Interdisciplinary research projects offer innovative approaches to making work in the arts and humanities more visible. Zach Zito, a student at Utah State University, has been working hard on a project that combines physics and philosophy. His work focuses on quantum mechanics and relativity of time. We reached out to him for an interview to learn more about his research.
CURAH: What is the nature of your research?
ZZ: I have the privilege of engaging in research with Dr. Brittany Gentry (philosophy) and Dr. Charles Torre (physics). Our research centers on the role of time in physical systems. It is an interdisciplinary endeavor, drawing heavily on concepts from the relevant philosophic literature as well as modern physical theories.
From Aristotle to Newton to Einstein, great thinkers have established diverse ways of viewing the physical word based on different conceptualizations of time’s nature. In physics, one’s assumptions about the nature of time play a role in how scientific theories are structured. Interestingly, two of today’s most important disciplines within physics — relativity (which describes the cosmos) and quantum mechanics (which describes the sub-atomic) — make use of different and irreconcilable notions of time. This is puzzling because both theories make remarkably accurate predictions and are fundamental to modern technology and our understanding of the universe. How could two theories, both of which serve us so well, contradict one another? This is the question at the heart of our research.
Digging into the literature, we thought hard about the metaphysical status of time: what we are truly referring to when we speak about temporarily. Inspired by the work of Barbour and Bernoulli (two prominent physicists), we set out to find a way to describe particle systems (not unlike those studied in quantum mechanics) in a manner that is in harmony with the findings of relativity. We have made some promising advances in this regard. Today, we are working on establishing canonical methods for defining a relativistic rime metric in systems that share more and more qualities with full-fledged quantum mechanical systems.
CURAH: What were the easiest and hardest things about the work you did?
ZZ: Philosophers and physicists alike have been thinking about the metaphysics of time for… quite some time. This made it relatively easy to find high quality literature related to the subject in question. We looked at several works from prominent thinkers to round-out and purify our conception of clocks, motion, and time to establish a solid basis on which to proceed. the most difficult part was synthesizing all the material, crystallizing our findings into mathematical expressions and robust metaphysical explanations to describe our models. Despite the difficulty, Dr. Torre, Dr. Gentry, and so many great thinkers before us, we were able to come to a satisfying conclusion.
CURAH: What kinds of things did you learn? (about your topic, about scholarship, or about yourself)
During this research, I had the opportunity to learn more about the existing literature on the philosophy of time and change as well as advanced methods in physics for analyzing and describing systems. Particularly, I learned about the intricate relationship between temporal succession and motion and about the importance of symmetries and conserved quantities in physics. This alone felt like a top-rate educational experience and affected the way I see the world around me and how I interact with the academic disciplines of philosophy and physics. On a deeper level, I learned how engaging serious investigation into deep questions can be. I was surprised at the high level of collaboration that took place across disciplinary, spatial, and temporal boundaries. I hope to continue to participate in this ongoing conversation, exploring the secretes that nature has in store through creative synthesis of experience, mathematical rigor, and careful consideration.”
CURAH: Did you make any discoveries along the way?
ZZ: Yes! We established a framework through which to view change, time, and matter and discovered an equation that describes simple motion in a model-universe without reference to the type of “assumed” time that relativity theory demands we abandon. Functionally, we found a way to mathematically convert a complicated combination of measurements into a clock which is internal to the system under study. We did this by examining the quantities of the systems that are conserved due to symmetries and exploiting them to craft a mathematical clock. This means that in principle, systems can be coherently understood without external reference, suggesting that a deeper understanding of the very early universe may prove accessible. As of now, we are searching for a similar result that can be applied to more complex systems involving quantum properties and more interacting particles.
CURAH: How has the project helped you in your career goals?
ZZ: This project allowed me to grow personally and learn a great deal about unique spaces in physics and philosophy and about research in general. Because my career goals include future work in both philosophy and physics research, this project has been of utmost value to me in that regard. This project has also given me a look into the details of research work in these fields, which helped give me a better sense of what exactly I’d like to focus on in my career and hence what I should be studying and investigating now in preparation.
Zach Zito talking with his Physics and Philosophy mentors about his research.
Interested in hearing about more undergraduate students and their research? Check out our page dedicated to these profiles!
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Advanced computational tools such as natural language processing and word embedding can often provide excellent opportunities for undergraduate research in the humanities. This summer, a College of the Holy Cross summer research team completed a project titled “A Composite Model for Homeric Scholia Transmission.” Natalie DiMattia, Augusta Holyfield, Rose Kaczmarek, and I explored the little-studied scholia (historical scholarly annotation) of Iliad manuscripts and used natural language processing methods to analyze the topics within them. As part of the project, we have made available for the first time a diplomatic edition of the scholia within Books Eight through Ten of two Iliad manuscripts. Our work demonstrates that the sources of Homeric scholia are varied across manuscripts with no single stemmatic source. In other words, scribes used material creatively instead of simply copying from earlier works.
Holy Cross Research Team: Natalie DiMattia ‘22, Rose Kaczmarek ‘23, Anne-Catherine Schaaf ‘22, and Augusta Holyfield ‘22
Beyond the Stemmatic Model
Previous scholarship assumed a stemmatic model of transmission, with later annotations deriving from earlier ones like branches on a tree, all leading back to singular source. Because we recognized that scribes creatively mixed material from multiple sources, we applied computational methods to identify common units of scholia content. These units have been compressed, expanded, and combined in different manuscripts, making an unrooted network a more accurate model for scholia than a stemmatic tree.
