2015, Volume 8

V O L U M E 8 2015 D E PAUL UNIVERSITY Creating Knowledge THE LAS JOURNAL OF UNDERGRADUATE SCHOLARSHIP CREATING KNOWLEDGE The LAS Journal of Undergraduate Scholarship 2015 EDITOR Warren C. Schultz ART JURORS Adam Schreiber, Coordinator Laura Kina Steve Harp COPY EDITORS Stephanie Klein Rachel Pomeroy Anastasia Sasewich TABLE OF CONTENTS 6 Foreword, by Interim Dean Lucy Rinehart, PhD STUDENT RESEARCH 8 S. Clelia Sweeney Probing the Public Wound: The Serial Killer Character in True- Crime Media (American Studies Program) 18 Claire Potter Key Progressions: An Examination of Current Student Perspectives of Music School (Department of Anthropology) 32 Jeff Gwizdalski Effect of the Affordable Care Act on Insurance Coverage for Young Adults (Department of Economics) 40 Sam Okrasinski “The Difference of Woman’s Destiny”: Female Friendships as the Element of Change in Jane Austen’s Emma (Department of English) 48 Anna Fechtor Les Musulmans LGBTQ en Europe Occidentale : une communauté non reconnue (French Program, Department of Modern Languages) 58 Marc Zaparaniuk Brazil: A Stadium All Its Own (Department of Geography) 68 Erin Clancy Authority in Stone: Forging the New Jerusalem in Ethiopia (Department of the History of Art and Architecture) 76 Kristin Masterson Emmett J. Scott’s “Official History” of the African-American Experience in World War One: Negotiating Race on the National and International Stage (Department of History) 84 Lizbeth Sanchez Heroes and Victims: The Strategic Mobilization of Mothers during the 1980s Contra War (Department of International Studies) 92 Adam Syvertsen “I said softly to myself. paralysis”: Paralysis and the Church in Joyce’s Dubliners (Irish Studies Program) 98 Claire Speck La condizione femminile in due capolavori del Rinascimento: La mandragola di Machiavelli e Il merito delle donne di Moderata Fonte (Italian Program, Department of Modern Languages) 104 Paulina Nava Aztlán and Chicagoacán: A Look at the Challenges in Chicana/o Art Within Chicago’s Pilsen Neighborhood (Department of Latin American and Latino Studies) 114 Charlie McKeown Mass Incarceration and ABC Chicago (Peace, Justice and Conflict Resolution Program) 118 Jordan Weber Something to be Done: Political Agency, Materialism, and Aesthetic Theory in Samuel Beckett (Department of Philosophy) 128 Chelsey Sanford I am Malala (Department of Religious Studies) 132 Chanel Cox Police Force, Race Relations and the Media (Department of Sociology) 142 Wiktor Ez´lakowski El impacto del bilingüismo en el éxito escolar en estudiantes universitarios (Spanish Program, Department of Modern Languages) 150 Deanna Boland Political Intersectionality: The Foundation of Coalitional Movement Building (Department of Women’s and Gender Studies) 156 Anthony Melville From Empty Room to Art Exhibit: The Rhetorical Genre of the Exhibit Label (Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and Discourse) FOREWORD Dear reader, I am delighted to introduce this eighth volume of Creating Knowledge: The LAS Journal of Undergraduate Scholarship. This volume features 19 essays and 14 art works, representing advanced coursework produced in twenty different departments and programs during the 2014-2015 academic year. Several of the essays have been honored with department awards and several draw on research supported by undergraduate research grants. Many were originally written in senior capstone seminars, research-intensive seminars, and independent studies, and many were presented in some form at one of the numerous conferences and showcases sponsored by departments and programs throughout the year. All have been selected by department-based faculty committees as the best of the year’s student research writing and all have been revised for submission under the supervision of faculty. (The first footnote to each essay provides information about the class in which it was written and the processes of selection and revision.) Together they represent the rich variety of research questions, methods and materials used in the arts, humanities, social sciences and interdisciplinary studies. The readers of this volume are also many and various. They include the faculty who taught the classes in which this work was produced and encouraged their students to submit it for publication, the faculty who reviewed and selected the work and those who assisted with the editing, the proud parents, siblings, and classmates, and, of course, the featured students themselves. The volume’s readers also include alumni and supporters of the college and, perhaps most important of all, future student scholars—prospective students and recently admitted students who are curious about what advanced work in this or that field looks like: What does a sociology, Latino and Latin American studies, or philosophy major do? What are the key research questions