Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Globalization And Poverty: Exploring Development Discourse Within Urban Dynamics - The Case Of Colombo And Mumbai, Zohra Helali

Senior Projects Spring 2024

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

The Black Women Who Were Not In American History Books: The Women Of The Black Wall Street Massacre Of 1921, Antoinay Ruby Gwendoyln Collins

Senior Projects Spring 2024

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

Never Left The Dreaming: A Study Of Decolonization And Enchantment, Javin R. Lee-Lobel

Senior Projects Spring 2024

There is a belief in contemporary left politics that we must re-enchant the world because it has been disenchanted by coloniality: the meanings and sacredness which uphold community and sustain harmony with the earth have been drained through the ‘Western’ project of colonization, modernization, and capitalism. The problem with this belief is that we cannot re-enchant what we understand to be inherently disenchanted.

Via the ontological turn in anthropology, an understanding of the world emerges that is not disenchanted, but inherently imbued with meanings. Enchantment is not applied upon or removed from nonhuman bodies by human minds but is woven …

Fiat Money As An Empty Signifier: An Investigation On The Resemblance Between Money In Mmt And Structuralism, Xiangchong Meng

Senior Projects Spring 2024

This article investigates on the resemblance between structuralism and credit money with money creation in modern monetary theory (MMT) and post-Keynesian theories. Keynes, whom MMT takes up for its theoretical foundation, considers fiat money to be firstly a debt, a promise exchangeable for the same financial value, because it does not have any intrinsic value, but is generated only from the credit of government. The ranking of credibility of money leads to the taxonomy of money in the form of a money pyramid: the money issued by the government (fiat currency) with the most credibility, then money lent by banks, …

Thinking Of Western Influence: Elite Chinese Women’S Response From 1880s To 1920s, Pin-Shan Lai

Senior Projects Spring 2024

Through this project, I aim to look at elite Chinese women’s work in response to Western influences. During the 1800s to 1900s, Western ideology and social customs began to spread into China. With the return of Western-educated Chinese scholars, the tension between local communities’ values and the West, a foreign value diverse from the local community, increases. By examining Chang Yu-i’s memoir, Bound Feet and Western Dress, and the work of He Yin Zhen, an anarchist feminist at the time, I will look into how the elite group in China responded to the Western influence around them. Ultimately, the paper …

Beyond Translation: A Critical Comparison Between English Renditions Of The Holy Qur’An, Mohamad Eisa

Senior Projects Spring 2024

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

Sedimentary, Claire E. Sullivan

Senior Projects Spring 2024

S E D I M E N T A R Y is a mixed-media exploration of the layers and connections between the synthetic and natural world -- Where do the natural and built environments begin and end? In what ways might natural elements and man-made materials mimic or defy one another? What aesthetic, economic, or sustainable possibilities can be unearthed when nature's laws and patterns are applied to our calculated, built environment? Most importantly, how responsible must we hold ourselves and one other for our particular interactions with and impact on our environment? S E D I M E N …

3rd Nature, Heather Diane Phelps-Lipton

Senior Projects Spring 2024

My work is rooted in critical thought and centered by photographic imagery. Created as a mechanism of societal metamorphosis via the language of the familiar (capitalism, media and public policy), it is always an experiment. The realized form varies, but my working hypothesis is consistent: with intentional practice, human energies and activities can be (re)directed into an existence of non-destructive curiosity, wonder, and gratitude.

Be it a video poster, street fashion concept or a design for a future-forward food system, my work is best activated beyond the walls of the gallery or museum. I’m interested in creating works in collaboration …

Boys Town, Grant Steven Venable

Senior Projects Spring 2024

How much of our identity comes from within or is constructed by the media and entertainment mediums we consume growing up?

For my senior project, I set out to write and direct a multimedia performance piece following the relationship between two West-coast friends–George and Antonio–as they navigate their friendship and identity at the dawn of the new millennium. By incorporating multimedia, I sought to explore how media in the 90s and early 2000s could construct queer identity and affect George and Antonio’s navigation of the world as emerging queer men. Through lighting, sound design, and CRT TV installations, I aimed …

Slit Sensilla, Clementine V. Williams

Senior Projects Spring 2024

In these paintings I echo the collage-like elements of both cyberspace and the ‘mental plane,’ Menz Insana inspired. I reference an actively accumulating archive of iPhone pictures that range from self portraits and construction sites to pelicans. Often, it is unclear to me why an image feels important until it becomes resolved in the process of painting. These digitally mediated pictures are in conversation with figures from my imagination. I like to think of Slit Sensilla as both an apparatus for uncovering images through feeling, as well as a destination: an unknown place my work flocks to or orbits around, …

Process In The 1977-1994 Earth Art Of Nancy Holt, Meg Webster, And Mia Westerlund Roosen, Catherine Clare Curry

