Defending with Distinction: Master's thesis on the 'rhetoric of nomadism' passes with honors

APRIL 2022 — My project, a master's thesis called, "A Cross-Cultural Trek of Nomadism Through Metaphoric Criticism," passed with distinction. I defended on Wednesday, March 30, 2022. Drs. Clare Mullaney, Maria Bose, and Maya Hislop attended, with Dr. Gabriel Hankins.

I am grateful to the faculty who helped me tackle what turned out to be an ambitious inquiry into the nuances of language describing nomadism—a wide-ranging, cross-cultural, transhistoric phenomenon. Nomadism appears in contexts far past, recent past, and present. The language used to describe nomadism, I argue, points to a lingustic worldview, which employs spatial rather than linear thinking. While this may seem obvious to some, the implications portend economic and social changes. A nomadic worldview subliminally, as I show through study of metaphor, urges readers to pivot from a hierarchical worldview to a more fluid one.

Now it's back to the drawing board. If I want to submit this thing to an academic journal, I'll have to reformat some of my arguments. The work of a word nerd never ends!