image
Lulu Mokete ’24
After spending nearly a year analyzing Dominican identity from a social formation perspective, mathematics major Lulu Moquete (’24) approached Associate Professor of Mathematics Emilio Fernández (PhD) with a dilemma that faces many students in their final year of undergraduate studies: what to do after graduation.
During Moquete’s time at Pace University’s Westchester campus, Fernandez became a trusted mentor with whom he shared a lot in common: They both have a deep love of math and critical thinking, and they’re both Dominican immigrants living in the U.S. It was these similarities, along with Moquete’s eye for the future, that led Fernandez to suggest that Moquete apply for the Dean’s Office of Undergraduate Summer Research Grant.
The grant led Moquete and Fernández to undertake a multi-level cultural analysis that explores the impact of colonialism on diaspora (a term that refers to Dominicans living outside the Dominican Republic in countries such as the United States and Spain). Through an immersive, multidisciplinary analysis of texts, Moquete explored the social structures and psychological and sociological effects of colonialism on Dominicans and society at large. As a result of this research, Moquete and Fernández’s ultimate goal is to convince universities to offer introductory analytical courses to help students understand “how culture is formed and functions.”
“When Lulu became my supervisor, I realized that she already had a lot of people teaching her math, so I thought, ‘How can I be of better use to her?'” Fernandez said, adding that she believes in the liberal arts idea of seeking a broad range of knowledge rather than specializing in just one field. “As a fellow Dominican, I didn’t have to think too much about it. A lot of the challenges she faced were cultural, just like I would have if I were in her position.”
The intersection of data analysis and the humanities
image
Associate Professor of Mathematics Dr. Emilio Fernandez
The project centered around a critical reading of three interdisciplinary literary works: the first was Junot Diaz’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Brief and Wonderful Life of Oscar Wao, a fictional story about a Dominican boy living in New Jersey who dreams of becoming a Dominican JRR Tolkien.
“I felt like this book would be an accessible read for Lulu,” Fernandez said, “because if you’re a Dominican living abroad and you happen to be going to school, how could you not become immersed in this character?”
The next piece was more puzzling: French Marxist Louis Althusser’s essay “Ideology and the Ideological State Apparatus,” in which he argues that social institutions like schools, churches, and families have the power to promote a bourgeois-dominated worldview through seemingly obligatory but unconscious rituals and practices.
“As a maths student, reading these essays was a whole new experience for me,” Moquete says. “I slowly worked my way through them and rewrote them in a way that I could understand. That’s when I realised I was analysing them in the same way a data scientist analyses quantitative data. This was me analysing qualitative data.”
The last book Moquete read was Black Skin, White Masks, written in 1952 by Frantz Fanon, a French-Martinician psychiatrist and philosopher. Having served in the French army and endured many hardships as a black medical student, Fanon’s doctoral thesis was rejected by his professors, who deemed it of no value to the field. After graduating from medical school and grounding his theory with empirical evidence of practice, he published his thesis. The book offers a human science approach to how colonialism imposes, defines, and reproduces the psychology of the colonized. It also offers a systematic analysis and historical critique of colonialism’s impact on the human psyche.
“Because Lulu isn’t primarily a humanities student, it became very clear to me that she needed very concrete examples that showed connections,” Fernández said of her reasons for choosing Fanon’s work. “Because this book is more of a sociological, scientific analysis, I thought this was the most applicable theoretical framework that Lulu could use to begin to understand all these texts.”
In adapting three very different texts, their focus was on contextualizing both qualitative and quantitative data about the impacts of colonialism. Fernandez said statisticians and sociologists often work separately—statisticians provide the numbers, sociologists contextualize them. Fernandez hopes his students, especially Moquete, will see the connections between them.
result
This fall, Mokete presented her findings to members of the Pace University community at an event hosted by the Center for Undergraduate Research Experiences for students who participated in the summer research program. Fernandez said he was proud of Mokete’s presentation, especially her ability to speak eloquently and analytically about information outside of her field of mathematics.
Moquete and Fernandez have laid the groundwork for a course they hope will one day become a staple of social analysis at Pace. They noted that their conversations have already begun to see their course added to the academic catalog, a legacy Moquete said he will be able to leave at Pace after he steps down in May.
“I really hope that once this course opens, it will have an impact on a lot of other minority students and encourage them to get involved in programs and departments like this,” Moquete said. “Typically, we don’t have a large number of minority students in math programs, but I hope that in the future, more people will know that there is an ability to get involved in programs like this.”
And as for her plans after grad school, her work with Fernandez has given her a clearer idea of her next step: She plans to pursue a PhD in applied mathematics or data science.
“My background in mathematics has allowed me to think more eloquently in many different areas,” Moquete said, “so imagine how many more windows I would have through which to see the world if I could have obtained a higher degree in mathematics.”
More than anything, Moquete will graduate with a life-changing connection to Fernandez.
“In all the hundreds of hours that Lulu and I spent in the office and emailing each other, the one topic we have never discussed is math,” Fernandez said with a laugh.
“Having a mentor like Professor Fernandez, especially within my department, was really helpful,” Moquete says. “He guided me through my time at university and helped me grow in ways I didn’t even know I could.”