Senior Projects Spring 2024

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

Twentieth Century Reforms In Traditional Chinese Music, Jinou Dong

Senior Projects Spring 2024

This historical research project explores the transformation of Chinese national music in the twentieth century and the reforms in traditional Chinese music, including its education and performance from 1911 to the present under different political and social backgrounds. It focuses on the impact of different ideologies of music reform, the fusion of Western music with Chinese national music in terms of compositional techniques, musical forms, and Western music theories, as well as the path of Chinese music reform. This inquiry takes as its primary example the Pipa, a traditional four string plucking instrument that has been played for thousands years …

Hungry For Mcmindfulness? The Effect Of Linguistic Framing On Perceptions Of Vipassana (Insight Meditation), Sarah J. Eckert

Senior Projects Spring 2024

Linguistic framing shapes the way we conceptualize social matters, moral and causal reasoning, and influences the way we perceive the world by constraining how we gather evidence about people, events and situations. There is a robust history behind the dichotomization of religion and the secular, which manifests in present day linguistic framing of meditation practices as “secular,” despite their ties to Buddhism or other religious traditions. This secularization has been criticized for its dilution or total erasure of Buddhist ideals, and conversely, as a form of “stealth Buddhism,” a tactic for recruitment of otherwise uninterested parties. The present study aims …

Born-Again Governance: Evangelists And The Republican Party, Jacob Andrew K. Epter

Senior Projects Spring 2024

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

The Joy And Taboo Of Menstruation (Body Image And Self-Objectification), Lola Justine Mainieri

Senior Projects Spring 2024

This study strove to understand the correlation between menstrual attitudes, body image, and self objectification. Participants were menstruators that were garnered from the Bard College population. They proceed through a Google Form that was compiled from the the Menstrual Joy Questionnaire (MJQ), the Menstrual Distress Questionnaire (MDQ), the Self-Objectification Questionnaire (SOQ) and finally the Body Appreciation Scale (BAS) (Delaney et al., 1988, Vannuccini et al., 2021, Dahl, 2014, Tylka & Wood-Barcalow, 2015). Participants accrued a score from each questionnaire that was then used to run the four separate correlations. A significant positive correlation was found between the Menstrual Joy and …

Baba, Sanovia Ngozi Muhammad

Senior Projects Spring 2024

BABA is a documentary that explores the life and legacy of my grandfather, Baba Ahmed T’Chaka Zulu Obafemi, through the perspectives of my grandmother, my aunt, and my father. With the aid of archived materials such as audio recorded speeches, videos, and images, BABA inspects the political journey of Ahmed particularly throughout the 1970s, 80s, and 90s. As a founding member of the New Afrikan People's Organization and The Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, Ahmed became a notable organizer and speaker in the Black revolutionary communities of New York, Alabama, Georgia, and beyond. Although his primary focus was in the liberation …

Towards Illegibility: A Series Of Reflections On Living Beyond Language, Ariella Brodie-Weisberg

Senior Projects Spring 2024

After she died, the ecstatic and the mundane collided and exposed each other. The dead live in the place of stories. Those who survive gather the scattered remains of a life, cohere them into forms so they may be remembered. But in making this story, we so often sacrifice raw, visceral experience –

But every once in a while, caught off guard, the ecstatic comes. Something animal like a moan or wail overrides sense and sensation overrides story and there you are as you were in life: singular and without reference, indescribable and so utterly here.

My mother wasn’t buried …

Navigating Queer Historical Temporalities Of Drag Culture In Rupaul’S Drag Race, Kevin Alejandro Carchi

Senior Projects Spring 2024

Queer people in the United States continue to be essentialized in history as the liberal passage forward into a democratic and proud American society. When we look at queer people, what is it that we notice right off the bat? Well, thanks to RuPaul’s Drag Race, one thing we can expect is the ability to entertain and build a sense of community. Since the show’s release in 2009, the show has finished its sixteenth lap and has been expanding its queer platform across the globe. This circulation of drag culture has become a source of capital where digital networks such …

Education In Changing Times: How To Identify And Rehabilitate Issues In Education Post-Crisis, Gaius Forsyth

Senior Projects Spring 2024

Modern US education post-pandemic is facing issues with students far behind pre-pandemic. This paper investigates this issue through two lenses: Psychology and Classical Studies. Within the Psychology lens deficits in academic achievement, socioemotional development, and accessibility emerge as key issues. Educational Psychology presents potential solutions with a learning theory named Constructivism emerging as the theory with the best possible implementation and supporting evidence for solving the specific issues post-pandemic. Within the Classical lens one thinker from Late Antiquity, St. Augustine, lived within a time with similarities to the current problem and wrote on teaching. Past literature did not adequately cover …

