Biography
Cass Mayeda is an MA/PhD student in the Film and Media Studies department with a wide array of professional and educational experiences. Most recently Cass was a Web Applications Research Assistant for Jonathan Irish’s lab at Vanderbilt University where they built educational websites and data analysis tools for biologists and immunologists. Cass is a passionate educator, and has taught coding to students as young as five and as experienced as published research scientists. Academically Cass has a background in American Studies and received the John Demo Prize for their undergraduate senior thesis “Disarming Play: Toy Drones, Freeing Flight, and War Machines” that investigates toy drones as a site of production for American opinions on drone warfare. Continuing some of the core themes of this thesis, Cass’s current interests lie at the intersection of gender, race, and violence on social media analyzed cross-disciplinarily with media studies and data science.