Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Philosophy By The Pint, Kyle Robert Quinn

Senior Projects Spring 2018

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

The Propagation And Proliferation Of The Greek Ideal: From Antiquity To Winckelmann, Halina Cecily Piasecki

Senior Projects Spring 2018

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

Donald Trump And The Spectacle Of The Modern American Presidency, Medora Mcdougall Jones

Senior Projects Spring 2018

On January 20, 2017, Donald Trump was inaugurated as the 45th president of the United States. A former reality TV star with no prior political experience, his ascendance to most powerful position in American government shocked the country. News outlets and political analysts portrayed him as an unprecedented outlier, describing his demagogic appeals and grand gestures as anomalies detached from the typical features of presidential leadership. Yet, Donald Trump is not a glitch in the American political system, but rather a unique manifestation of the qualities inherent to the spectacular status of the modern presidency. His rise to the Oval …

The Unveiling Of Us, Alexis Parra

Senior Projects Spring 2018

The Unveiling of Us is an affirmation by, of and for wom^n of color. In this collaboration, we - subject and photographer - seek to reclaim the performance, production and beauty of individual identities that are informed by collective pasts. Everyday acts of performance are emphasized in these images through objects and gestures that reference the day to day practices of black and brown wom^n based on our histories, our cultures and our senses of self. This is our space to claim: the viewer looks, but the subjects hold the gaze as they declare power through a notion of beauty. …

The Estate, Henry Hardcastle Smythe

Senior Projects Spring 2018

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

Practicing Engagement, Isabella Powers Yannoni

Senior Projects Spring 2018

For this project I lead two rehearsal processes with peers, and a movement class for middle schoolers, all of which centered around engagement. I have investigated how my own and others’ engagement can contribute to a rich experience for participants and observers, using collaborative games and storytelling as a means of working with these ideas. I believe in the power of questioning together, as opposed to determining alone. Throughout these processes, we, the participants, have learned from each other and have had to re-negotiate our roles and responsibilities to the work as well as to each other.

Dancing with people …

Pretty Young Host, Maria Isabelle Filippa Olsson Skalin

Senior Projects Spring 2018

“Pretty Young Host” is largely inspired by my upbringing in a society that impresses a sense of normalcy, bordering on necessity for women to have children in order to live happily. This societal pressure has led to my fascination with the Western world’s consumption and production of women as “fertile bodies”, including pro-natalist advertising and media that specifically targets women. I was both interested in and horrified by television commercials of life-like baby dolls for young girls, teaching them from a young age to learn how to raise and care for a child, as well as some advertising in recent …

Losing Shahrazad: A Distant Reading Of 1001 Nights, Taysa Mohler

Senior Projects Spring 2018

This project is a distant reading analysis of seven 19th and 20th-century English translations of One Thousand and One Nights or The Arabian Nights. Through the use of computer programming and distant reading, it becomes clear that the Nights' frame tale is the carrier of the internal logic and generative power of the story cycle. Further, the frame tale expresses the Nights' self-representation, which serves to undermine the historical use of the Nights as synecdoche for the Orient. Therefore, the translators that remove the frame story from their versions further the Nights' use as an Orientalist object, …

What's The Problem With Noumenal Affection?, Leonardo Mugi Santoso

Senior Projects Spring 2018

According to transcendental idealism, our experience of the empirical world is the result of our minds being causally affected by supersensible things in themselves; however, transcendental idealism also holds that things in themselves are unknowable by us. The seeming incompatibility of these two claims is known as legendary 'problem of noumenal affection.' This problem has led many scholars to conclude that Kant's theory is inconsistent. In this project I offer a new diagnosis of the problem by reexamining the supposedly incompatible components: The doctrines of noumenal affection and noumenal ignorance. I argue that there are philosophical and textual worries surrounding …

East Meets West: A Comparative Study On The Origin Of Landscape Depiction, Conghao Tian