No single method accounts for all the diagnostic features of the scholia: thematic content, technical language, non-linguistic markings on the manuscript, and chronological indications. Therefore, we drew on a variety of natural language processing methods such as TF-IDF, a measure of the proportional importance of words to the document; topic modelling, which identifies recurring clusters of co-occurring terms; and word embeddings, which model sequences of terms. Using this new methodological framework, we created a composite model of the relationships between scholia. The resulting network has no stemmatic family tree, or even one source. Rather, it illustrates an interweaving, two-thousand year scholarly debate about the Iliad.
The MID’s Groundbreaking Work
Our research builds on work my teammates and I have been doing for four years as members of the Holy Cross Manuscripts, Inscriptions, and Documents Club (MID), focusing on the Homer Multitext Project. Part of Harvard’s Center for Hellenic Studies, the Homer Multitext Project has consistently engaged with and produced groundbreaking scholarship in Homeric studies. The Holy Cross MID was founded ten years ago, and has been working with the Homer Multitext Project ever since, providing students many summer opportunities to work on these incredible manuscripts. Professor Neel Smith, our faculty mentor, additionally serves as one of the Information Architects for the project. Students have turned their work into senior theses as well as presenting at conferences in Kalamazoo, Michigan, Mexico City, and Krakow.
Beginning in my first year, when I took Introduction to Ancient Greek and joined the club, I learned the foundational skills required to work with these texts. I have continued my work in MID throughout my three years at Holy Cross, as well as continuing on through Advanced Greek, and I have taken on an active role helping see through projects at Hackathon, as well as testing and introducing the new software to other members. In the spring of my sophomore year, I audited a course on archaeological data analysis, which gave me an initial overview of working with digital notebooks and forms of analysis such as topic modelling. My previous summer research allowed me to gain experience with the forms of textual analysis we continued to develop, as well as how to be a more efficient reader and editor of the manuscripts.
Creating New Research Opportunities
This summer, my team and I developed our modeling methods even further by tackling the scholia, a much more complicated corpus. My senior thesis will focus on the theme of weaving on the Iliad and its scholia, and my experience doing research has been invaluable, not just for the technical skills it gave, but in my work directly building and processing the corpus that I will use for my thesis research.
My team received the high honor of having a paper based on our research accepted at the SCS-AIA, the preeminent conference for classics and archaeology in America. The session we will be presenting at, Ancient Makerspaces, is unique among classics conferences for its combination of the classics and digital humanities, and the scholars and presentations there will offer a fascinating introduction to the latest developments in the fields I am most passionate about. The work my team has done will continue throughout the year as we expand our corpora of books of the Iliad, and even though I’m graduating, I’m very excited to see what the next generation of MID scholars at Holy Cross produce.
Anne-Catherine Schaaf is a senior Classics major at the College of the Holy Cross.
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Creative writing student Liam Strong and faculty mentor Julie Gard reflect on the challenges and joys of working together remotely at the University of Wisconsin-Superior during the Pandemic.
A Student Perspective – Liam Strong
A Frigid Spring
I had planned on celebrating Pride Month in June 2020 like I would any other year. I’d made a lot of plans, but I’d never accounted for a pandemic. The arrival of COVID-19, however, didn’t halt my one stationary plan of completing my Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) through the University of Wisconsin-Superior.
As a distance learning student, I had already constructed the skeleton of my project online. Working with my mentor and professor, Julie Gard, I planned to write a poetry chapbook manuscript (16-25 pages) by August. Or at least that’s what Julie insisted I do instead of the full-length manuscript I had initially challenged myself with. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, the finished chapbook is practically devoid of its influence.
What the pandemic didn’t change was how politically charged the manuscript ended up being. Pride Month wasn’t going to happen once the Black Lives Matters protests began this summer, and they informed the outspoken nature of the manuscript. The pandemic didn’t change the experiments I did with poetic forms, nor with language, nor my hopes for the project.
If anything, isolation brought me closer to myself and my identity, which wasn’t planned at all.
Content, Themes, Meditations
Truth be told, the original title of the project, Like a Body From Blood, was a placeholder. Because the project’s themes began broadly, they weren’t fully realized until almost halfway through the summer. I wanted to write a set of poems about the non-binary experience, about grappling with one’s gender dysphoria. I wanted to celebrate queerness, existing in a sometimes bizarre transgender body and mind, and not be angry.
The poems are sad and indignant (in a mutedly poetic way) because I found myself in everything I had compiled for my Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship project’s reading list. I hadn’t planned on writing poems dealing so much with my body image, with every one of my multitudes. I’m the only one who will say the manuscript is about insecurities.
Books from Liam’s reading list.
Thematically, what started as my exploration into theorizing non-binary poetics then became a narrative. After reading Bodymap by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, I knew there were roads to my gender fluidity, masculinity, femininity, my physical vulnerability. My emotional vulnerability. Joshua Jennifer Espinoza’s I’m Alive. It Hurts. I Love It. reached out to hold me because it knew my pain, my joys, my place in the world. I realized with that book my manuscript needed to do the same.
Workshopping Poems and Myself
I’d often be distracted trying to read the titles of the dozens of poetry books behind Julie’s head while we discussed my poems and readings via Zoom. I’d hear her dog, Nikolai, lawnmowers and endless road construction, or her partner coming home while we workshopped at her outdoor office. I tried, however, not to be distracted by my own expectations toward how I had been writing before the project began.
My weekly poem drafts were unlike any I had written before—largely due to Julie’s feedback and my propulsion to do something different. I was tired of being comfortable, especially with writing the fine-tuned poetic line, and in turn focusing on crafting an evocative, personally charged line. Though not every single poem I wrote took on a specific poetic form, every poem had form in that it was written with purpose in mind. I wrote poems in conversation with the content of my weekly readings; poems in response to another poet’s poem; long narrative poems that were unlike the tight, brief poems I typically wrote.
I could see my body in every poem. Each poem had bones, flesh, genitals, and a name that didn’t fit their visage. The poems were all searching for belonging, and I just didn’t know it yet.
