Abstract Booklet
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Abstract Booklet Sponsored by: Vice Provost for Research Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education Center for Family, Work and Community Honors Program Humanities Guest Speaker Alan Khazei Alan Khazei has pioneered ways to empower citizens to make a difference. In 1987, as a young graduate from Harvard Law School, he co-founded a nonprofit organization called City Year with his friend, Michael Brown. City Year unites young adults ages 17-24 from all backgrounds for an intensive year of full-time community service mentoring, tutoring, and educating children. It served as the model and inspiration for President Clinton’s AmeriCorps program and now operates in 20 U.S. cities and Johannesburg and London. In June 2003, when AmeriCorps faced a drastic funding cut, Alan joined with other service leaders to organize the “Save AmeriCorps” coalition, an effort that led to an increase of $100 million dollars. Inspired by the success of the Save AmeriCorps campaign, in 2007, Alan launched Be the Change, Inc., a nonprofit that creates national issue based campaigns by organizing coalitions of non-profits, social entrepreneurs, policymakers, private sector leaders, academics, and citizens. In 2009, ServiceNation, the first campaign to be launched from this platform, played a key role in the enactment of the strongly bi-partisan Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act. In the fall of 2009, Alan Khazei was a candidate in the Senate special election primary in Massachusetts. He was endorsed by the state’s leading newspaper—the Boston Globe, as well as the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, CapeCod Times, and the BlueMassGroup. He also received endorsements from public leaders such as General Wesley Clark, Mayor Bloomberg, and Senators Hart, Nunn, and Wofford. Jonathan Alter in a Newsweek column entitled “Khazei: Teddy’s Rightful Heir”, described Khazei as being the only candidate “carrying forward his reform ideas on the most important domestic issue of the 21st century”. Alan has served on the boards of leading national non-profits and has received numerous awards, including the Reebok Human Rights Award, the Jefferson Award for Public Service, and the Schwab Foundation Social Entrepreneur Award. In 2006, US News and World Report named him one of America's “25 Best Leaders.” Alan is also the author of a new book, Big Citizenship: How pragmatic idealism can bring out the best in America. Alan lives in Brookline, Massachusetts with his wife, Vanessa Kirsch, and their two children. ‐‐ ‐ 1 ‐ College of Fine Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences Art The Senior Studio Project: Art major undergraduate students in the BFA program must complete a single semester 6-credit Senior Studio course. Each student focuses intensely for a semester on an original project that is analogous to a thesis. Below is a description of several of these projects this spring 2011: ART1 Chan, Anna WATT.M.I LAMPS (Advisor: Karen Roehr) Watt.M.I lamps represent real materials trapped under the false assumption of being trash. The technique of these lamps redefine what high end products could appear to be, but instead of using expensive materials, they will be constructed from recycled plastic and paper. The idea of using what society regards as disposable and cheap will be transformed to look sophisticated and organic. ART2 Donahue, Caitlin MOOD ALBUMS (Advisor: Karen Roehr) Designing album covers for music compilations that relate to emotional genres, such as melancholy, rage, loneliness, love and sex. I am currently working on a related advertising campaign for these albums. Designs are mixed media combining digital with watercolor. ART3 Hodgkin, Brandon SELF-PORTRAIT (Advisor: Karen Roehr) This work is about learning how to interact with myself. It's a conversation about the good, the bad and the ugly that I am finding within. I made the decision to work with various printmaking media because it gives me the ability to work in layers and just like a conversation things surface and others are pushed back. The whole experience then becomes a discussion with myself that I invite the viewer into. ART4 Hyland, Charlotte SUNNY SIDE UP (Advisor: Karen Roehr) This is a collection of thoughts, findings, photographs, and epiphanies of an egg donor. This book is a documentary take on my personal experience donating my eggs. Egg donation is such an unnatural process I use text and image pairings to convey the ridiculousness of this method of having children. This book contains conceptual images, my baby photos, ultrasound images, and photographs of me made before and after the egg retrieval surgery. Intended parents only know me as #064492, from my online donor profile. This document contains almost everything you could ever want to know about me, including my genetic, menstrual, and sexual history. My profile also includes pictures of me throughout ‐‐ ‐ 2 ‐ my life so you will have some idea of how your potential child would turn out with my genetic