2007-2008 Opportunities
Mapping Personal Histories, Drawings Transformed: A Printmaking Collaboration, Claudia Fieo and Patty Stone
We wish to apply for Wheaton Research Partnership funds in order to complete a series of prints, that experiment with various printmaking techniques, with an initial focus on photopolymer etching techniques. These two bodies of work will explore the idea of Personal Histories through a variety of images that reflect our common interests in drawing.
La Dolce Vita, Robert Vogler
The project for this Wheaton Research Partnership is for a student to help me develop and order the bibliography for a book manuscript: La Dolce Vita: Senses of Beauty in Italy. The work would include reading the text and notes of recent chapters of the book, which I have been researching (with the help of WRP students in past years) and writing for several years, and incorporating sources cited into the current bibliography in a Refworks file . At times, the student will also locate some of the sources in order to provide full and complete citations for footnotes and other references in the text. This is an important stage in the development of the manuscript for submission to publishers.
Image Archive Project, Sue Standing
This project focuses on creating a database of images for use in my research on ekphrastic poetry and African literature as well as for use in several courses, including English 245 (African Literature), English 289 (Word and Image), and English 101 (Writing About Images and Ideas). The student research partner will scan slides and analog images from my own archives, and also seek out other useful images from library holdings and internet sources. In addition, the student will work in the Wheaton archives to help select materials to put on the new Rushlight website, which Scott Hamlin and the Rushlight editors and I have just developed. The student will also assist in recording and creating multi-media podcasts for our new podcast site, Creative Writing@Wheaton, which has just been launched. The WRP needs basic research skills, as well as some experience with compiling bibliographies and with using Adobe PhotoShop. Experience with managing web content is also highly desirable.
Watching Paint Dry the Molecular Way, Laura Muller
Student researchers in my laboratory have used recipes found in 10th century and 15th century manuscripts to prepare oil painting media and analyzed the chemical results of these recipes using Fourier Transform Infrared spectroscopy. We are learning about the importance of transmitted knowledge even as we learn about the chemical profiles of different oil films. In the current year, we plan to monitor the drying of unpigmented oil films using Gas Chromatography √ Mass Spectrometry to learn more about the process, and the rates, of drying of each of these films and then to match the type of preparation with the painting technique: are the ignited films used for preparing thin glazes of color because they dry faster, or does the viscosity of the film enhance their use for impasto? Other students in the lab will be studying a parallel drying technique using lead-based siccatives and we will be comparing the results of the two studies.
The Intersection of Architecture and Glass in the Gothic Church of St. Julien-du-Sault, Evelyn Staudinger Lane
My primary project is called Creating Sacred Space: The Intersection of Architecture and Glass in the Gothic Church of St. Julien-du-Sault and is an analysis of the relationship between architecture and stained glass in this 13th-16th century collegiate church. St. Julien-du-Sault is distinguished as having one of the very few largely intact glass programs in its choir that dates from the mid-13th century and is contemporary with Ste. Chapelle. Despite this renown, it is hardly ever mentioned in the literature. The research conducted in 2007-2008 will be another phase of a much larger re-analysis of the integration of architecture and stained glass in French Gothic architecture that will lead to the first book ever written on the subject. My WRP will help me analyze the data I have obtained through my site work on the architecture of St. Julien-du-Sault, compiled during my sabbatical year, in order to produce a survey plan of the building in an effort to demonstrate how the building developed over time. My WRP will also assist me with responsibilities I have as a Board Member of three medieval organizations: as Treasurer of AVISTA, as Assistant Treasurer of the American Corpus Vitrearum, and as member of the Finance Committee and Member of the Board of Directors of the International Center of Medieval Art.
Computing With Texts in Large-Scale Experiments, Mark LeBlanc
Computational stylistics is the application of computing and statistical techniques to identify patterns within and likenesses between texts. Examples domains include Anglo-Saxon literature and genomes of DNA. This WRP position seeks a student with programming expertise to design and implement a suite of software to automate the execution of large experiments.
