Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Shakespeare's Madwomen: How Elizabethan Theatre Challenged The Perception Of Mental Afflictions, Hannah Dhue, Dani Snyder, Faculty Advisor

John Wesley Powell Student Research Conference

I would like to write about the perception of madness in Elizabethan England. William Shakespeare’s Hamlet will serve as my primary text and I will carefully examine Ophelia. However, it is my intent to use other works from the same era, perhaps even more examples from Shakespeare, to support my points.

Currently my research questions are as follows:

How did the theatrical representations of mad characters – particularly young women – in Elizabethan England reflect the perception of mental diseases and disorders at the time? To what extent were those representations serving as political comments? Were they typically in women …

Martin Luther: Vater Einer Allgemeinen Sprache? Martin Luther: Father Of A Common Language?, Annika Ewaldz, Adam Woodis, Faculty Advisor

John Wesley Powell Student Research Conference

Martin Luther is well known for his 95 Theses, in which he rejects the Catholic practice of selling indulgences; but it was his groundbreaking translation of the Bible into German that instigated the standardization of the German language. After his excommunication, Luther was in hiding in the Wartburg Castle, where he translated his Bible into a vernacular and cohesive form of the German language. Many different dialects were spoken throughout Germany at the time making communication between regions difficult. Luther’s translation soon became the most influential Bible in Germany and was disseminated quickly due to the recently invented printing …

Movin' On Up: Sodomy In Service In The White Devil, Kevin Brown, Joanne Diaz, Faculty Advisor

John Wesley Powell Student Research Conference

Renaissance England was marked by change. From the late 15^th century through the early 17^th century, the social atmosphere in England was thrown out of order. The rise of the middle class gave people money who weren’t supposed to have money. This deteriorated the established hierarchies of the time, blurring the lines between classes. Critics of John Webster’s The White Devil (1612) have yet to address these issues in conjunction with the homoerotic tones throughout the play. Webster is using sodomy as a trope to illuminate how mobility in service is a destructive, chaotic force. By exploring these …

A Comparrision Between Formal Medical Spanish Terminology And The Terminology Used By Low-Income Hispanics, Kathryn Rothas, Christina Isabelli, Faculty Advisor

John Wesley Powell Student Research Conference

It has been observed by Illinois Wesleyan students enrolled in the Medical Spanish course that when translating for patients in a clinical setting one of the two situations can occur: 1) the Spanish-speaking patient will use terminology unrecognizable by the student when describing their conditions or symptoms; or 2) the student translator will use terminology taught in their Medical Spanish course to describe conditions, symptoms and treatment instructions, but the terminology is unrecognizable by the Spanish-speaking patients. This miscommunication between the translator and the patient can lead to lack of treatment adherence or improper diagnosis due to a misinterpretation of …

Can Musicians Tell Sharp From Flat?, Cathryn Volk, Joseph Plazak, Faculty Advisor

John Wesley Powell Student Research Conference

A musician’s awareness of intonation (i.e. “being in tune”) is an important skill. While musicians are highly sensitive to “out of tune” notes, research suggests that this sensitivity is categorical rather than absolute (Siegel & Siegel, 1977). If intonation is heard “categorically,” musicians’ classification of intonation errors (both magnitude and direction), would be expected to be poor. This experiment was designed to determine whether or not musicians could categorically perceive mistuned musical intervals, as well as to investigate the relative limits of absolute intonation perception. Ten undergraduate music students were tested on their ability to identify intonation errors within an …