Senior Projects Spring 2018

This project examines the origin and evolution of landscape depictions from both Eastern and Western traditions, covering from Han Dynasty (206 BC-220 AD) to Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127) in China, and from Roman antiquity to early Renaissance in Europe. Landscape depiction from each time period is examined. With the help of detailed visual analysis and overviews of religious ideology, the study reaches the conclusion that in both traditions, landscape depiction reaches its maturity both in terms of pictorial techniques and the ability to convey spirituality by the early Renaissance (11th century in China and 15th century in Italy). The project …

Turned On: An Exploration Of Intimacy In The Age Of Technology., Franchesca Breanna Chorengel

Senior Projects Spring 2018

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

Victorious Athena: The Cult And The Temple Of Athena Nike, Brynlie-Sage Johnston

Senior Projects Spring 2018

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

As You Were Sleeping, Nora Yamazaki Heineman

Senior Projects Spring 2018

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

A Womb With A View, Briauna Marie Falk

Senior Projects Spring 2018

I found my mother’s pregnancy diary when I was 12. The diary presents not only the story of my origin, but also the story of how my biological father left my mother. The diary gave me insight into what unfolded while I was growing inside her, and yet, many questions still remain unanswered. I have heard that trauma experienced by the mother is felt in utero alongside her – I worry one of the first feelings I felt was true sadness. Ideally the diary could answer my unresolved questions, but instead I am left to my imagination. The diary cannot …

Newsroom Action During The Lebanon War: A Look At American And Israeli Media Coverage, Ciara Collins

Senior Projects Spring 2018

Since 1948, the birth of the Jewish state has been broadcasted by news media outlets all over the globe. Most audiences and viewers are driven by an ideological bias, one that influences the daily consumption of media, impeccably catered to the viewer and their political, social, and moral understandings. This paper explores biases embedded within Israeli and Western news industries through literature, news stations, and language. I will unpack these biases in media representation with concern to the hierarchical structures that exist behind the unquestioned voices or “factual” sources. Israel has been viewed and criticized as a modern Nation-State by …

A Great Negative Work Of Destruction: 20th Century Avant Garde And The Reimagination Of Novelty, Alexander V. Hall

Senior Projects Spring 2018

This project traces the thread of novelty through three avant garde movements. It discusses their posterity through time, and addresses the various shapes which novelty takes throughout the 20th century.

Speaking The Unspeakable: Armenian Women’S Fiction Generations After Genocide, Elena Lucine Lefevre

Senior Projects Spring 2018

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

Blackish: Afrolatinidad And Dominican Identity In Nyc, Salim Elias Chagui-Sanchez

Senior Projects Spring 2018

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

Black And Grey: An Audio-Visual Tribute To The Undefined, Jewel Evans

Senior Projects Spring 2018

The Process:

My project was originally called Seven Stages of “Griffe.” The term “griffe” was a racial category describing people who are three quarters black and one quarter white, which is my actual genetic makeup. My original plan was to analyze the history of the term and reference it in seven songs representing the seven stages of grief, and create a long music video to open up dialogue about the racial definitions we ascribe ourselves to. The project changed when I reached an impasse in my historical research, given that the term was obsolete by the 18th century and had …

Reporting Identity: Social And Political Implications Of Adding A Mena Category To The U.S. Census, Mehgan Rose Abdel-Moneim

Senior Projects Spring 2018

The Census Bureau has been testing a new category called MENA for the 2020 census that would better describe the Middle Eastern and North African population in the United States, but in January of 2018, the agency announced that the category requires further research. In this work, I connect the development of a MENA identity category to historical events, sociological theory, current politics and public concerns related to the following questions: What are the social and political implications of including a MENA category on the U.S. census? What does the movement to add a MENA identifier to the census tell …

Contested Identity And Making Sense Of Atrocity: Understanding The Rohingya Crisis In Myanmar, Christopher Andrew Long