A Text Encoding Initiative Project: Early Modern Narratives on Travels by Sea and Shipwrecks in the Spanish Main, Domingo Ledezma
I would like to continue working with a Wheaton Research Partnership student to help me in my TEI project on editing and publishing a collection of hyper-textual digital editions of Early Modern Narratives on Maritime voyages. This coming year I will be including to the TEI project English narrations on sea voyages in the Spanish Domain, particularly accounts on the incursions of Francis Drake in the Caribbean and Pacific coast of the New World. The work of the research assistant will be focused in proofreading XML files and transform them into HTML in order to publish this material on line. He will be also editing digital images, adding technical information to them, as well as geographical and historical data to the hyper-textual edition.
The visual culture of women and war: political engagement in African societies
I am applying for a 2007-08 Wheaton Research Partnership to help me with my current research project, which examines women≠s political engagement during national conflict or war, and the ways in which African women≠s wartime experiences are represented in post-war visual culture. The student will help me conduct comparative research examining the representations and realities of women≠s political engagement in three different African contexts: South Africa, Rwanda, and Liberia. In each of these countries, women held significant roles during wartime in both the public and private spheres. Likewise, in each country, women have seen substantial political gains in the public sphere in post-war periods. To date, no scholar in any of the interdisciplinary fields associated with this research has examined the intersection of women≠s political experiences and visual culture, and so the student will be working on a project that will make a substantial contribution to several fields of study.
I am looking for a student with strong word processing skills and research experience, who is also self motivated. The research assistant will undertake library research, locating relevant sources through World Cat, and put together an annotated bibliography (after reading and evaluating the sources), and then organize data using EndNote software. She (or he) will also help me compile a list of museums and monuments in Liberia, Rwanda, and South Africa that commemorate both male and female political figures, and a list of artists who depict politically active women in their work. The research partner may also be asked to transcribe interview tapes and code interview materials based on my interviews with activist artists in South Africa. An interest in feminist studies, visual arts, and/or African societies is also a plus.
Sweet Disaster, Charlotte Meehan
Sweet Disaster, a stage work that will incorporate excerpts of David Hopkins' animated film series of the same title, will premiere at Perishable Theatre in spring 2008 under Ken Prestininzi's direction. I am looking for a student with strong video editing skills to work with me on splicing film excerpts for incorporation with the text and to attend rehearsals as a ≥second eye≈ on adjusting our choices with actors in the space. We will also be incorporating a musical score by post-minimalist composer Elodie Lauten, which must be considered with the film and stage elements. The ideal student will be visually sophisticated, have some familiarity with experimental theatre, and will freely offer his/her own creative ideas to the team.
"Takin' it to the Streets," the 3rd edition, Alex Bloom
I have just begun the process of revising the reader I co-edited on the 1960s, for its third edition. This will involve the selection of 15-20 new entries and the editing out of an equal number These will be culled form a larger number of potential new additions. The WRP assistant will help find and copy potential entries, based on criteria I provide him/her.
"The End of the Tunnel: The Vietnam Experience and the Shape of American Life," Alex Bloom
This project is a continuation of the manuscript I have been working on for the last several years. The work begins in 1975, with the end of the Vietnam conflict, and aims to evaluate the way the Vietnam experience has shaped political, diplomatic, and social life in the United States since that time. No war, save perhaps the Civil War, has had the lasting impact and remained so alive and provocative in the nation, as Vietnam.
Part of the difficulty with this work is that while the beginning point is clear, the ending point continues to move forward in time. In the last year, with the explosion of comparative analyses between the current Iraqi conflict and the Vietnam experience, it now seems clear that the Iraq war and its relation to Vietnam will be the final chapter. Further, the centrality of Vietnam as an issue in the 2004 election is another area which suggest the power of Vietnam in contemporary American life.
As I had done the lion's share of the research for this book already, I am reapplying for a WRP award to help gather the material-flowing daily-on the comparisons and contrasts made between the Iraq and Vietnam wares and for work on the 2004 election. This will mostly be done through periodical and newspaper research and can easily be accomplished in the Wheaton library.