An Audience of One vs. An Audience of Many
Many authors and teachers of writing suggest that one should always write for themselves. At the end of summer 2020, my SURF project implored the opposite. Although most, if not all, the poems in the final manuscript are “about” me, they are not for me.
I titled the chapbook Likeness. Once we had begun composing the list of poems that would make it into the projected order of the manuscript, we realized that the themes extended beyond gender identity and toward kinship, toward finding likeness in others. I wasn’t writing for myself, but rather for people who didn’t have a literature to call their own. Though there isn’t a dedications page, the manuscript is for all transgender, gender-nonconforming, and non-binary individuals. As someone who grew up without any non-binary poetry to see myself in, it became my goal to ensure that others could see themselves in my experiences as a person of gender and sexual diversity.
Certain Uncertainties
Having endured the pandemic thus far, I can’t help but regard the toll it’s taken on my mental health in conjunction with a 200-hour fellowship project. There were days where I didn’t want to look at a poem, then days where all I wanted to indulge in were literature podcasts, poetry collections, and my personal free-writes. There were days where I felt like a boy, days where I was a girl, days where I didn’t want to be clearly defined by a binary. Although many poems over the course of the summer were undoubtedly fun to write (particularly those in response to Chen Chen’s When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities), others became therapeutic. As in, I may not have been ready yet to tackle their emotional baggage.
Bouts of dysphoria would hit me, but during those times the best strategy for coping was gardening. Hours spent picking weeds, trimming bushes, and topping begonias became a necessary reprieve from not only the difficult personal content of my poems but also the social climate of America.
That all said, I won’t discount the newfound relationship I now have with writing and workshopping poems. The workshops Julie and I held weren’t simply devoted to constructive criticism and revision—our workshops were more like discussions of poetic intent, considering how to best fulfill the then uncertain themes of the chapbook. Uncertainty offered so much to me, despite my evasion of it. I may not have found my true self with all these poems, but that was never the point. I will always continually find myself. I have a lifetime of poems ahead of me to write, and this summer of writing has been the bridge between me and the poetics I want to see more of in the world.
Liam Strong and Julie Gard, hard at work.
A Faculty Perspective – Julie Gard
Writer at Work
Liam’s apartment had white walls, comfortable couches, and a cat. Bookshelves, a washing machine, lamps, and warm light. Outside of the Zoom frame in which much of our mentorship transpired, they described gardening and working in the dirt. I loved to imagine this companion experience to a summer of reading and writing poetry–the tangible digging, planting, and growing. I have never been to Traverse City, Michigan, so their life outside of the apartment was an imaginary space for me. I knew they lived on the third floor, so I pictured them in a fortress up in the air, safe to take on poetic form and the false gender binary.
Set-up and Structure
Liam and I have never met in person; they were a student in my online, advanced poetry workshop in Spring 2020, which is where I got to know their writing and work ethic, sensing they would be a perfect candidate for a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship at the University of Wisconsin-Superior. Our remote mentorship was not a response to the pandemic, but this format certainly turned out to be convenient.
Structure is important whenever a faculty member is accompanying a student on their journey with an independent project, and Liam and I worked together to set up a framework ahead of time, with the understanding that we could tweak it. In the late spring, we developed a timeline that included weekly readings and due dates. We committed to meeting once a week throughout the summer, with these meetings scheduled as “recurring” in Zoom and on both of our Outlook calendars. In between meetings, we agreed to check in over email if any questions or challenges came up.
In terms of our mentorship medium, video meetings have limitations but can be extremely effective as a space in which to discuss creative writing, especially when accompanied by written feedback and exchange. I think of the long tradition of epistolary mentorships between writers, and between writers and editors. In many ways, writing is a well-suited discipline for long-distance work, and adding a face-to-face element, even if virtual, adds another layer of richness.
A Flexible Pedagogy
As a mentor, my role is to help a highly motivated and well-prepared student set up a framework in which they can work independently on a significant project and make discoveries. Providing structure while giving up control is somewhat like teaching a course where the student authors or co-authors the course objectives. In a mentorship of this kind, often the “course objectives” become more focused as the project continues. I now see creative project mentoring as occupying a space between an advanced college writing course and the life-long work of a professional poet. I strive to equip the student with the skills and framework to pursue in-depth creative projects independently in the future.
I know from my own experience with writing mentors such as George Barlow at Grinnell College, and Valerie Miner and Julie Schumacher at the University of Minnesota, that encouragement and praise can very much coexist with questioning, suggesting, and looking deeply into a work. Taking someone’s writing seriously helps them to grow, as does modeling a state of curiosity. This is not a project of dismantling or asserting dominance, but rather of working with a highly engaged student as a collaborator. What is the student curious about? How does this overlap with what I’m curious about? How can a recommendation for revision or further development truly be a suggestion that the student has the freedom to take or leave?
Logistics in Illogical Times
Each weekly meeting began with a general check-in, acknowledging our lives as human beings outside the scope of the project. The social unrest across the country, and in our own cities and states, was often part of the conversation, including how we were responding to and finding ourselves influenced by it. This check-in was followed by a discussion of the week’s reading, and then Liam’s poem drafts for the week and my feedback. Liam provided me with their draft work a couple of days ahead of time so I could prepare feedback, and we could discuss the draft together from an informed place.
At the beginning of the summer, the focus was on individual poems. As the summer progressed, our lens expanded to include, usually at the end of the session, a discussion of the overall manuscript and how it was shaping up. We considered how the poems might interact with each other and themes that were emerging, some expected and some unexpected.
