Congratulations to our MA graduate, Sarah Law, on receiving the prestigious Dean of Graduate Studies Convocation Medal!

This award recognizes the highest level of academic excellence in the graduate program, and Sarah鈥檚 work truly exemplifies that excellence. We caught up with her for a short Q&A to learn more about her thesis project, her research process, and what鈥檚 next in her academic journey.

Read the full interview to hear Sarah鈥檚 insights and reflections!

Can you briefly describe your thesis project?

My master鈥檚 thesis, , illustrates how late capitalist life and anticipating crisis form desire in subjects to protect themselves against the threat of uncertain futures. I used feminist theory, economic sociology, and political economy of emotions and affect to understand how people in the online personal finance movement - Financial Independence Retiring Early (FIRE) - reason about early retirement, hard work, financial freedom, and the moral weight of their economic conduct. 

I show how the present moment is governed by an affective state of anticipating uncertain futures and how neglectful neoliberal structures of (non)governance turn subjects towards financial self-help movements as a moral project of self-transformation. In my thesis, I develop a theory of hardening and argue that late capitalist life is embodied as an urgent and virtuous desire to harden the self through hard work that works to maintain colonial, racial, and gendered relations of power and conceal structures of domination. I offer the term "hard economic sensibilities" to conceptualize how this anticipation forms a desire to become unaffected by crisis which compels subjects to steel themselves and take up the cold emotionality of late capitalism. 

What was the most surprising or challenging aspect of your research?

I wasn鈥檛 expecting my previous research on climate grief, political anxiety, and what I now call 鈥渨orld ending feelings鈥� to be so prominent in this work on financial freedom. It was both validating and concerning to see just how much the present moment is governed by fear of the future and uncertainty. Lauren Berlant remains salient in how ordinary life is marked by ordinary crisis.

I wish I was joking when I said that it was a challenge for me to stop reading theory. I got to a point where my advisor, Kyle, had to put me on a reading theory ban because I kept coming into our meetings with more theoretical frameworks. Maybe hauntology will come back to me someday. It was also challenging for me towards the end, where I felt like I got to a point of thinking with Sylvia Wynter, margins, and the matrix of capitalist valuations once I had submitted my final version of the thesis to my external reviewer. And I could have only gotten to that point of thinking by writing about it, and once I got there, I just wanted to keep writing.

Looking back, what are you most proud of during your MA?

I am most proud of developing my theory of hardening. This theory is something that I鈥檝e been thinking about since I was in my undergrad, but I also feel that I鈥檝e been trying to make sense of the coldness of capitalist logics and economic moralities that hinge on colonial, racial, and gendered politics throughout my life. There is a lot of me in the thesis in ways that I wasn鈥檛 anticipating for - I am more present in my writing.

I remember how nervous I was after I submitted my first draft to Kyle and immediately left to go camping to clear my head before the fall semester started up again. When I walked into his office, Kyle sat me down and just said, 鈥淵ou did it.鈥� I sat there as he read out portions of my thesis out loud to me from a printed copy of my thesis he was waving and throwing around. It all sunk in for me in that moment.

I also think that my writing style has changed a lot since I wrote my honours thesis as an undergraduate student. Even though it鈥檚 only been two years or so, it鈥檚 really gratifying to see how my fidelity to text appears in the way that I鈥檓 able to write about my thinking. Particularly in my citation is relational chapter and the way that I play with citation and show what I mean about concealment and how power works in the data, but also in the structure and form of the thesis itself by using margins.

What are your next steps after graduation?

To enjoy my gap year as much as possible and continue to read and write for pleasure; to bring people I love together; and to continue to sustain the worlds we are fighting so hard to keep.

To read more about Sarah's story, please visit here.