Scientists, journalists, and policymakers frequently compare large-scale disasters to nuclear events in an effort to convey their magnitude to the public. These comparisons, which I define as nuclear benchmarking, use nuclear events—such as the atomic bombing of Hiroshima—as frames of reference or units of measurement to describe the magnitude of non-nuclear events. While nuclear benchmarking is frequently used in pop culture, journalism, and scientific communication, it has largely gone unexamined. Through critical discourse analysis of news media and scientific communication, I identify several primary categories of nuclear benchmarking. These include natural disasters, single man-made events, sustained man-made events, and environmental benchmarking. Examples include the widely used Hiroshima Equivalent unit of measurement and comparisons to the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. While often intended as a communicative tool to help the public understand and contextualize overwhelming events, nuclear benchmarking nonetheless shapes popular perceptions of nuclearity by both normalizing its presence and obscuring its impact. In this study, I build upon the work of scholars such as Carol Cohn and Holly Barker, who examine the language of nuclearity both within the nuclear realm and in popular discourse, to argue that nuclear benchmarking obscures the long-term consequences of nuclearity. By abstracting the harms of the nuclear realm into units of measurement, these comparisons risk minimizing the generational biological, environmental, and psychological consequences of nuclear policy. In doing so, I aim to contribute to the broader study of nuclearity by interrogating how language and discourse reinforce dominant narratives and advocating for a more critical approach to nuclear discourse.

I am interested in how different educational communities understand, discuss, and teach about the history of the Hanford Nuclear Testing site in Washington state and its impacts on Indigenous communities in Washington. Shannon Cram maintains that the Indigenous body was sidelined in favor of “Jane,” a prototype of a human designed to live in a post-cleanup Hanford site. The “boundaries and biologies” of nuclearity at Hanford are directly connected to Colleges across Washington State, specifically, the students and professors that work toward environmental justice (Cram 2015). Since the Fall quarter of 2024, I have been spending time each week exploring the 238 Hanford Litigation Office archive boxes through the Special Collections program at the UW Libraries. My research applies Cram to the culture of Hanford through the UW Archives and other Washington colleges, and the ways that archives contribute to how colleges perpetrate, reformat, or challenge nuclear propaganda, knowledge about Hanford, and the nuclear-technoscientific future. Back in December 2024, I had the incredible opportunity to visit Whitman College for Holly Barker's Popular Culture of Nuclearity class and interview the Whitman community about Hanford. Using Critical Discourse Analysis, Interview Analysis, and Participant-Observation methodology, I created an informal documentary and opened up conversations surrounding nuclear justice and the Hanford site. This research matters because nuclear justice cannot be obtained without archival-based education or creating conversations in higher education spaces surrounding critical perspectives on nuclearity. In addition, university and college archives are not always accessible to the public, yet they contain information essential for nuclear justice education regarding collegiate connections to Hanford, and how Hanford displaced and caused long-term health effects for local Indigenous communities. This project will be presented via oral presentation, as creating conversations around archival material is necessary for community-building and grappling with the emotionality of nuclear and environmental justice.

The Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture currently holds approximately 140 presumed-to-be Samoan textiles called Siapo, a majority of which are kept in outdated materials from six years ago. There is a need for these pieces to be pulled, rewrapped and sorted by island for improved care and access for community members. Using catalog cards as a guide, I investigate if these pieces that are cataloged as Samoan are truly from Samoa? Culturally, Siapo are made in community, so in respect to that legacy, the unrolling and care of these pieces is done with Pacific Islander undergraduates, graduate students and community members. I use resources in the Burke’s Oceanic library collection to build my knowledge on the identifiers for the respective islands and better place the Siapo pieces. In addition, I coordinate online meetings to speak with master Siapo maker, Reggie Meredith, to work through any pieces that are difficult to accurately identify. Expected findings include the correct placement of pieces to their respective islands and the re-organization of the housing of these pieces. In addition to that, this project may provide increased knowledge for students and community members of Burke Museum pieces. There is a need in our community for cultural immersion but a lack of information on where to access this. I intend to use my knowledge from this experience to create a curriculum that continues to integrate Siapo cultural practice into learning experiences with the hopes that future generations can know how to identify Siapo pieces themselves.

Initiated in Spring 2024, I wanted to answer the question of why oral histories and community engagement are imperative to the cataloging process in museums. My findings assert that these factors lead to a richer understanding of the value of belongings in the collection. My interest in this work began with a personal connection to Punjabi artifacts, as my family hails from Amritsar. A visit to the archives with my mother showed me the vital role oral history plays in understanding the value of artifacts often disregarded as insignificant. Given my family’s displacement during the Partition of 1947, this visit also developed my own goal of connecting the South Asian community with material heritage. As the only South Asian student to conduct comprehensive research on this collection, I have developed a methodology that combines archival studies with community-based knowledge gathering. I have conducted my research through museum visits and interviews with community members, using the collections as my field site. I record or note the knowledge shared during these visits, and this data has informed my findings. Indrani Chatterjee’s methods of knowledge gathering in the book, Unfamiliar Relations: Family and History in South Asia, have been my main inspiration. My  research emphasizes ethics such as cultivating respect for cultural artifacts and looking to communities as the chief source of knowledge. Through this work I have learned that the material culture can only be properly cared for if communities have access to history that is rightfully theirs. This research is important in helping decolonize collections and create spaces where marginalized voices are respected in academic and museum contexts.