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Office of Undergraduate Research and Creative Scholarship

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Events & Activities

2013 Festival of Scholars

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Student Abstracts at this Session

Student(s): Kevin Bowen Faculty Mentor: Dr. Joan Wines	The Postmodern Serial: A Narrative Form for the Twenty-First Century Concerned about the chasm between contemporary mass culture and postmodern literary art, I am experimenting with a relatively new narrative form I call the postmodern serial. An heir of the popular Victorian serial fiction, the postmodern serial comfortably adapts itself to contemporary society through portable digital media. My experiment is based on two primary observations: first, that the information flow of mass culture is incompatible with standardized literary narrative forms; and secondly, that literary art continues to obscure and marginalize itself by increasingly privileging academic over vernacular concerns. I think that the postmodern serial, compatible with both contemporary society and a progressive literary art, can negotiate the disturbing chasm between mass media and literary narratives, and create a new digital narrative form in the space within the divide.
Student(s): Wren Cherney Faculty Mentor: Dr. Joan Wines	Fictional Narrative as a Vehicle for Extratextual Social Change Cognitive theorist Blakey Vermeule argues that readers who re-prioritize their realization that a fictional text is indeed fictional are not likely to become actively involved in extra-textual situations involving social change—even though the text may have made a compelling case for such involvement. I argue, however, that fictional narratives contextualized by social conditions can and do convince readers to participate in social change, especially when the readers empathize with a fiction’s characters. Authors who intend to promote a social agenda may create characters who elicit narrative empathy for just this reason—to influence their readers to act. An examination of three fictional texts (Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin 1852, Upton Sinclair The Jungle 1906, and Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go 2006) strengthens the argument that literary authors and their fictional characters have shaped and can continue to shape social change.
Student(s): Melanie Cornejo Faculty Mentor: Dr. Joan Wines	The Deconstruction of the Feminine in Atwood’s Prose and Poetry Studying Margaret Atwood’s novels at The University Reading, England, I was disappointed to find within them not only a consistently unforgiving view of human nature, but also a negative perception of women. Revisiting four of Atwood’s novels, (The Edible Woman, Lady Oracle, Alias Grace, and Cat’s Eye), I identified some of the repetitive markers she uses in her presentation of women. These include lack of identity, self-abortion and self-torture. I came to see these novels as a literary vehicle to express Atwood’s increasing discontent towards the antifeminism movement of the 1960s and 70s. As a poet, I wanted to know if this resistance and the disturbing images in her novels were present in her poetry as well. Using the markers identified in her novels as a frame, I have found a similar representation of women in the major collections of Atwood’s poetry.
Student(s): Francesca Dutra Africano Faculty Mentor: Dr. Joan Wines	Learning the Language of Subtext Communication is a learned skill set we work at acquiring for the majority of our lives. Typically, we learn to speak by mimicking our parents and we learn to read by following our teachers’ instructions and examples. Influenced by the environment in which we learn, we all read and interpret texts differently, as reader response theorists point out. In researching different classroom techniques for teaching students to read, I determined that recognizing and understanding subtext is paramount to productive reading, i.e. reading that taps into the many layers of meaning a text has to offer. As I demonstrate by examining a selected Hemingway text, a combination of personal and formal analysis is ideal for accessing and understanding the rich potential of meaning inherent in subtext. This combination of reading techniques and analysis enables and encourages readers to access and understand the multiple layers of meaning available in every text.
Student(s): Shauna Fletcher Faculty Mentor: Dr. Joan Wines	Counteracting Negative Perceptions of the LGBT Community: The Need for a More Realistic Literature Several theorists assert that portrayals of homosexuality in literature over time have led to a more pervasive acceptance of homosexuality. I examine historical evidence from medieval times through modern day in essays by Dudley, Fone, Hirschfeld, and Karlen, as well as literary texts attributed to Shakespeare, Lord Byron, Walt Whitman, and Dorothy Allison. Even though this historical examination demonstrates an increasingly progressive acceptance of homosexuality, none of these interpretations have been honest enough. My short story “Irretrievable” attempts to reconcile society to the value and validity of the homosexual lifestyle by offering a realistic view that will counteract the negative perceptions of the LGBT community.