Liam chose the reading list for this project, and it was exciting to read these new-to-me works and become familiar with the growing body of poetry by trans and gender-fluid writers, and to learn about the growing field of trans poetics. As a cisgender, queer person in her forties, I was grateful to have my world expanded in this way. My experience is an illustration of the personal and intellectual growth that is one of the rewards of mentoring.
Web of Connections
Liam completed this project during a time of social and political unrest, in the context of a world-wide pandemic. Both of us acknowledged the stress of these circumstances. Two important coping mechanisms were acknowledgment and integration: making space to discuss how we were impacted by these events, and also allowing them to become part of the summer’s writing.
There were few challenges in terms of the logistics and structure of the internship itself. Technology worked well, and the framework we set up, with some tweaks as the summer went on, also proved effective. Liam completed two versions of a polished, powerful final manuscript. It was deeply rewarding to watch Liam become part of an important literary conversation, sharing their own truth with and among creative peers and kindred spirits.
At our university’s Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium, held virtually in October, I had the opportunity to watch Liam give a powerful reading of several of their project poems. Audience members expressed a heartfelt connection to and admiration for their work. On a personal level, it was rewarding through this mentorship to expand my knowledge of trans poetics, and in turn my own sense of queer community and creative possibility.
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When Chloe Landis first examined the images of Pharaoh Ramesses III from the high gate of his mortuary temple, Medinet Habu, she knew there was an untold story in their depictions of women. Landis, an undergraduate student at the University of California, Los Angeles with a double major in Art History and Egyptology, had studied early scholarship on the site. These scholars viewed the women as mere footnotes to Ramesses III’s sensational murder by members of his “harem.” Landis’ work led her to recount a far more complex story, one that emphasized the lived experiences of these women in ancient Egyptian society and their relationship with the Pharaoh. Landis is also the winner of the Trimmer Travel award from CURAH and the 2019 UCLA Dean’s Prize for Outstanding Undergraduate Research. Her faculty advisor was Kathlyn (Kara) Cooney. CURAH caught up with Landis in the midst of the pandemic to ask about her research.
CURAH: What was the nature of your project?
CL: My research focuses on a monumental gate structure that stands at the entrance of Pharaoh Ramesses III’s mortuary temple called Medinet Habu. This gate, referred to as the Eastern High Gate, has a series of rooms with an unusual series of reliefs on the interior walls depicting Ramesses in attendance by royal women. These images depict Ramesses in in intimate poses with the women, poses which are not only extremely unusual for Egyptian art but are odd given the context of the entrance into the pharaoh’s temple. My project involved studying the High Gate through an art historical lens. I wanted to fill in gaps in our conception of how the High Gate functioned as a ritual space for the pharaoh. I also wanted to understand the relationship between the king and the royal women depicted in the images.
Chloe Landis, UCLA
CURAH: What were the easiest and hardest things about the work you did?
CL: I think accessing sources was probably both of the easiest and hardest parts of the project. It was incredibly challenging to understand the reliefs with only a partial picture of them, as I could not visit the High Gate in Egypt and relied solely on excavation photos and line drawings of the reliefs made by epigraphers. Black and white photos from the 1930s are not useful when you’re looking for visible paint remnants or trying to understand orientation and spatial analysis of the reliefs within the High Gate. These problems left some gaps in my analysis.
On the other hand, The Epigraphic Survey from the Oriental Institute of Chicago has excellent excavation photos and an entire volume of documentation of the High Gate in its entirety, including line drawings of the entire gate and translations of texts. The Oriental Institute has incredible online access to their excavation images and publications that were invaluable in my study of the High Gate. Their records also include multiple volumes of documentation of the entire Mediet Habu temple complex. Working through their records gave me crucial context to the High Gate’s purpose and let me compare images to reveal the artistic style under Ramesses III.
CURAH: What kinds of things did you learn? (about ancient Egypt, about scholarship, or about yourself)
CL: I learned that the Eastern High Gate was possibly the site of the murder of Ramesses III, an event which served as the catalyst for my project. Ramesses III was murdered in a plot by members of his so-called harem, their extended families, and officials. It was all documented in a collection called the Turin Judiciary Papyri. These accounts were confirmed by a scan of the king’s mummy that showed his throat had been slit. Because Ramesses’ death was so salacious and possibly occurred within the High Gate, often the reliefs are used almost as footnotes in articles about Ramesses’ murder, rather than discussed in their own right.
I also found much of the early scholarship frames the women as the villains of the story and out for their own ambitions, without reflecting on the complexities of the political atmosphere of the reign of Ramesses III and the involvement of the women’s extended families. When I discovered the biased way these women were discussed in scholarship, they became the passion of my project. I wanted to understand their role in society and how they functioned vis-a-vis the king.
This became the most prevalent when I realized how debated the term “harem” is in the field of Egyptology. Many scholars believe this term, does not capture the realities of the ancient Egyptian institution. A “harem” is a problematic orientalist image, which conjures an idea of women lounging around and only meant to serve the king sexually. But in ancient Egypt it housed royal women and was where royal children were raised. Early European egyptologists named the institution based on their understanding of the Ottoman harem and 19th-century harem paintings. The amount of colonial, orientalist and sexist baggage within egyptology is astounding, but it was essential to work through in beginning to untangle the perception of the women in the High Gate reliefs from their likely purpose.
CURAH: Did you make any discoveries along the way?
I made some very interesting discoveries along the way! I found that through the iconography of the reliefs there are allusions to the king’s sexual power and sexual ability. These allusions broaden our understanding of how the High Gate functioned, not only within the mortuary context, but also as a functional space. Few texts are preserved inside the High Gate, which necessitated greater art historical analysis and this brought me to my most intriguing finds. Ramesses and the women are seen holding and giving each other various fruits, mostly pomegranates, which often are a symbol of fertility. The most interesting plant that I was able to identify was the mandrake. This small yellow plant is believed to have aphrodisiac qualities and has been linked to sexual iconography by Egyptologists who found similar mandrake iconography on objects from the tomb of Tutankhamun. In one scene, Ramesses is not only holding a mandrake tightly to his lap, but appears mostly unclothed, an allusion to his body and sexuality.
