Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Verlust & Pérdida: On Loss Of Love And Innocence; Entre Mis Brazos: On Belonging - A Set Of Voice Recitals Featuring German, Mexican, Spanish, And American Composers, Sonny Phillip David Capaccio

Senior Projects Spring 2020

This pair of recitals was programmed with the intent to evoke emotions that we have all experienced, whether it be the intense sorrow of solitude or the unbridled joy of companionship. Also, in compliance with the guidelines set by the concentration in Latin American and Iberian Studies, half of the music from these recitals was composed by Spanish and Mexican composers dating from the late 19th century to modern day. Each concert was meant to illustrate some kind of narrative around their respective themes.

The first concert, “Verlust & Pérdida: On loss of love and innocence,” consists of two basic …

“As Natural As Earth Turning” : An Analysis Of The Relationship Between Self And Other In Improvised Music, Maeve M. Schallert

Senior Projects Spring 2020

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

My Moonshadow And I, Sarah J. Sieber

Senior Projects Spring 2020

February 10

Waiting on hold with eBay customer service because I won a bid for a butterfly shirt. My winning bid was $0.32. I didn’t realize I’d won because I wasn’t very invested and apparently a month passed and an unpaid item case was opened against me. When I go on the website to try to pay I get an error message. This is why I’m on hold with eBay customer service. I’m now being helped by a person named Justin.

The item description is “Eyeshadow Long Sleeve Blue Butterfly V Neck Shirt.”

The call ended abruptly. A disconnection. Now …

Time Is A Construct(Ion): Heritage And Becoming In Quito's Historic District, Samuel Abate

Senior Projects Spring 2020

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

Paradigm Of The Unknown, Vasia A. Pemberton

Senior Projects Spring 2020

This project is about portraying the essence of certain unexplained or controversial areas of belief that affect the lives of each and every one of us whether or not we are aware of it. My focus is to explore these confusions over the paranormal, the existential, and the supernatural, by overlaying, compiling, and comparing these different narratives as well as connecting them to a sense of greater mystery, or a fundamental knowledge that we are somehow not privy to.

Graft And Slime In New York City: Exploring The Impact Of Organized Crime On The Nullification Of The Eighteenth Amendment, Tristan T. Kozul

Senior Projects Spring 2020

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

The Ethos Of The Blues: An Ethnography Of Blues Singers And Writers, Zoë Emilie Peterschild Ford

Senior Projects Spring 2020

Dawn Tyler Watson, a blues singer based in Montreal, QC, performs a variety of genres. No matter what she performs, however, she continually expresses a blues ethos. Through improvisation and her resolute individuality Dawn writes and sings narratives always with a nod to the blues. What I call the “ethos of the blues” refers to a blues spirit that exists not only in music, but in literature, and in everyday life. Dawn’s practice reveals that blues is a music that values protective, generous, and exploratory narrative. As important as its storytelling quality is the genre’s Americanness. Blues, derived from a …

Disintegration And Other Stories, Brian Araque Pérez

Senior Projects Spring 2020

"Disintegration and Other Stories" is a collection of fictional short stories accompanied by two translations written originally by two iconic Latin American writers. The stories although fictional, are both deeply personal and distant from my own life.

“Tell Me I Did Well” And Other Things Left Unsaid, Shirley X H Cheng

Senior Projects Spring 2020

A collection of short stories built around a disease that turns you into a stone flower. The stories explore sadness, loneliness and helplessness and the ultimate effects that can have on people.

Eurydice, Gus Aronson

Senior Projects Spring 2020

Does the attention we pay to the world around us when we photograph destroy the inherent truth of it, as it was when Orpheus looked back at Eurydice? Is our attempt to understand the world by preserving it through a photograph only a fleeting attempt for survival in the face of eschatological thought? Or does pho- tography -- the act of looking itself --- render the opaque into a living clarified truth through poetic action?

As Roland Barthes notes in Camera Lucida, “the Greeks entered into death back- ward: what they had before them was their past.” What Orpheus had …

Shalamov's Testament: Pushkinian Precepts In Kolyma Tales, Andres I. Meraz

Senior Projects Spring 2020

In a letter from 1972, the author of Kolyma Tales and survivor of the gulag Varlam Shalamov, declared “In my prose, I consider myself the inheritor of the Pushkinian tradition <…>.” Indeed, in Kolyma Tales, Shalamov exhibited a studied understanding of Pushkin’s artistic technique. Through his implementation of Pushkinian artistic principles, Shalamov was seeking to restore the poet’s image to what it had been prior to the Soviet Union’s politicized interpretation while simultaneously revealing the truth about life in the labor camps to a readership that could not otherwise fathom what the inmates endured on day-to-day basis. In writing …

Small Packages, Caitlin E. Harris

Senior Projects Spring 2020

I chose to honor a lifelong impulse to make small objects. As my mother describes: “you've always been self sufficient and could get lost making things in your creative world. You were very independent and perfectly content spending hours entertaining yourself.” “Small Packages” is a collection of work created and installed entirely from my home. I spent a year making drawings and sculptures of a certain scale in order to accumulate enough tiny pieces that, when put together, would produce something impactful. I worked in a variety of mediums, including drawing, painting, screenprinting, casting, carving, weaving, felting, and sculpting, and …

Death Of A Hero: A Translation Of Sophocles' Ajax, Gabriel Martin Doyle

Senior Projects Spring 2020

This project consists of a translation of the first half of Sophocles' tragic play Ajax from Ancient Greek into English. Additionally, the project includes a brief introduction and Bibliography