Student(s): Delaney Gallagher Faculty Mentor: Dr. Joan Wines	Public Relations Writing: a Genre All Its Own Because of my own experience with and interest in the field of public relations (PR), I want to establish and validate PR writing as a legitimate genre of its own. Even though it requires a set of skills that distinguishes it from other genres, in my research I have found only one reference to this writing form as a legitimate genre. My project attempts to demonstrate that PR writing deserves to be regarded as its own distinctive genre. I do this by describing its unique history and identifying its specific conventions and innovative uses of technology.
Student(s): Mieke Howell Faculty Mentor: Dr. Joan Wines	Art Education: Art-Integration Ten years after it was implemented in 2001, the No Child Left Behind Act continues to emphasize the standardized testing of math and reading skills. Funding for K-12 art programs has dwindled and, in many cases, disappeared. My research offers a strong rationale for maintaining cohesive and complete art programs in schools, and recognizes the need to mandate the incorporation of art into K-12 curriculums.
Student(s): Emma Kanagaki Faculty Mentor: Dr. Joan Wines	Cracking the Case of the Dichotomous French Woman During a study abroad program in Grenoble, France, I became curious about some of the peculiar and contradictory characteristics of the French women there. They seemed to be passionate and romantic but at the same time keenly intelligent and sharply resolute. To understand this dichotomy in a broader context, I looked for evidence of it in French literature and film and found many female characters that exemplified these dual qualities, Flaubert's Emma Bovary and De Balzac's Adeline Hulot, Woody Allen’s Adriana. It is in Irene Nemirovsky’s work, however, that the value of the “dual personality” becomes most evident. She separates the complex French woman into two more simplified characters, clarifying the specific traits of the two poles (Francoise Giroud’s “iron hand” and “velvet glove”). Nemirovsky’s unfulfilled characters illuminate and reiterate my initial observation that the dichotomous French woman is an exemplary model of the female persona.
Student(s): Michelle Kane Faculty Mentor: Dr. Joan Wines	Challenging Gender- and Sexuality-Based Social Roles: Play Characters as Motivators of Social Change Western playwrights have broadened audience perspectives and effected social change by portraying characters that challenge or complicate definitive social roles based on gender or sexual identity. In the presentation of strong female characters, politically-contextualized plays like Antigone and Lysistrata (fifth century B.C.E.) explored women’s roles in impacting state politics. Later, plays like A Doll’s House and Trifles interrogated the conditions of domestic politics, challenged the legitimacy of traditional, distinct gender roles, and foreshadowed a more fluid understanding of sexual identity. Previously, in the 16th and 17th centuries, Renaissance plays, including Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, manipulated sexual identity and demonstrated its mutability, perhaps prefiguring the modern-day shift away from rigid definitions of sexual identity. Contemporary plays like Cock by Mike Bartlett challenge the traditional, definitive understanding of sexuality and highlight how social roles based on gender or sexuality problematically limit individual identity.
Student(s): Carli Rudebusch Faculty Mentor: Dr. Joan Wines	Bias and Bylaw: Rethinking the Rhetorical Emphasis in the Judicial System The introduction of DNA testing as a legitimate source of judicial evidence has made possible the release of a surprisingly high number of unjustly convicted prisoners--demonstrating that when scientific proofs are lacking, courts can make severe errors in judgment. As an aspiring lawyer, I sought to understand why the integrity of our judicial system has been so compromised. I found that Plato's analysis of rhetoric and dialectic, Kant's theory of inherent law, and Kierkegaard's definition of truth all point to bias as the culprit that most interferes with our interpretation of facts. These sources helped me reach a deeper understanding of how bias interferes with the administration of justice and convinced me that the legal system must work to more deliberately eradicate it in court cases, documents, and trials. We might consider adapting Plato’s ideas in order to reduce bias--by implementing less rhetorically-, and more dialectically-based methods in legal training and in judicial proceedings.
Student(s): Leah Schrimpf Faculty Mentor: Dr. Joan Wines	Existentialism, Existential Psychotherapy, and Existential Poetry: An Exploration of Meaning-Making Each individual holds the complexly subjective power to make meaning out of objects, relationships, situations, and/or memories. But how and why does meaning-making occur? Existentialism and existential psychotherapy attempt to answer these questions, while existential poetry plays with and comments on them. By analyzing basic existential premises, the existential psychotherapeutic approach to meaning-making, and the poetry of Tom Greening and Howard Nemerov, I unpack the four main categories of meaning and venture into my own experience of meaning-making via a collection of short existential poems.