The clothing or lack thereof was another discovery I made. The women especially appear to be completely nude, though scholars argue their clothing may have been painted over the nude representation. My analysis showed trace evidence of garments in only a few reliefs. The emphasis on the body is only heightened because the gestures made by the king are sexualized. Scenes show the king caressing the women. In one scene that has been purposely damaged, Ramesses’ hand is placed directly in front of the woman’s genital region.
These visuals of sexual activity and fertility demonstrate Ramesses’ ability to reproduce and regenerate life, a vital attribute for every king in ancient Egypt. But the display of images such as these suggests a social and political need for the king to have these images publicized in monumental stone. Rituals certainly occurred between women who held priestess roles and the king, long before Ramesses and the High Gate was built, but images like these have never been published on a monumental scale. I argue the public presentation of these images demonstrate that the king felt a need to visually display his sexual ability, perhaps to coincide with the rites which occurred within the High Gate or to ensure the act of reproduction would continue forever since it was preserved in the walls. The heightened tensions of Ramesses’ reign that ultimately led to his death may explain why the king would need to reveal his ability to procreate and the royal women’s role in these rituals.
CURAH: How has the project helped you in your career goals?
Though I’ve decided not to follow a path in traditional academia, I’m so grateful for this project in expanding my research skills and igniting my passion for future avenues of research. This project truly put my analytical skills and language knowledge to the test, while providing me with archival research experience that was truly invaluable. I would like to go into the museum education field. This is not directly applicable to egyptology, but I feel that so many of the hard skills I developed have already demonstrated how transferable they are.
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It isn’t often when undergraduates are granted the opportunity to connect family heritage and independent student research while bringing awareness to underrepresented fields. Sofia D’Amico, an art history major with a concentration in Asian art at Fordham University has been given this very opportunity in her project studying the work of artist Tiffany Chung. CURAH recently interviewed Sofia to learn more about her project.
CURAH: What was the nature of your project?
SD: My research focuses on the work of contemporary Vietnamese-American artist Tiffany Chung, especially her cartographic works which study global migration, displacement, conflict, and urban development, and their relation to history and cultural memory. Chung was born in Danang, Vietnam in 1969 and became part of the post-1975 Vietnamese Exodus of refugees to the United States, following the communist siege of South Vietnam. She currently lives and works inHouston, Texas. Her maps, rendered in attractive pastels and jewel-tones, invite viewers to question information often taken for granted, like historical memory, as tied to place, and the accuracy of conventional systems of knowledge.
I explored her work in three different spaces in 2018: a group exhibition at Asia Society Houston titled New Cartographies, which explored maps as an artistic medium, her solo-booth of work at Miami Art Basel, and her major solo-exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum: Vietnam, Past is Prologue. I considered what her works achieve in these shows, as well as her transnational artistic identity as a Vietnamese refugee, and how her life experiences have oriented her work towards an international, historical focus. I investigated such questions as, Does Chung’s work transcend nationality? What are some of the obstacles that artists from Southeast Asia encounter in establishing relevance to US audiences? And at the same time, how does Chung’s work depart from precedent and tradition? As a Vietnamese refugee is Chung expected to create work about the Vietnam War? How do Americans understand the Vietnamese, apart from the war and its cultural exports? Is it reductive to attach the label of Vietnamese-American artist to Chung when she works hard to be international in her perspective?
Sofia D’Amico, Fordham University
CURAH: What were the easiest and hardest things about the work you did?
SD: Of course, Southeast Asian art history is a developing discipline, and my research on Tiffany Chung necessitated that I conduct my own art historical study. But even in the 20th century, many Southeast Asian countries have undergone tremendous hardships. And the reverberations of European colonial legacy (stemming as far back as the 1500s) are still felt in the study of Southeast Asian art history: most writing on Vietnamese art history, for instance, has been done in French and from the perspective of European colonizers––which can of course be problematic.
Since the establishment of an independent Vietnamese state in 1945, little money has been disbursed for such cultural projects. Besides listing painters in official registries of artists, little effort has been made to maintain archives of artworks or art movements in Vietnam; certainly, as compared to western countries or even the monolith cultures of East Asia like China and Japan. But because Vietnamese art history records are rarified, there is a greater need to interview living artists than to consult written documents. I’m excited to explore this going forward.
In short, the hardest part of the research project is really its most interesting feature: that is, understanding the multiplicity of Southeast Asian art, learning about it largely independently, and communicating my findings in a way that is accurate, respectful, and sensitive to those it relates most to. Especially as an undergraduate, it’s intimidating to put research findings and original ideas out there in the global sphere. But it is also incredibly exciting to become informed in topics you were once simply curious about, which I think was the easiest part of the work. Having a connection to the work and being passionate about the topic made it easy and enjoyable to search for resources and interview specialists. I think the nature of Southeast Asian artists being understudied made it all the more encouraging to dive in.
Tiffany Chung, courtesy of the artist and Tyler Rollins Fine Art, New York
CURAH: What kinds of things did you learn?
SD: Because my research interest was prompted in part by my own heritage, I was able to use my family history as a springboard for learning about Southeast Asian art. My mother is a Vietnamese immigrant, and, incidentally, grew up in the same city and around the same time as Tiffany Chung. I didn’t learn much about Southeast Asia and Vietnam in school (apart from the war), so as I grew up, I would ask my mom about Vietnam. But her experience as a refugee made her understandably sensitive to some topics. I grew up, like most people, knowing little about Southeast Asia and thinking that artistically it had little to offer the world. Despite majoring in art history and concentrating in Asian art, I knew virtually nothing about the art of Vietnam.