material. It is interesting how the IVF industry makes this process sound so wonderful and magical, but in my legal agreement, the wording is blunt and full of loopholes. For instance, it is illegal to sell body parts, but it is legal to donate them for free, and have the recipient pay for pain and suffering of the procedure. I also want to explore the idea of exposing such intimate details about myself to the public. Most donors keep this a secret from their families and friends, but I am sharing my experience with complete strangers and acquaintances (my own mother does not know that I am doing this). A book format allows for a more intimate interaction between the work and the viewer. Only so many people can read a book at once, so what I am sharing with the viewer remains between us. ART5 Ramondi, Lauren STAY IN THE RACE (Advisor: Karen Roehr) These are a series of 12 posters designed for “fictitious” running events for former competitive runners who want to stay in the race in a non-competitive way. ART6 Santiago, Laurie THE COST OF FAME (Advisor: Karen Roehr) We live in a celebrity obsessed culture, yet most of us are unaware of the impacts the “cost of fame” has on some of these “stars”. The illustrations depict the effects of Michael Jackson’s fame on his life, from loss of privacy to betrayal. ART7 Shugue, Diane NON-TEXTILE, NON-TRADITIONAL WEDDING ATTIRE (Advisor: Karen Roehr) The tradition of sewing is coupled with the contemporary non-textile material plastic to create garments that could be worn by members of an American wedding party. Typically, most wedding and bridesmaid dresses are worn for a single event, the wedding. The recycled plastics used in the construction of these garments, are mainly from discarded bags. The history of Lowell’s textile mills combines with plastics (UML’s top Plastics Engineering department) to create a contemporary look for an institution (marriage) that itself seems disposable. Humanities Panels Panel 1: All that Glisters is Lyrical Gold: Seventeenth-Century Tributes, Country Houses, and Ghostly Encounters Time and Location: 2-3:15, Merrimack East Moderator: Jeannie Judge Heglin, Brad TRIBUTE POEMS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY (Advisor: Jeannie Judge) ‐‐ ‐ 3 ‐ Because the early Seventeenth century was so rich in poets, their contemporaries acknowledged them and their accomplishments in literature with tribute poems. In this presentation I will examine the usage and purpose of tribute poems written in the seventeenth century. I will define what they are and do, as well as account for their importance as pieces of poetry to praise or criticize a person admired by the writer. Starting with Robert Herrick, I will examine his tribute poem to Ben Jonson, "Upon Master Ben Jonson: Epigram." After a brief analysis of the poem, I will use it to show the affection often found in a traditional tribute poems about the writer's predecessor or contemporary. Thomas Carew wrote two poems that fit this category: the first being his lovely poem called "An Elegy upon the Death of Dr. Donne, Dean of Pauls." It will show the beauty and appreciation found in tribute poems of the period. Then, I will switch to his more critical poem on Jonson, "To Ben Jonson: Upon Occasion of His Ode of Defiance Annexed to his Play of The New Inn." This will be done to show that even critical poems can still include great praise. I will conclude with Ben Jonson's "To the Memory of My Beloved, The Author, Mr. William Shakespeare, and What He Hath Left Us." This wonderful poem shows again the conventions of a tribute poem and will also be a good example of Jonson's style as a Cavalier poet who uses classical references and heroic couplets. Lusardi, Joseph A. DECONSTRUCTING DONNE (Advisor: Jeannie Judge) The poetry of John Donne poses a threat to many binary oppositions that are central to the Anglo literary tradition. Collectively, the poet, his personae, and his readers participate in the experience of the text; none of the three is the locus of the text. The collaboration and intersection of these three discourses delivers forms of process; the result, therefore, is not a “resonant, “unified”, or straightforward phenomenon, but a purposeful dissonance. The poem is a threat to coherence and continuity, and twenty- first century readers ought to accept Donne’s work as such. The metaphysical style, featuring paradox, irony, and unparalleled energy on all levels, suits the postmodernist sensibility. Donne’s experimental lyrics and forms anticipate the aesthetics of postmodernity. The poetry read from the perspective of deconstructive theory demonstrates that the texts intend to challenge the dimensions of the English language- and the arena is poetry. Donne’s texts employ what the philosopher Catherine Malabou terms plasticity: “a break of the subject which is not death, which is another kind of possibility.” For example, the recurring motif of death represents voices as events, requiring the reader to rethink, reconsider, reformulate; to engage the self with dexterity in order for it to deconstruct, and thus recur.