their Zoom meetings. Additionally, I employed the autoethnographic method in order to fill in the gap where participation with informants’ daily life was unreachable by documenting my personal experience during and beyond the Zoom class.