With encouragement from my professor of art history and mentor, Dr. Asato Ikeda, as well as support from my school, Fordham University, I started doing independent research. And I couldn’t believe what I had missed out on! I interned at Tyler Rollins Fine Art in Chelsea, New York––the only art gallery in the country dedicated to contemporary Southeast Asian artists. Rollins and his gallery taught me how fascinating Southeast Asian culture and history really are, as the confluence of South Asian, Indian and Hindu influences, and East Asian Confucian, Daoist, and Chan Buddhist society. And, as such, Southeast Asian and diasporic artists create work that is wholly unique in perspective, context, and content. There is so much to both say and write on the subject.
CURAH: Did you make any discoveries along the way?
SD: I definitely made discoveries which encouraged me to keep going! As simple as it is, one thing I discovered as I went deeper into my project, was how much work and research still needs to be done in this field, and similar fields to it. There is so much interesting phenomena––some tragic, some triumphant––that evade contemporary consciousness.
I began my work by focusing on one contemporary Vietnamese-American artist, but ended up branching into Vietnamese art history, clearly under-researched. From there I learned about contemporary Vietnamese history, like the Japanese occupation of Vietnam and artists who were half-Vietnamese and half-Japanese, creating art about their families’ experiences: pieces of history I had no idea about. When I found out about this occupation, I was able to bring it forward to my mother, who opened up about our family’s interactions with Japanese soldiers. This research ultimately helped me, in my study of art, as well as personally, in understanding complicated and difficult parts of history.
From here, another important discovery for me was the possibility of doing research in a way that parallels the artists’ practices that I am interested in: by sharing microhistories, individual narratives, and family experiences, and exploring what a radical act that can be.
While researching Tiffany Chung, I witnessed a four-channel video installation titled The Specter of Ancestors Becoming (2019) by artist Tuan Andrew Nguyen, which chronicles the descendants of Senegalese French colonial soldiers once stationed in Vietnam tirailleurs Sénégalais — and features stories written by three members of a Vietnamese community in Senegal. One portion of the video observed the tense confrontation between a half-Vietnamese half-Senegalese boy with his Senegalese soldier father, who whisked him away from Saigon at a young age and never allowed him to know his Vietnamese mother. This piece allowed viewers like me to connect with a small community and especially with individual families’ experiences, as they were affected by war and colonialism. I thought it was radical and moving to have this focus on smaller units of research like individual communities, people, and events. I’d like to carry this awareness of microhistory forward with me throughout future research in my academic career.
Tiffany Chung, courtesy of the artist and Tyler Rollins Fine Art, New York
CURAH: How has the project helped you in your career goals?
SD: It is due to this project that I have found my art historical focus and ongoing research interest in making more familiar, to myself and others, the peripheralized stories of Southeast Asian artists within Asian art and the world’s art histories more broadly. It has helped me realize that I would like to be a part of a larger movement academically, whether that is Southeast Asian art historians, researchers of Asian diaspora, or scholars of socially-engaged contemporary art.
It’s also made more clear the need for further diversification of US art spaces. Visual culture and art act as some of the most powerful ways people understand each other transnationally. I would love to see the development of more robust Southeast Asian curatorial programming in museums and galleries in the future, and I hope to help contribute to it someday. And it’s encouraging to see institutions like Fordham actively supporting these art historical projects. The voices of emerging undergraduate researchers are wanted and our work is important on so many levels.
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Timothy (TJ) Scherer, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University ’22, is majoring in Computer Engineering at the University’s Daytona Beach campus. In November 2018, he became the student web designer for Dr. Debra Bourdeau’s Hogarth Online website and entered the world of digital humanities, something he never expected as a student at an aviation-focused university. Scherer modernized the site over the past year and has begun adding content this academic year.
Bourdeau is Chair of English, Humanities and Communication for ERAU’s Worldwide campus. She received an internal grant to revitalize the project, which had remained relatively unchanged since 2004. Because Dr. Bourdeau lives in the Atlanta area, project meetings occur by Skype; she and TJ have had to learn to work virtually.
CURAH recently caught up with TJ to ask how the project is going.
CURAH: Tell us about your project. What has been your role?
TJ: The Hogarth Online project was started with the goal of creating a more widely accessible resource for William Hogarth’s works. More often than not, commentary on Hogarth’s works is highly detailed and not welcoming to newcomers. This project is aimed at those who want to learn about William Hogarth but lack the expertise many existing resources assume. From home to classroom, I hope that this project will serve as a resource to students and professors alike. To accomplish this, I have compiled commentary and observations to help explain the individual elements of each artwork in a sophisticated yet simple manner. I want to provide the necessary background information to enrich people’s understanding of Hogarth.
My role in this project is to modernize the original website, improving the aesthetics and functionality using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. This mostly consists of reorganizing the large amount of content using more recent web development techniques, along with adding in new content as the project grows. My greatest focus in this project has been adding as much functionality as I can to make the website a valuable classroom resource, providing different ways to view both the artworks and the associated commentary so that it can easily adapt to lesson plans and the technology in the classroom. From personal experience, this tends to be a frustrating issue for many students, and I believe that I have been successful in mitigating it.
CURAH: What have been the greatest challenges in the work you are doing?
TJ: Going into this project, my experience with HTML and CSS was fairly limited, and beginning to build the infrastructure for a website requires a significant amount of knowledge to maintain an organized structure that can be expanded upon in the future. It took a lot of research and practice to fully understand the best ways to structure the code, but once the foundation was in place, I had lots of room for experimentation to find the best layout for the site.
