Category Archives: Profiles of Undergraduate Researchers

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Physics, Philosophy, and the Nature of Time

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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featured, Profiles of Undergraduate Researchers, Resources for faculty

Undergraduates Reveal Key Feature of Homeric Scholia Using Advanced Computational Tools

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
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.

Image produced by natural language processing

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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featured, Profiles of Undergraduate Researchers

Reassessing Murder at the High Gate: Ramesses III’s Royal Women Emerge from the Shadow of Anti-Feminist Scholarship

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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News, Profiles of Undergraduate Researchers

CURAH Congratulates Trimmer Award Recipients 2020

CURAH congratulates three undergraduates who have received the 2020 Trimmer Travel Award: Martha Grace Whiteman, Chloe Landis, and Samantha Fain.

Martha Grace Whiteman, Winthrop University

Martha Grace Whiteman

Martha is a senior Art History Major at Winthrop University. While attending Winthrop, she worked as an Undergraduate Gallery Assistant at the Winthrop Galleries. This position sparked her interest in museum studies, prompting her to pursue several internships in her time at Winthrop. Most notably, Martha Grace has interned twice with the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum of Contemporary Art in Washington, DC. During the Summer of 2018, she also worked as an arts counselor for the Smithsonian’s All Access Digital Arts Camp, an educational program specifically designed for teens with cognitive disabilities to experience the world of art in a way applicable to their needs. These experiences have prompted Martha Grace to pursue a graduate degree in Museum Education after her graduation in May.

Chloe Landis, UCLA

Chloe Landis

Chloe is a senior transfer student at the University of California, Los Angeles with a double major in Art History and Egyptology. A Departmental Scholar in the department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, she is simultaneously pursuing a master’s degree in Egyptology, with an emphasis on Egyptian art. Her area of study focuses on depictions of pharaoh Ramesses III and his royal women. Landis highlights the lived experiences of these women within the asymmetrical ancient Egyptian society. Her research won the 2019 UCLA Dean’s Prize for Outstanding Undergraduate Research. Outside of the classroom, Chloe works as a Student Educator at the Hammer Museum, merging her passions for art and education.

Samantha Fain, Franklin College

Samantha Fain

Samantha is a creative writing major at Franklin College. Sam’s poetry has been published in publications such as the Indianapolis Review and SWWIM. “The poet’s role in the world is to help build empathy and build a new perspective for other people to understand,” she says. Samantha’s mentor at Franklin is Callista Buchen, assistant professor of English.

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featured, News, Profiles of Undergraduate Researchers

Mapping Underrepresented Microhistories in Southeast Asian Art

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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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Profiles of Undergraduate Researchers, Resources for faculty

Samuel Beckett, Optimist?: A Summer Research Experience

Summer undergraduate research in the humanities can be a great opportunity for students who might be interested in graduate work. Many colleges have programs that pair students with faculty mentors; these experiences often begin work toward a major, capstone experience.
 
Carthage College, in Kenosha, WI, has such a program, the Summer Undergraduate Research Experience, or SURE. Each summer, between 25 and 50 students from across campus spend ten weeks on campus in collaboration with a faculty member on a new or developing line of inquiry. This summer, rising senior Caleb Hays (English/Public Relations) worked with English Professor Maria Carrig on Samuel Beckett, the Irish writer; CURAH recently got to hear a bit about it.

CURAH: Tell us about your project.

CH: My project centers on the renowned Irish writer Samuel Beckett. Mostly known for his theatre works such as Waiting for Godot, Beckett is also responsible for some wonderfully strange prose works. I had to produce a critical essay that would add something new to the conversation surrounding Beckett studies, a task much more difficult than it sounds. Beckett is an insanely popular author, and in searching through the hundreds of books and essays on his work one gets the feeling that everything to be written about him has already been written.
 
Yet, in my searching I started to get the feeling that the studies revolving around the author were largely about his theatre work, and painted Beckett as a pessimistic writer. I felt the latter was inherently false. The little I’d read of Beckett did have a certain weightiness to its content, but it was also extremely funny. I set out to uncover the underlying optimism in Beckett’s work by focusing on his trilogy of prose works, specifically his novel Malone Dies.
 
I worked for ten weeks with Professor Carrig as my supervisor, reading and discussing everything Beckett. Understanding this project would transfer over to my senior thesis, I concentrated on consuming as much material as possible. I read many of his plays and prose works, including many critical theorists and essayists pertinent to the subject. My paper took on a post-structuralist ideology in nature, focusing on the meta-fictional techniques used in Malone Dies and the multiple strata of narration concealed within the text. Ultimately, I came to view Malone Dies as being about the desire to reach a beginning, rather than an ending. 

Caleb Hays, Carthage College ’20, English/Public Relations

CURAH: What drew you to Samuel Beckett?         

CH: I discovered Samuel Beckett’s work through a creative writing professor of mine, who mentioned to me in passing that I may enjoy some of his work. I was searching for a subject to complete my thesis on, so I read the first Beckett novel I could get my hands on: Watt. The novel was so unlike anything I had ever read, and I was hooked from the very start. I began to read more of his work, eventually coming to Malone Dies, finding myself so immersed in the work’s strangeness that I knew I had no other choice but to write about it. I have always loved modern, experimental writing that tests the limits of what fiction is capable of, so it was a perfect match.

CURAH: What were the easiest and hardest things about the work you were doing? Any surprises?

CH: The easiest part of my project was the reading. I read a lot of material through the course of the ten weeks, and I loved every minute. I was fortunate enough to receive a stipend for the work, so I spent my days doing nothing but reading and trying to make sense of some dense texts—which was a dream come true for any English major. The hardest part, while still enjoyable, was the actual creation of the paper. I had pages and pages of notes, but attempting to condense them and form a linear argument became quite difficult with the amount of material.
 
