Chau Nguyen Doan
Chau’s research seeks an answer to this question: Do the business interests of an increasingly corporate media undermine the reporting of news on which the public depends? Media scholars have debated this key question for years (mostly answering affirmatively), but Chau hopes to introduce a novel approach to the analysis: using news coverage of media concentration as a case study. Her project will involve a qualitative and quantitative analysis of broadcast coverage by the major networks — specifically of media concentration — before and after the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) […]
Andrew Peterson
Co-branded advertising is a movie marketing strategy allying films such as Star Wars and E.T., with brands like Burger Chef and Atari. Though film and advertising have always engaged in a mutually shameless relationship, there are many important distinctions between co-branded and conventional film advertising. In contrast to the prologue-like tone of movie trailers, co-branded advertising is presented to the spectator as a kind of hyper-utopian epilogue to the film’s narrative conflict, in which “good guys” and “bad guys” alike are rewarded with consumer products. The aim of Andrew’s project […]
Pei (Tony) Zhao
On one hand, determinism claims the necessity of physical laws, together with the state of the universe at any moment, entails that what happens next must happen. On the other hand, when a person acts wrongly and gets blamed for his action, we seem to presuppose that he could have acted differently. Does determinism, or the objective view of science in general, threaten the notion of moral responsibility? Is our practice of holding people responsible ultimately unjustifiable? Incompatibilists say yes; compatibilists say no. In the summer of 2008, Tony will […]
Christophe Marc Wall-Romana
Christophe will translate for publication a volume of poetry, titledViens dit quelqu’un, by the French poet James Sacr. Sacr is one of the most accomplished French poets writing today, the winner of France’s most prestigious poetry prize (Prix Apollinaire, 1988) and highest cultural distinction (Chevalier dans l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres, 1987). Translated into Swedish and Spanish, Sacr’s work is still largely unknown in the English-speaking world, despite the fact that the poet has lived in the United States for the last twenty years, where he currently teaches as […]
Matthew Lewsadder
Matthews project will take him to the British Library in London this summer, where he will investigate the censorship of plays during the transition from Victorianism into Modernism. In particular, he will be examining the significant role the Lord Chamberlain played in maintaining English morality through his censorship powers. Taking Foucaults theories as a starting point, Matthew will test his hypothesis that the Lord Chamberlains censorship activities, which were deployed inconsistently, were less concerned with the maintenance of decency and morality than they were with who had the authority to […]
Zachary David Gordon
Located at the nexus of linguistics, philosophy and literary studies, Zach’s Senior Honors Thesis in English will examine Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, specifically to illuminate the relationship between the theory of knowledge inherent in the novel’s syntax and the epistemological issues the novel thematizes. In order to understand Woolf’s syntactic use of “unoccupied perspectives” in the “Time Passes” section of the novel, Zach will be making use of a relatively unexploited linguistic approach to looking at philosophical issues in Woolf’s fiction. His project will not only deepen our understanding […]
Shannon Mathes
Shannon will examine the effects that Rastafarianism has had on the political economy of Jamaica since the implementation of structural adjustment programs by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in 1977. Specifically, she will describe and analyze the ways in which Rastafarian organizations have challenged the policies of the Jamaican state regarding land use, land availability and small-scale agriculture in relation to the lowering of trade barriers and currency devaluation imposed by the IMF. This summer, Shannon will travel to Kingston and Ocho Rios, Jamaica to conduct archival research and interviews […]
Jacob Coakley
Jacob will write, as an independent study project in the English department, a full-length play with a double narrative. This duality of structure will allow Jacob to experiment with various forms of multi-media and digital technology available in a modern theatrical production in an effort to explore questions of human subjectivity raised by media theory. To accomplish this, Jacob will develop the script in dialogue with an actress over the summer in New York City, while observing the techniques and technology of several avant-garde theatre companies in NYC already doing […]
Sun Lee
Sun’s project examines how cultural memory and postcolonial consciousness have shaped the notion of justice and reconciliation in post-Khmer Rouge Cambodia. While the newly-established Special Court aims to establish international criminal justice 31 years after the tragic events, whether such justice can redress historical wrongs and bring about reconciliation remains questionable. Therefore an inquiry into the Cambodian social and political imagination, ideological development and notions of national identity and culture becomes appropriate. Through interviews, observations and review of historical evidence, Sun will unearth the non-dominant voice and seek to understand […]
Lijia Xie
Based on Lijia’s travels in China in summer 2008, she composed a collection of three chapters of prose poems intercut with verse as cultural narratives of gender, reanimated as myths of Chinese history and femininity situated onto an invented milieu, the neither/nor setting of contemporary China hosting a global event. The first chapter, (public airing), seeks deconstructed understandings of this setting beyond the partial, i.e. incomplete, privileged, and relentlessly deferred by emerging phenomena. The second chapter responds to a French feminist discourse on criture fminine, particularly a fascination with how […]