Once I had determined a general layout, I had to address the problem of organizing and displaying a large amount of content . After some research and experimentation using HTML and CSS, I decided that it would not be enough. Further research suggested that JavaScript had the answer to my problem, but I had never used it before. Using guides and example snippets of code, I was able to gain enough understanding of JavaScript to create a solution.
Beyond these technical challenges, I encountered some small difficulty in transferring the content because I was new to Hogarth. I was very fortunate to have Dr. Bourdeau available whenever I needed. Every time we talked she taught me a little more about Hogarth and his historical background.
CURAH: What have you learned (about Hogarth, digital humanities or yourself)?
TJ: Over the duration of this project, I have learned several things.
Engraving on a metal plate is a very interesting process, and the result is quite stunning. It absolutely amazes me how much effort has to go into each plate. The planning and the amount of detail involved is quite inspirational.
There is a surprising lack of documentation of Hogarth’s works. It took a decent amount of time to locate high resolution images of each of Hogarth’s plates that are included in the project.
I far prefer tasks that require research and creative thinking to achieve a goal. I enjoyed solving the problems I encountered while modernizing the website much more than I enjoyed transferring all of its contents to the new website.
CURAH: What has surprised you about this project?
The most surprising part of this project is the sheer amount of effort needed to produce this website. There are so many resources out there with similar levels of detail and content that it becomes easy to take them for granted. I can’t count the number of times a website’s design has frustrated me as a user, but being on the other end of the interaction is very eye-opening. From obtaining grants to compiling information, there is so much that goes into preparing to take on such a project, and even more to actually execute it. I was surprised to realize that it takes all of this effort just to make a single website, and it has given me a greater appreciation for each website I visit.
CURAH: How do you think this project will help you in your career or future studies?
The technical skills that I have developed from this project are probably the most notable way in which this project has already benefited me and will continue to in the future. By improving my understanding of the languages required to take on this project, I am simultaneously improving my skills in other programming languages. Further, the effort I put in to develop these skills has shown very good results, and now I think I will be more willing to put the same level of effort into future endeavors. Beyond this, the experience in communication and collaboration with Dr. Bourdeau is something I anticipate being very useful in the future, and that I am very thankful for.
Hogarth Online, before its revitalizationThe revitalized Hogarth OnlineThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
Sometimes undergraduates have an advantage over more senior scholars: pursuing two majors can make them more radically interdisciplinary and more open to unconventional combinations. Olivia Brock, Utah State University ’21, is a double major in mathematics/statistics and art history, interests that combined in her recent project on the astrolabe, that most beautiful tool of late medieval mathematical and astronomical thought. Olivia recently spoke with CURAH about her work.
CURAH: Tell us about your project.
Olivia: My project is designed to answer a question: how can interdisciplinary conversations between humanities and STEM fields be facilitated through the examination of material/visual culture? In particular, I am answering this question by studying the astrolabe, a medieval scientific instrument that puts into question the historical categorization of objects. As an object that is scientific, artistic, religious (and I’ll even add pseudo-scientific), the astrolabe presents a slew of interpretive challenges. I am examining the ways historians of visual and material culture have categorized these objects, and how their categories can limit our ability to fully understand astrolabes as the unique, specific, and complex objects that they are.
In addition, I hope to create an interdisciplinary dialogue that allows artists, scientists, scholars, and others to interact with intellectual ideas that may not be familiar. Ideally, through the dissemination of these ideas in writing and presentation, I can help the widest disciplinary audience connect with a single object and learn about new fields or ideas.
Olivia Brock, Utah State University
This particular goal is really important to me. As both a math/stats and art history student, I get a lot of questions about why I decided to do both majors, and comments regarding how disparate these fields are. Though these fields are quite different, and a traditional undergraduate education in either makes the bifurcation even more prominent, I have found that there are a lot of ways that these fields complement each other. It just takes a conscious effort to find these connections. This is why I’m so excited about this project: it allows me to pursue the connections I’ve found in a ways that go beyond traditional art history or math classes.
CURAH: What are the easiest and hardest things about the work you’re doing?
Olivia: There are a few bumps that I’ve run into over the course of this project that have really stood out to me. First, methodology. I work as a writing tutor in the Science Writing Center here at USU, and a big part of my job is helping students with their “Methods” sections. These are strict, orderly, pre-determined methodologies that make predicting the course of scientific research much more feasible. For me, as a scientifically-minded person, the more subjective methodological approach to my art historical research has been difficult to adapt to. I can’t create a step-by-step guide to my research as one might for a lab experiment.
The next bump I ran into was while working to develop an overall thesis for my project. How do I come up with an original and interesting claim, while at the same time ensuring that I can ground my ideas with established literature and evidence? The balance between originality and credibility has been difficult for me to maintain. Fortunately, in Dr. Alexa Sand I have a great and experienced mentor who has really helped me achieve this balance.
I’m not sure there’s been anything I’d specify as being “easy” for me. I’ve had a lot of ups and downs. But I love the work and subject matter, and that makes it easier for me to stay excited and motivated about this project.
CURAH: What kinds of things have you learned? (about astrolabes, about scholarship, or about yourself)
Olivia: I learned
that even the most basic object can have a plethora of intangible functions and relationships that become apparent when you look at the object in a different light.
that the astrolabe is just a single example of the arts and sciences working in tandem: there are so many interesting multidisciplinary interactions that can be found over the course of history. They just require someone to look for them.
that scholarship is hard, but it’s worth it. The knowledge that I can take an idea and pursue it as far as it can be pursued is incredibly rewarding.
that I may love sharing my ideas a little more than I love pursuing them. I’ve really enjoyed this process, but my favorite parts, so far, have been the times when I’ve gotten to interact with my research community and share my ideas and knowledge with other curious students.
CURAH: Have you made any discoveries along the way?