and ways of thinking or writing or knowing in history of art and architecture or Italian or women’s and gender studies? For these students, this volume provides a vivid and inspiring illustration of what they have to look forward to as they embark upon their chosen courses of study. Many thanks and hearty congratulations are due to the student scholars for their contributions to this volume and also to the more than 60 faculty who supported, reviewed, selected, and helped to edit these students’ work. Thanks are also due to the three Department of Art, Media and Design faculty who served as jurors of the art work and the three masters in writing and publication students who proofread the volume. Most of all, thanks are due to Warren Schultz, associate dean of undergraduate studies in the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, who serves as editor of the volume, putting out the call for submissions, supporting the faculty work of reviewing, selecting, and editing the student essays, and coordinating the production of the print and digital editions. To all, congratulations! And to you, dear reader, enjoy. Lucy Rinehart, PhD Interim Dean PROBING THE PUBLIC WOUND: THE SERIAL KILLER CHARACTER IN TRUE-CRIME MEDIA S. Clelia Sweeney* American Studies Program It is two weeks before Halloween and I’m standing lamps completed the macabre scene.”1 Those grisly inside a tent with a man in smeared clown makeup photographs, published as part of a Life magazine shouting at me: “Are y’all ready to see some sick, twisted 6-page cover story about the crimes on December 2, shit?” This is Rob Zombie’s Great American Nightmare, 1957, circulated the depraved inner world of Ed Gein an attraction of three haunted houses set up in Villa (later referred to as “The Ghoul of Plainfield”) across Park, Illinois, and the last house on the tour has a the nation. serial killer theme. The outer façade is resplendent in sensationalistic Americana, with hay bales, jack- A sign almost exactly like the one outside Rob Zombie’s o-lanterns, rusted metal, a sharp-toothed taxidermy Great American Nightmare was once hung outside a monkey, and gaudy signs advertising attractions inside. carnival tent in 1958 to advertise a strikingly similar One painted clapboard sign reads, “SEE—the PSYCHO exhibition of serial killer entertainment. At the 1958 fair, of PLAINFIELD—A TRUE CANNIBAL.” Inside, an a reconstructed murder scene featured wax dummies in actor portraying that “psycho” leers from a workbench the actual car Gein drove when he committed his crimes. piled with eviscerated plastic bodies, helping to create a As Harold Schechter recounts in his biography of Gein, recreational thrill based in real-life tragedy, a thrill that “The ‘Ed Gein ghoul car’ made its first public appearance also oddly evoked hints of an (almost) nostalgic 1950s in July 1958 at the Outgamie County Fair in Seymour, Americana. Ed Gein is the famous killer the sign is Wisconsin, where it was displayed for three days inside referencing and the actor is portraying; in bucolic 1950s a large canvas tent covered with blaring signs—‘SEE Plainfield, Wisconsin, Gein robbed graves, murdered THE CAR THAT HAULED THE DEAD FROM THEIR two women, and allegedly cannibalized corpses. He is GRAVES! YOU READ IT IN ‘LIFE’ MAGAZINE! IT’S most notorious for making taxidermy-like items out HERE! ED GEIN’S CRIME CAR! $1,000 REWARD IF of human bodies. As psychologist George W. Arndt NOT TRUE!’”2 The exhibit was soon shut down by public recounts from photographs of the farmhouse interior, outcry, but Ed Gein endured as a celebrity monster in “Ten human skulls neatly arranged in a row, books America, inspiring iconic horror movies such as The on anatomy, embalming equipment, pulp magazines, Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) and Psycho (1960).3 furniture upholstered in human skin, and dirty kerosene * This essay was initially written for AMS 301, Senior Seminar, taught 1 George W. Arndt, “Community Reactions to a Horrifying Event,” in by Professor Amy Tyson. The essay was selected as the winner of Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic, XXIII (New York: Guilford Publications, the Richard deCordova Scholarship for excellence in writing and 1959), 106. interdisciplinary inquiry in the area of American Studies (selection 2 Harold Schechter, Deviant: The Shocking True Story of Ed Gein, the committee: Professors Paul Booth, Nancy Grossman, and Amy Tyson). Original “Psycho” (New York: Pocket Books, 1998), 216. George W. Arndt, “Community Reactions to a Horrifying Event,” 3 Dane Placko, “Rob Zombie’s haunted house has John Wayne Gacy in Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic, XXIII (New York: Guilford room,” Fox News Chicago (Oct 5 2014), http://www.myfoxchicago.com/ Publications,

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