Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship

Gracelynn Osei-Bosompem is a senior majoring in Sociology and Africana Studies with a minor in Inequality Studies.  

She is a first-generation Ghanaian American born and raised in Middletown, NY.  Her academic interests include comparative class dynamics between the West and Africa, global economy, bourgeois aspirations in neocolonial contexts, and the colonial history of the Democratic Republic of Congo; currently she is conducting research on embourgeoisement amongst the Congo's neocolonial elites as a normative mechanism of Western domination over the global market.  Outside of her research, Gracelynn serves as immediate past president and current Z-HOPE Service Chair of the Xi Phi Chapter of Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc., president emeritus of Black Students United, a library assistant at the John Henrik Clarke Africana Library, and was the 2024 recipient of the Black Woman of Impact Award presented by Cornell’s Black Woman Support Network.  In her free time, Gracelynn enjoys watching and reviewing movies, crocheting, playing instruments, listening to music, and playing video games.

Devyn Bryant (she/her) is a senior at Cornell majoring in Anthropology with a minor in Comparative Literature.

 Her research examines the logics of desire animating the practice of gay Christian celibacy. Primarily drawing from literature detailing the personal narratives of LGBTQ+/same-sex attracted Christians who uphold a sexual ethic that restricts sex to heterosexual marriage, she investigates how Side B Christian celibacy might inform the ways in which subjectivity is conceived within of queer studies. Through this, she hopes to provide an account of queerness in light of where it is widely seen as impossible.

Louisa Howe is a junior studying Sociology and English with a concentration in Women’s Literature. 

Her area of research draws on a variety of disciplines such as sociology, moral psychology, and philosophy to understand the social world and human connection. She is currently working on a project titled “Reimagining Accountability: Sexual Responsibility and Moral Fragility in the #MeToo Era,” in which she examines the social construction of sexual assault and the way we think about who’s responsible. This project reflects on various frameworks of conceptualizing morality and accountability, and their implications for our ability to communicate with each other to prevent and adjudicate sexual assault. In her free time, Louisa enjoys pilates, docuseries, and breakfast burritos.

Kaylani Williams (she/her) is a senior English major with a minor in Africana Studies with a focus on African American women’s literature. 

Her research is centered on Black female sexuality, functions of the erotic and exploring literary expression of self-determination for the Black female. To understand this, Kaylani examines both historical (focus on Harlem Renaissance) novels and contemporary music by Black female artists in their reflection and delivery of black female conciousness and self-authority. In addition to being a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow, Kaylani is the President of a student run book club, Between the Pages, as well as working at Cornell as an Undergraduate Resident Fellow in Carl Becker House and Cornell Dining Student Manager. 

Seth E. Vieira is a junior double majoring in Africana Studies and Philosophy with a minor in History. 

At Cornell, Seth serves as the founder and leader of a Black Men’s Bible Study group called Black Men 4 Christ (BM4C) and as the Political Action Chair for Black Students United (BSU). He originally hails from Brooklyn, New York, and currently lives in the Hudson Valley, New York. As part of Mellon Mays, Seth is currently researching Black Christian writers in the nineteenth century and how they reclaimed Christianity through their writings. With this research, he hopes to deconstruct what he purports to be the “myth of the white man’s religion,” the idea that Christianity is a colonial religion. He asserts that Christianity is inherently a faith practice of liberation and hopes to help advance the causes of the oppressed across the world. 

Max Nam is a junior English major. 

In his research, he is undertaking a literary analysis of The Story of Hong Gildong, through which he intends to scrutinize popular notions surrounding Korea’s most famous folk hero. He also hopes, in doing so, to apply a text-centric mode of close reading that is largely absent in scholarly discourses on Korean literature. Aside from MMUF, he is a member of the Milstein Program in Technology and Humanity, the Humanities Scholars Program, and Shimtah, Cornell’s only traditional Korean drumming society.

Nnenna Ochuru is a senior studying History and American Studies. 

She is interested in how historical narratives are shaped in education, influenced by politics and collective memory. Her research, “Educational Leadership and Class Formation in Black Boarding Schools” examines how Black middle-class politics shaped boarding schools Post-Reconstruction, how Black women in education navigated class dynamics, and how educational models—industrial and academic—impacted racial progress. At Cornell, she is a member of the Wari House, Cornell Historical Society, Academic Policy Committee, and Writing Center Tutor team. In her free time, she enjoys nature walks, movie nights with friends, and dancing.

Nicholas Vega is a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences studying History. 

His project focuses on a 17th century Spanish work of ethnography and history about China, and how the author compares and contrasts Spanish and Chinese society and its institutions. Ultimately, the project seeks to capture how China was perceived and imagined by an Early Modern European writer seeking models for their own country's development. Outside of my project, I work on campus both as a curatorial intern at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum and within Cornell Dining's student administration. I am also the president of the Cornell Undergraduate Historical Society, and enjoy reading, writing, trivia, and learning creative skills.