Olivia: I didn’t make anything that I would call a “discovery.” However, I never had the expectation of major discovery. My goal for the project is to pursue an idea that is personally important to me and important to the academic community at Utah State. I’m not trying to answer any major questions or problems but rather working to create discussion among my peers.
Because of this goal, however, I have helped some other students make small discoveries. Many students “discovered” the astrolabe for the very first time upon our conversations. Others may have discovered that there are a number of connections between the humanities and STEM that they may not have been aware of before. And others may have even discovered that there is a place in the research realm for even the most bizarre or disparate of interests. I also made personal discoveries about myself and my interests that will undoubtably change the course of my academic and professional career.
CURAH: How do you imagine the project will help you in your career goals?
Olivia: I must admit that my career goals are a bit unclear right now. However, through this project, I have become much more open to pursuing academic scholarship, at least through graduate school, and maybe into a career. This project also taught me that I love talking and writing about science in a non-scientific way, which has sparked ideas about potential careers in scientific communication or scientific journalism.
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These days, study of the archives often begins with digital images, but an in-person visit to an actual manuscript remains a powerfully transformative scholarly experience, especially for undergraduates. Sheridon Ward, Ohio State University ’21, was lucky enough to spend time working through a massive and dense wardmote inquest book at the London Metropolitan Archives (the LMA). Sheridon has a double major in Medieval & Renaissance Studies along with Evolution, Ecology and Organismal Biology. CURAH caught up to her after her visit to the LMA.
CURAH: Tell us about your project.
Sheridon: During the autumn semester of 2018, I took a class that explored popular culture in 16th and 17th century London with Professor Chris Highley. As the final project, we were assigned to write an article for the Map of Early Modern London (MoEML), a map based on the Agas map that was drawn around 1561 and reprinted in 1633. Professor Highley introduced me to wardmote inquest books as a possible theme-based entry for MoEML, specifically the St. Dunstan in the West inquest register. Though it started as more of a term paper than anything else, I have continued working on the project since then, and I finally got to visit the book itself when I was in Europe over the summer.
Sheridon Ward, Ohio State University, ‘21
Originally, I worked using photos that Professor Highley had taken during his visit at the LMA, and I started to decipher the pages in the massive volume that spans from 1558 to 1823. I only studied pages within the early modern period in the first volume. These pages detail the sessions of the wardmote inquest for the Faringdon Without Ward. It names the inquest members, lists prominent businessmen (the licensed and unlicensed victuallers–sellers of alcohol– for example), and then “presents” people who have committed offenses to the Lord Mayor of London for redress. These offenses can range from petty complaints against poultry dealers for their baskets protruding too far into the road to accusations of adultery.
Overall, my archive project summarizes and explores the wealth of knowledge of everyday life that can be found in the pages of the wardmote inquest book. It reveals their priorities and values, how government on the smallest level worked, and how they systematically and scrupulously organized these sessions. Additionally, it addresses questions of social mobility and social standing by studying how aldermen were affected by their participation and what infractions were and weren’t punished.
CURAH: What are the easiest and hardest things about the work you’re doing?
Sheridon: The greatest obstacle that I faced during this project was unquestionably deciphering the secretary hand in the documents and coping with the fact that English spelling wasn’t yet standardized. I frequently had to use the OED Online to verify the spelling of the word that I thought I was seeing in order to link it to the modern spelling of the word.
Another obstacle was the monotony of the court proceedings. While snippets of information were fascinating to read, most of the items dealt with defective pavements or improper weights and measures. When each sentence is a struggle to decipher, it makes skimming for the more unique items much more difficult.
The easiest part of my research was finding the resources that I needed. Prof. Highley would send me frequent emails with articles related to wardmotes, and the LMA created a welcoming environment for looking at these documents. I was originally intimidated by handling a document so old, and I was terrified that they wouldn’t even let me into the archives to look at the document, but I was surprised at how painless the process was even though I’m just an undergraduate.
CURAH: What kinds of things have you learned, about the early modern period, about scholarship, or about yourself?
Sheridon: Through this project, I’ve learned a lot about early modern social structures and how they parallel our current structures and preoccupations. When I was exploring the part of London that I was studying, I came across a sign that listed the current aldermen of the Faringdon Without Ward. While some of these aldermen are now alderwomen, it was surprising to learn that these government structures still exist so similarly 400 years later.
I also learned that no matter how much passion and inspiration you have for a project in scholarship, you still need determination and discipline. Otherwise, you miss those small snippets of unique stories and information that actually breathe life into the document. And although technology has evolved to give scholars greater access to important materials, nothing compares to handling the material artifact itself. It provides a wealth of information in its own right, even before you read the words on the page.
CURAH: Have you made any discoveries along the way?
Sheridon: While I haven’t found any groundbreaking information, one thing that struck me was just how intrusive some of these documents seem. The extent to which the rest of the community is involved and watchful of everyone else seems like an invasion of privacy to my modern sensibility, but it was entirely normal then. They kept track of who came to church regularly and reported people who failed to attend church as “recusants.” However, even though this is the type of issue that would be presented to the Lord Mayor, the frequency with which some people were reported seems to suggest that it wasn’t effectively handled or simply wasn’t a priority.
Henry Lusher, for example, appears almost every year as a recusant from 1621 to 1651. However, in 1622, he was named as a petty juryman, and the fact that his recusancy continues for likely more than 30 years is puzzling and raises questions as to how important regular church attendance really was in the early modern period.
CURAH: How do you imagine this archive project will help you in your career goals?
Sheridon: Learning how to read secretary hand early on in my career is a very valuable skill to have, and I have gained experience in reading court documents that are more informal and less bogged down with technical terminology as kind of an introduction to other handwritten legal documents.
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The Arts and Humanities Division of the Council on Undergraduate Research
