Senior Projects, Spring 2008

Sarah Barbour:
My project has two goals: to represent abstract, sometimes difficult mathematical concepts visually, and to encourage people who would normally not be interested in math to become engaged in it. The medium with which I propose to do so is color photography.

Julia Brown:
My thesis explores the history of Blues dance, its role in African-American communities, its recent movement to other communities, and the changes that occur in this movement. How is the dance affected? How are the two communities affected?

Andrew Clearfield:
I propose that drunk driving fatalities can most cheaply and most effectively be reduced by instituting automatic one month jail time for first offenders and creating a nationwide advertising plan to make drivers aware of the penalties for drunk driving. I propose that the cost of this plan (enforcement and housing convicted felons) be paid for by an alcohol tax and fines issued to the last bar that a drunk driver admits to patronizing.

James Kelly:
This study examines the rise of AIDS prevention efforts in Africa and the cultural contexts that exist in Uganda and South Africa for the successful dissemination of AIDS prevention messages as well as the interplay between traditional healing systems and western medicine.

David Letteri:
This project examines the phenomenon of the "maid café" in contemporary Japanese culture, and places it in historical and sociological relationship to the role of the geisha in Japanese society.

Brittany McCandless:
My project examines the broadcast news media's handling of the Iranian Hostage Crisis and how it's impacted the American collective memory of the event. It analyzes the framework, rhetoric and images the media used to report the event as it happened, and it examines how the media has referenced the event since--specifically, how the hostage crisis has (or hasn't) impacted reporting on current events in Iran.

Michael Pato:
My research focuses on how infants and adults learn language. Research indicates that infants are significantly better at learning language. One explanation for this is that language is learned differently then other things. To explore this I am seeing how adults and infants learn visual patterns that share many characteristics with patterns found in language.

Marshall Roy:
My project, a long work of fiction, seeks to probe the complexity of shame as an agent of the moral imperative. It follows a small group of individuals who discover and expose pedophiles operating in cyberspace, and its psychosexual drama hinges on the fact that opposition demands engagement--in other words, the characters cannot curtail behavior they find horrific without repeatedly subjecting themselves to said behavior.