As far as surprises go, I suppose the biggest was how fulfilling the work was—I’ve never taken part in a project of this scope, so naturally I was nervous in the beginning. As the ten weeks progressed I realized how gratifying academic research of this level can be in its capacity to introduce new avenues of thinking.

CURAH: How has your understanding of Beckett grown?

CH: I’d like to say that my understanding of Beckett has grown a great deal, but I’m not sure that such a thing is possible. I have a greater respect for the depth of his work and the techniques he uses in his writing—but as a whole his writing is just as strange and otherworldly as when I first read it. In part, this is the beautiful thing about Beckett; reading his work is an experience, one that seems to change with time.

CURAH: How has the work informed your plans about the rest of college and beyond?

CH: The work I did this summer with Professor Carrig has made me seriously consider a career in academia. As of now my future is still uncertain, but the search for the appropriate graduate program is on the horizon. The project has given me a great deal, including the realization that being a student of literature is something I’ll continue doing for the rest of my life, regardless of career path.

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featured, Profiles of Undergraduate Researchers, Resources for faculty

Undergraduate Computer Engineer Delves into the Digital Humanities

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.

Timothy Scherer, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, ’22 Computer Engineering

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 revitalization
The revitalized Hogarth Online
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featured, Profiles of Undergraduate Researchers, Resources for faculty

Humanities and STEM Come Together in Scholarship on the Astrolabe

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
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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News, Profiles of Undergraduate Researchers

Travel Award Winner Presents on Cold War Poster Art at World Congress in Germany

This year’s Trimmer Travel Award winner is Olivia Reyes, a Global Art and Visual Culture Major at the University of Central Oklahoma. Reyes presented at the 2nd World Congress on Undergraduate Research at the University of Oldenburg. She analyzed Cuban, Polish, and American posters advertising the two American films, George C. Scott’s Rage (1972), and Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather (1972). CURAH caught up with Reyes and asked her how it went. Here is what she told us.

CURAH Chair Maria Iacullo-Bird congratulates Olivia Reyes.
CURAH Chair Maria Iacullo-Bird congratulates Olivia Reyes.

Olivia Reyes reflects on her experiences

It is difficult to fully describe the value of my 2nd World Congress on Undergraduate Research experience. Nowhere else have I had the opportunity to work and collaborate with colleagues and scholars from across the globe. In addition to attending excellent keynote speakers like Dr. Lujendra Ojha, Dr. Anne Dippel, and Dr. Sonia Fizek, I also attended presentations by my undergraduate colleagues. There was such a strong emphasis on global relationships and the need for international cooperation, something that I felt we were all actively a part of in those moments.

My own presentation, a poster exploring the cross-culture development of visual languages during the Cold War through Polish, Cuban, and American film posters, was integral part of my experience. This project was the result of close to four years of work, and to be able to explore it with my international colleagues and scholars from a variety of disciplines was invaluable. I believe my research was well received, and I acquired many incites on the possibilities of traveling abroad once again to continue my research, as well as various ways to expand the research itself even further.

Cuban poster for George C. Scott’s Rage (1972)

Another truly valuable part of my experience was the chance to network with other researchers and scholars. I particularly enjoyed the “communications” thematic session. Each of us came from a wide variety of disciplines but found ways to incorporate our own knowledge and ideas into one project. Going off the idea of a colleague from South Africa, we developed a series of research questions and ideas for the development of a baby monitoring device for deaf parents, one that would be as affordable as possible for people worldwide. I am proud of what we accomplished during that short time, and I hope I have the chance to work with these colleagues in the future!

It is often said that we live in an increasingly global community, and indeed, in order to tackle global issues it is more important than ever to connect with colleagues from a variety of disciplines and from around the world. I believe the 2nd World Congress on Undergraduate Research was the first of opportunity of many for my colleagues and myself to be a part of that global dialogue. I am truly honored to have attended such an event, and I am grateful to have received the Trimmer Travel Award.

For more information about the Trimmer Travel Award and all of CURAH’s awards, please visit our award page in our Resource section.

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News, Profiles of Undergraduate Researchers

Undergraduate Award Winners Present at NCUR

Every year CURAH awards travel grants to deserving undergraduates. This year we congratulate our two award winners, Tori Dehlin (Utah State University, majoring in Global Communication and Spanish) and Madeline Hass (U of Wisconsin Oshkosh, majoring in philosophy). Tori and Madeline presented their original research at this year’s National Conference on Undergraduate Research at Kennesaw State University.

Tori Dehlin

Paper title: “#MeToo/#YoTambien: A Comparative Analysis of Sexual Harassment Discourse on Twitter.”

Dehlin examines public discourse around sexual harassment and abuse in the twittersphere. She looked at tweets in English and Spanish to construct her comparative analysis and emphasized the value and impact of #MeToo/#YoTambien on different communities of participants and users of the hashtag. As Dehlin explained, this paper is the beginning of an ongoing study that will explore the impacts of social media in creating narratives of shared experience, as well as examine how discourses such as #MeToo/#YoTambien change over time.

Madeline Hass

Paper title: “How Art Helps Us Understand: A Neo-Cognitivist Theory of the Value of Art”

Hass builds on work done by Gordon Graham. She constructs a philosophical argument about how art is able to transcend standard statements of value, advocating for a level of understanding that takes us beyond human experience and sensory perception. The audience embraced Hass’s argument with enthusiastic engagement. Speaking about her experience, Hass said, “NCUR has had an incredible impact on my undergraduate experience. It has given me the opportunity to present my work to other young academics and to improve my skills as a speaker. Most significantly, it has helped me to see that academia can be accessible, and that there is a place for people like me in academia.” Hass hopes to attend graduate school to continue her studies in the field of philosophy. 

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