The Reconstruction Era: As Taught In United States History, Tahj Frazier

History - Master of Arts in Teaching

I. Synthesis Essay………………………………..8

II. Primary Documents and Headnotes………..39

III. Textbook Critique……………………………..50

IV. New Textbook Entry………………………….57

V. Bibliography………………………………….....77

Revolution, Conflict, Revolt, Uprising, Among Other Adjectives: Resistance Movements In Colonial Sudan, Edibeth Mencía Roy

History - Master of Arts in Teaching

I. Synthesis Essay………………………………3

II. Primary Documents and Headnotes……….21

III. Textbook Critique……………………………30

IV. New Textbook Entry………………………...33

V. Bibliography…………………………………..36

Maya Lavender's Senior Project In Theater And Performance (Part 3): Reflections From Playtime, Maya E. Lavender

Senior Projects Spring 2023

This project is an exploration of metatheatre in an attempt to understand and portray the feelings surrounding coming of age. Part one was A Play, performed in LUMA theater in fall of 2022. Part two was More Play, performed in the Old Gym in spring of 2023. This is part three, a reflection on my time playing.

Women’S Sexuality And The State: A Beginning Look At Virginity’S Relationship To The Law, Ariana Strieb

Senior Projects Spring 2023

This is a beginning look at the relationship the state has with women's sexuality in the United States, specifically looking at how virginity animate the way rape trials are prosecuted.

The End Of Everything: The Physical And Figurative Impacts Of Landscape On American Ideology, Wyatt Alger

Senior Projects Spring 2023

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

Plurality, Precarity, Nos/Otras: Searching For A New Guarantee Of Dignity In The Contemporary World, Antonia Salathe

Senior Projects Spring 2023

One cannot comprehend the topography of our contemporary globe without seeing the chain-link lines that fractalize sand, sea, and soil. Contemporary global politics is marked by a refugee crisis of colossal proportion. At its core, the contemporary refugee crisis is perpetuated by the fact that there is no framework to apprehend the personhood of the refugee, let alone an organized and attentive global process for directing the flow of vulnerable persons toward safety.

I argue that in order to ease the burdens placed on vulnerable people we must return to philosophy and look at the refugee crisis for what it …

"We Have Nothing To Lose But Our Chains": Paving The Way To A New Horizon For Marginalized Youth, Soledad Aguilar-Colón

Senior Projects Spring 2023

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

Rendering The Cyberfag: An Examination On The Spatial Sociology Of Grindr, Matthew Paul Gershovich

Senior Projects Spring 2023

Rendering the Cyberfag: An Examination on the Spatial Sociology of Grindr attempts to dissect, theorize, and expose the current dismality of gay existence and space in direct correlation with the inception of the digital realm. The investigation begins by establishing a lexicon of socio-spatial attributes that aim to establish the reader within a basis of the spatial vulnerabilities attached with queer identities. A contextualizing chronology of aspects of queer history is presented; beginning with the act of cruising, and its subsequent demise during the AIDS epidemic. In parallel, the thesis follows the creation of the internet, which birthed gay anonymous …

Coup De Grâce, Violet Rea Mass

Senior Projects Spring 2023

This project, composed of an introduction and a fiction piece, explores the complex power dynamics at play on the university stage put into perspective of the Human Rights study. The fiction follows young Olive as arrives for her first term at a university in a secluded valley where she must come to terms with a darkness greater than she had ever imagined.

Plexus Being, Hannah S. French

Senior Projects Spring 2023

The Plexus; a site where divided nerves–blood and vessels come together–an interwoven combination of parts in a system. I would like to offer a critical intervention into international politics by employing visual language in a space constructed and bound by semantic language. playing with the fluidity with boundaries, inscribed as natural revealing they are there.

Collage reveals the relationships between one another, disrupting the linear mode of conduction and transmission. To collage, I am avoiding exclusionary mechanisms, working with gaps, holes, layering and lapsing of meaning. I am queering by obscuring rather than clarifying. Not only am I queering the …

The Creation Of The Home: A Sociological And Literary Analysis Of Dominicanidad In Public Spaces Of Washington Heights And Within Dominican Literature, Mádoris Isabel Santana Figuereo

Senior Projects Spring 2023

“The Creation of the Home” is a study that puts in conversation theories within sociology of immigration, culture, nationality, urban studies, gentrification, and literature. These realms of study allow us to capture the trajectories of meaning making by Dominican Immigrants in New York City who lived in the homeland for the majority of their childhood. It shows that even when the physical home is endangered by larger structural forces such as economic precarity, gentrification, and displacement, Dominican immigrants continue to center their identity and cultural markers through symbolic recreations of the home. Dominican literature of the Diaspora shows us that …