Four MALS Students Receive 2025 Byam Shaw-Brownstone Thesis Excellence Award

Four students have been honored with the 2025 Byam Shaw-Brownstone Thesis Excellence Award, which recognizes outstanding interdisciplinary scholarship in each of the Masters of Liberal Arts (MALS) program concentrations.

Established in 2000 through the generous support of Nicholas Byam-Shaw and the Clyde and Diane Brownstone Foundation, the award celebrates exceptional thesis work across the MALS curriculum.

This year's recipients represent the depth and range of work across the program:

Kehinde "Kenny" Aruwajoye (General Liberal Studies) earned recognition for Floating Signifiers: AI, Semiotics, and the Crisis of Meaning in Music. Combining cultural theory with musical expertise, Aruwajoy explores how AI-generated compositions risk becoming culturally stagnant, advocating instead for human-centered collaboration. 

McIntosh Bazile (Cultural Studies) was honored for From Silence to Song, which reinterprets Toni Morrison's Beloved through the lens of "critical fabulation." Bazile argues that Morrison's novel exemplifies and advances this methodological approach, transforming speculative storytelling into a tool for historical recovery and resistance against archival erasure.

Baptiste Gibrat (Globalization Studies) received the award for Driving Green Investments to Address Climate Change, a thesis proposing actionable frameworks for accelerating green investment. Gibrat's work included field research in Uganda on biochar production and interviews with policymakers, including Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo.

Rebecca Shepard (Creative Writing) was recognized for The Magdala Moms of La Jolla, a satirical novella set in a fictional evangelical prep school. Drawing from personal experience, Shepard uses wit, alternating perspectives, and a detective fiction structure to explore themes of performative faith and privilege.

Professor Donald Pease Jr., chair of the MALS program, presented the awards during this year's Investiture celebrations. Congratulations to all the recipients of the 2025 Byam Shaw-Brownstone Thesis Excellence Awards!