Embodied Desire: Establishing The Transmasculine Viewer, Bel Simek

Senior Projects Spring 2020

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

Voice Of Silence: Women Inmates' Perspective On Sexual Violence In The Soviet Gulag, 1936-1956, Louisa Jane Fulkerson

Senior Projects Spring 2020

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

Hut Annandale: Humblest Dwelling, Ruiqi Zhu

Senior Projects Spring 2020

Lots of us have a dream deep down in the heart: to get away from the congested cities and live in a hut in nature. French port Jean Wahl once wrote: The frothing of the hedges I keep deep inside me. In my project, he explored this dream and constructed a group of architectural structures by hand for those potential hermits. Studying at Bard College, I have found this region is a place with a great hermit culture. With the picturesque scene of nature and the location near the New York Metropolitan area, here the mid-Hudson Valley has attracted lots …

Tendertopia, April Fionn Perin Wogenburg

Senior Projects Spring 2020

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

Fruit Of The Spirit: An Investigation Of How French Colonialism Trans-Nationally Created The Creolized Black Dance In New Orleans, Called Secondline, Through The Lens Of An Original Treme Babydoll., Micah Theodore

Senior Projects Spring 2020

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

Despite The Blues: Richard Wright And Ralph Ellison’S Blues Based Works, Miranda Virginia Reale

Senior Projects Spring 2020

Ain't got no mother, ain't got no culture

Ain't got no friends, ain't got no schoolin'

Ain't got no love, ain't got no name

Ain't got no ticket, ain't got no token

Ain't got no god

–Nina Simone, “Ain’t Got No-I Got Life,” from the album Nuff Said (1968).

In between human intention and reality lies a disproportionate space that Albert Camus labels “the absurd.” Modern man’s affliction is thus absurd, as orthodox systems turn obsolete, the traditional virtues of the past cease to be familiar. The epistemology of the absurd may not have developed from American soil; but I …

Last Call: I'M Never Drinking Again And Other Lies I'Ve Told Myself, Oona G. Oglesby

Senior Projects Spring 2020

This is a work of creative nonfiction documenting a girls journey with sobriety.

“No Place” In Cyberspace, Scarlett Sinay

Senior Projects Spring 2020

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

Ellipsis, Tristan Julle Geary

Senior Projects Spring 2020

Ellipsis. An orchestral composition written for The Orchestra Now at Bard College.

Feathers To Flesh, Lucille H. Reback

Senior Projects Spring 2020

I drive down the dirt road to my mother’s house. The potholes have gotten deeper and more aggressive in welcoming me home. The house looks more or less the same, except the front door has been painted red. I leave my camera in the car, I don’t want to give away my reasons for being here.

Twitching legs while we slept, legs that didn’t take up space. Snores and mumbles. Maroon uniforms; crests and collars not quite white.

I stand in the front doorway, hesitant to pass the threshold. They amble about the kitchen, nonchalant and confident in faded swim …

Painting A Modern India: F.N. Souza, M.F. Husain, & Artistic Identity After Independence, Shay Afsheen Kothari

Senior Projects Spring 2020

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

Heaven Is A Hot Tub, Charlotte Catherine Foreman

Senior Projects Spring 2020

A lot of people don’t know that most of what America considers “Florida”– the tri-county area of Miami-Dade, Broward, & Palm Beach – was underwater before it was developed. The unadulterated marshland of the Everglades flooded everything south of Orlando. On some days, so many wading birds crowded the air above that you couldn’t even see the sky. Fast forward about a century, & half of the marsh has been drained with the help of dredges, levees & canals. 90% of the wading birds are gone, but the snowbirds from the northeast, biding out retirement on the beach, have replaced …

Lovelution, Timothy Lindhurst Trumpet Jr

Senior Projects Spring 2020

“Lovelution” contains 6 songs detailing the growth that a man experiences by learning to accept the Love of a woman via the medium of modern Hip-Hop and Trap genre-based music with Jazz influences. In “Blue Heart” the man connects with a woman who understands the loneliness that he feels from and they begin a relationship. In “Spaceship” we see the first wave of doubt wash over the man due to the issues in his newfound relationship. “Lay With You” displays when the two reunite and resolve their issues. “Too Much” shows us the man’s unfortunate mental spiral due to his …

Feta, Blintzes, And Burritos: The Evolution Of The Diner And Immigrants' Role In Defining American Food Culture, Alexis Kimberly Maresca

Senior Projects Spring 2020

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

A Cultural Clash Of Emotions And Music: Connecting My Passion Of Music To The Buddha Passion, Weilan Li

Senior Projects Spring 2020

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

Afterlife Of A Renaissance Sculpture: Reception History Of Michelangelo's Pietà, Yanhan He

Senior Projects Spring 2020

This project explores three significant moments in the history of reception of Michelangelo's Pietà, demonstrating changes of the Pietà's meaning according to that of its location, the era, and groups of spectators. The project first introduce reception of the Pietà around the time of its creation, focusing on the polemic opinions of Renaissance artists who have seen the sculpture in person. It then analyzes reception of the sculpture during the age of Grand Tour, when the audience group of British aristocrats shows notably limited interest in the sculpture. Finally, it talks about reception of the Pietà during the …

The Photogram Now And Then: An Investigation Of Contemporary Photogram Practice, Susan Melissa Andreas

Senior Projects Spring 2020

My senior thesis is an investigation of contemporary photograms. My thesis is not meant to be a comprehensive study of photograms but rather a look into how specific uses and treatments of it have evolved since its inception in the nineteenth century. A photogram is a photograph made without a camera. The paper begins with a look into nineteenth-century photogram practice to provide general information and context about photograms. The first chapter outlines when the photogram process was invented, who it invented it, how it was used, what its traditional steps were, and what the images looked like. A description …