Digital Commons Network^™

Becoming Ourselves: Black Women’S Autobiographical Interrogation Of Tropes Of Identity, Christina L. Duncan

Senior Projects Spring 2019

A central premise of this project is that Black female identity has historically been seen as a fixed identity. Much of the imposed rigidity on Black female identity has been informed by conservative strategies for survival. Such conservative strategies include respectability politics, as racial leaders have found utility in upholding the principle that if they or others work hard, they can uphold the race. Only by maintaining these standards of respectability have Black women been deemed as worthy and able to uphold and reinforce positive images of Blackness. Many of the stories written by Black women generally fall into the …

Sanguine Salvation: Pilgrimage And Penance At The Sanctuary Of Chimayo, Isabella J. Spann

Senior Projects Spring 2019

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Arts of Bard College

It Seemed A Lucky Thing: The Self As Art In The Work Of Sylvia Plath, Evin J. Guinan

Senior Projects Spring 2019

“It Seemed a Lucky Thing” centers a discussion of author and self around the works of Sylvia Plath, primarily using her novel The Bell Jar and two of her Ariel works, “Lady Lazarus” and “Daddy”. Blending together various ideas of self-construction, ranging from Kierkegaard’s aesthetics to Foucault’s “What is an Author?” to issues of psychiatry as a method of social control, the work defines its principle term “self-authorship” as the purposeful construction of self-image inherent in both decisions within a lived life and in the process of creating written art.

Self-authorship and its complications are addressed both in context of …

Remnants, Savannah Lou Williams

Senior Projects Spring 2019

Understanding where you come from is never a linear experience. I began this project with the urge to dispel the cinematic portrayal of a romanticized and glorified ‘wild west’ and instead, I spent the last eleven months deciphering the stories and myths I was exposed to throughout my life by my family; perpetuated by the film industry. Growing up, I was told tales of the Bixby Ranch, a thousand-acre ranch in the middle of the Sonoran Desert that my grandfather worked, just as his father had done before. I went to rodeos and watched old westerns, fueling the mental picture …

Bound To Rise, Morgan P. H. Bielawski

Senior Projects Spring 2019

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Languages and Literature of Bard College.

Bound to Rise is a collection of short stories about people who discover themselves in the “fine drizzly rain” (or smirr, in Scottish lingo) of everyday life. They orient themselves and find some way forward, or they realize they have to. Thematically, it addresses a carnival (the carnivalesque), a demolition derby, multiple fires, photography, drinking, music, an eating disorder, and a birthday cake. It includes one original children’s story written in Russian and translated into English by the author.

Picturing A History, Bella Feinstein

Senior Projects Spring 2019

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Multidisciplinary Studies of Bard College.

Cowboy Boogaloo, Paris Loren Adorno

Senior Projects Spring 2019

Cowboy Boogaloo; A Play About Cowboys, Queers, and The American West.

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Arts of Bard College.

Cowboy Boogaloo, Imogen Thomas

Senior Projects Spring 2019

Cowboy Boogaloo; A play about Cowboys, Queers, and The American West.

Mud Bog: Reconsidering Rural America, Michael Vincent Bodnar

Senior Projects Spring 2019

Mud Bog is an examination of the social and economic realities that present-day Americans living in rural communities endure, and how circumstances beyond their control have prodded them toward narcissistic displays – which can often be troubling expressions of darkness and intolerance.

I hasten to add that my artistic goal is not to wag a finger of disapproval at those depicted, or to punch down at them. I strive to treat this material with sensitivity and empathy. My intent is to shed a light on the conditions that have contributed to the current rancorous state of political and cultural division …

From The Church Of Disco To Waterfront Ruins: An Analysis Of Gay Space, Liam Nolan

Senior Projects Spring 2019

My senior thesis is an analysis of gay space from the late 1970s to 1980s New York, and I’m questioning how themes of private vs. public, accessibility, race, and economic status dictated where one searched for gay self-expression and community in the built environment. In order to understand how queer spaces functioned architecturally and socially, I’ve chosen to research two opposites: The Saint and the west side piers. The former was a private club in New York City from 1980-1988 and was considered to be the “Vatican of Disco” with a planetarium that could hold over a thousand men, two …

“The Educated Indian:” Native Perspectives On Knowledge And Resistance In The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Madison Michelle Kahn

Senior Projects Spring 2019

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

A Return To The Region: 
Reconstructing The Past In Jewett, Cather, And Hurston
 (1896-1935), Anna L. Russian

Senior Projects Spring 2019

My senior project focuses on three works of American literature, starting from 1896 and ending in 1935. During this time period, the United States was undergoing drastic cultural and industrial changes, both of which indefinitely reshaped the American landscape. My project seeks to understand these changes through Sarah Orne Jewett’s The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896), Willa Cather’s My Ántonia (1918), and Zora Neale Hurston’s Mules and Men (1935). All three works look beyond the city, and instead look inward toward small regional communities in Maine, Nebraska, and Florida. With the regional focus placed on the narratives, my project …