Margot pursuing a masters in public administration focused on international development at the Harvard Kennedy School
2020's Alumni
Dori-Taylor Cater is a sociology PhD student, Chancellor's Fellow, and NSF Graduate Research Fellow at Berkeley University. Her research focuses on the construction of identity categories and populations, the political representation of identity groups, and the mobilization of shared identities and experiences toward collective liberation. She recently was in New York presenting a coauthored paper with Dr. Michael Rodríguez-Muñiz and Jessica Law at the American Sociological Association Conference. In June, she was in Newcastle, UK for the European Conference on Politics and Gender, where she presented her master's research on political action committees working to increase identity representation in U.S. electoral politics.
Jane Clark is starting her PhD at Berkeley. Previously Jane was chosen as a 2025 Gates Cambridge Scholar. Jane studied history and American studies in Northwestern’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, will pursue a master of philosophy in American history at Cambridge.
There, she will build on her undergraduate thesis project, which examined ideologies of imperialism in American children’s literature in the first half of the 20th century. She plans to explore what is distinctive about how American imperialism is depicted by adding a comparison with British children’s literature from the same period.
While global history and the study of empire tend to focus on the big-picture or diplomatic level, Clarke’s project focuses on these topics through the lens of pop culture and ordinary people.
Ultimately, her goal is to become a historian in a public-facing setting, which is why she was drawn to the Gates Cambridge program.
“It combined my interest both in doing the academic research and how that research can make an impact outside of the academy on the lives of everyday people,” she said.
Though she didn’t enter Northwestern as a history major, Clarke became one after realizing how her understanding of history had fundamentally shaped how she interacted with the world. Now, she hopes sharing her own work can help spark others’ curiosity, something she saw firsthand in both her work with the Northwestern Prison Education Program and when she presented at the department of American studies’ senior research symposium.
“To see how that research, when it was presented to a wider public audience, could spark conversations, help people think more critically about the world around them, ask really interesting questions — that’s the importance of doing research for me,” she said.
There, she will build on her undergraduate thesis project, which examined ideologies of imperialism in American children’s literature in the first half of the 20th century. She plans to explore what is distinctive about how American imperialism is depicted by adding a comparison with British children’s literature from the same period.
While global history and the study of empire tend to focus on the big-picture or diplomatic level, Clarke’s project focuses on these topics through the lens of pop culture and ordinary people.
Ultimately, her goal is to become a historian in a public-facing setting, which is why she was drawn to the Gates Cambridge program.
“It combined my interest both in doing the academic research and how that research can make an impact outside of the academy on the lives of everyday people,” she said.
Though she didn’t enter Northwestern as a history major, Clarke became one after realizing how her understanding of history had fundamentally shaped how she interacted with the world. Now, she hopes sharing her own work can help spark others’ curiosity, something she saw firsthand in both her work with the Northwestern Prison Education Program and when she presented at the department of American studies’ senior research symposium.
“To see how that research, when it was presented to a wider public audience, could spark conversations, help people think more critically about the world around them, ask really interesting questions — that’s the importance of doing research for me,” she said.
I worked two part-time internships this past year at a museum, The Drawing Center, and an art advisory. I have just accepted a job as a gallery assistant at a gallery called PPOW in Tribeca in NYC. The gallery has a particular focus on feminist and queer artists and was founded in the first wave of the East Village art scene in the early 1980s
Vivien Hough ’21 is an Associate Marketing Manager at AbbVie. She helps patients suffering from chronic autoimmune issues, with which she is familiar from her personal experience. She graduated from Northwestern with a BA in American Studies and a minor in Business Institutions. Her two rounds in Chicago Field Studies helped Vivien test her compatibility with two different careers, and eventually, to chart her professional future. Read more about Vivien and her CFS experience here.
Jack has been deeply committed to environmental activism since his time as an American Studies Major at Northwestern. His thesis was focused on this important issue and he has devoted his career to it right here in Evanston. Read more about Jack here in his interview with The Daily. Jack is back in the news sharing more about the climate and community in the Evanston Roundtable. You can find the article here. I am working at the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning. Through the NU Public Interest Program I was able to get a year-long fellowship here and I am working on a range of different projects. I am working out of the Research, Analysis and Programming Division.
After working adventure therapy in Chicagoland for a couple years, I moved to Leadville, Colorado to teach Spanish, lead wilderness expeditions, and run res life functions at the High Mountain Institute semester school. I'm now in Bainbridge Island, WA to participate in the IslandWood Graduate Program in Environmental Education and Equity and likely to pursue an M.Ed.
Caleb worked in politics for two years out of Northwestern in Washington, DC and is currently in his second year at Harvard Law with other fellow AMST alumni; Mara Kelly and Maddie Brown