Senior Projects Spring 2018

Myanmar’s recent transition towards democracy has caused western leaders to become increasingly optimistic about the future of human rights within the country. However, since emerging on the international stage in 2012, the Rohingya crisis has drastically upset such expectations, leaving the international community in complete shock over the issue. Attempting to shed light on this human rights tragedy, international media coverage has produced an overly simplified depiction of the Rohingya crisis. In addition, very little academic literature exists seeking to explain the root causes of the issue. By utilizing interviews conducted at the University of Mandalay this paper attempts to …

The Objectivity Of Subjectivity: The Dialectics Of Marx, Lenin, And Brecht, Timothy Wells

Senior Projects Spring 2018

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

Using Static Analysis And Dalvik Bytecode On Android Compass Applications To Detect Operational Anomalies, Arti J. Tripathi

Senior Projects Spring 2018

The focus of this paper is the functionality of Android applications and the detection of functional anomalies though a basic static analysis approach. The intention of this research is analyzing applications without running them and detecting how application behavior might correlate with method call patterns. We will focus on simple free compass applications because their ostensible simplicity will make high variation in methods calls an interesting phenomenon. We employ clustering algorithms and other statistical methods to isolate a particularly unusual collection of applications and then perform a qualitative analysis of these applications to discover any interesting common operational behavior or …

William Wells Brown; Or The Spook Who Sat By The Cabin Door From Black Ex-Slave Narratives To White Abolitionist Fiction: Understanding The First African American Novel And Its Origins, Elijah Coleman Jackson

Senior Projects Spring 2018

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

Word As Bond: Rhetoric And Performativity In Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, Stephen Appel

Senior Projects Spring 2018

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

A Technical Analysis And Exploration Of Guitar Pickups And Electronics, Hunter Manel

Senior Projects Spring 2018

The development of the electric guitar during the 20th century was revolutionary for musicians and sound engineers alike. The advances in amplifying sound by way of pickups and amplifiers contributed to massive cultural movement in music, including Jazz and Rock 'n Roll. While the pickup is acknowledged as an integral component of the electric guitar, few players understand the electronics and mechanics underlying their instrument. This project aims to accomplish two goals with a focus on pickups: first, describe the physics behind the electric guitar's amplification process, and secondly, use this understanding to build a pickup for use in an …

Love, Kissed Into Verse: Swinburne, Tennyson, And The Failure Of Love In Consummation Versus The Triumph Of Love Through Time In Poetry, Julia E. Berry

Senior Projects Spring 2018

At its core, this project seeks to examine the veracity of identifying love and sex as inextricable concepts within romantic relationships. Locating this exploration in the study of Victorian poetry, various poems from A.C. Swinburne’s “Poems and Ballads” and Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s elegy “In Memoriam A.H.H.” provide portraits of love with and without consummation. The first chapter focuses its gaze upon Swinburne’s poems, where consummation in romantic relationships erodes love and causes love’s inability to survive through time. The second chapter analyzes “In Memoriam A.H.H.” and its portrayal of loving, even after the death of the beloved. Ultimately, after considering …

An Old German Song Cycle And Some New American Music, Jonathan Allen Mildner

Senior Projects Spring 2018

“An Old German Song Cyle and Some New American Music” is, at its core, a straightforward art song recital. As to its form, the only thing that could be considered even remotely revolutionary was my decision to perform the small collection of unrelated pieces in the second half, following the large, segmented work—an order that, in most traditional concert settings, is reversed.

The project was comprised of preparing and performing Robert Schumann’s (1810-1856) Liederkreis, Op. 39, and four modern American songs I have collected over the years. The Liederkreis is a song cycle consisting of twelve unrelated vignettes, each …

“Something That Just Hovers”: Charting Feldman’S Neither, Madison E. Owings

Senior Projects Spring 2018

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

The Outer Space Film As A Mythology For Human Destiny, Alexander Samir Habiby

Senior Projects Spring 2018

The modern outer space film uniquely explores the future and destiny of humanity as shown in 2001: A Space Odyssey, Contact, and Interstellar through their themes and invocation of the sublime. It functions as a modern mythology for human destiny.