APRIL 18, 2017
9:30-10:00
Performance
The Half Written Memoir of an Artist
Jayce Ringwald
It starts when I’m a kid, scribbling on everything I can with my favorite crayons in imitation of Dad until I’m drawing on my own. I fall in love with art classes; spend my time drawing with and for my friends. It bleeds into my schoolwork. It fills the margins of my homework and overtakes my projects for science and literature. When I’m fourteen, the nurse’s office becomes a regular part of my school day. Shortly after, the doctor’s office is part of my weekly routine, getting a new medication to treat anemia, iron deficit, and a newly developed asthma. Wolfson’s Children’s Hospital is my home for a week as I deteriorate. I haven’t drawn much in three months, the creative part of me suffering more than the physical part until I see the Surfboard.
10:00-10:30
Performance
Caring Too Much About Band Camp
Mary Decker
This piece is an exercise in writing in the creative non-fiction genre. This genre is writing nonfiction – completely true stories – while utilizing elements of creative writing, such as scene, character, and poetic language. This particular piece is a memoir; a personal narrative that works to embody something of the overall human experience. This piece specifically has to do with my work and struggles with marching band camp, where I was always the one person to care “too much.”
10:30-11:00
Performance
Hecuba on Trial
Jessica Marcure
The Greek drama HECUBA takes up the case of the tragic Trojan queen Hecuba as she stands trial for her life because of the choices she's made after the Trojan war. Hecuba explores her reasoning for blinding Polymester and killing his two young sons. This comes from my Law and literature class where the question was posed: can murder be justified?
11:00-11:30
Performance
Sixty Million & More
Emma Gelinas, Tylre Robedeau
Our song, “Sixty Million & More,” is a richly nuanced ballad that offers insight into the world of slavery, including its countless ramifications on the African American population. The basis for the song is Toni Morrison’s Beloved, which revolves around Sethe, a runaway slave, who kills her 2-year-old daughter to save her from enslavement. As the novel unravels, Sethe begins to fall in love with Paul D, a slave escapee whom she had known during her time at Sweet Home, a slave plantation in Kentucky. The song, although multi-faceted, is in short, a victim impact statement from Paul D, explaining to the judge the damage slavery has caused him. The title of the song comes from Toni Morrison’s dedication to the “Sixty million and more” slaves who died as a result of the Atlantic Slave Trade. This emotionally compelling song is a cry for equality and the right to liberty.
11:30-12:00
Paper
Hiker Trash or Pilgrim? A comparative study of the modern walks on the Appalachian Train and the Camino de Santiago
Keenan Phillips
Despite the world becoming increasingly secularized in the past century, ancient rituals, such as pilgrimages, have prevailed or even surged in popularity. Many “new Pilgrims” report that they come away from their journey with a clear head. They feel they have seen the world and its problems from a different angle. Victor Turner suggested that “It is the people you meet that are the journey, not the journey itself’” Turner’s thoughts on pilgrimage extend to his theory of universal communitas, but he later rephrased his ideas to admit that while the idea of the universal community where all members are equal is present on pilgrimages, it does not come to fruition because; “although pilgrimages strain in the direction of the universal communitas, they are still ultimately bound by the structure of the religious systems within which they are generated and persist.” This paper considers how secularization has changed the definition of what a pilgrimage actually means in the modern world, so that Turner’s communitas does exist along different pilgrimages. It compares the Appalachian Trail and the Camino de Santiago to show that there are no longer just religious pilgrimages to holy icons, but treks of inner tranquility.
12:00-12:30
Paper
Mary L. Ware and the Early Funding of Harvard Anthropology: Private Sources of Funding in the Nineteenth Century (Paper)
D. Wes Beattie
Today in anthropology most researchers get money for field research through grants from NSF, NEH, NEA, Fulbright, and the Werner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. But when anthropology began in the 1890’s none of these existed. So what did anthropologists do without any of these endowments? How did anthropologists and archaeologists fund their research? Nineteenth Century anthropological and archaeological research often subsisted primarily on private donations. It was a common practice that many archaeological excavations were actually funded by the archaeologists themselves, because many were independently wealthy from other business enterprises. But private donations could be found in many different forms. Early anthropologists like Fredric Ward Putnam of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard supported themselves financially by cultivating wealthy donors. This paper considers the relationship between Putnam and one of his many donors: Mary Lee Ware of West Rindge, New Hampshire. Well known locally in NH and Boston for charitable works, she often kept her donations anonymous from the public. Her correspondence with Putnam reveals that she provided a significant amount of money for America’s first preserved archaeological site; Serpent Mound in Ohio, and Putnam’s other archaeological researches.
12:30-1:00
Paper
Women in the Mexican Workplace
Danielle Turcotte
This is a study of women’s role in the workplace in Mexico. The purpose of this study is to determine women’s place at work and at home. Some Mexican women try to do everything at once including going to school, working, and taking care of the house and children. As of 1997 there has been an official government that replaced where women could be hired by corporations only if they gave up marriage and having children. There is no corporate responsibility to care for families; they are solely focused on making a profit. This observational and survey-based study suggests that Mexican women’s roles are in both the home and work place. This study focuses on women 14 and older who work, study in school and/or run the household. It was conducted through open-ended interviews with any women who fit the categories above who agreed to participate the study. The researcher asked basic questions to get a brief understanding of the woman’s life pertaining to work, raising children, school, and expectations. This study offers a better understanding of Mexican work-culture than traditional ethnographies.
1:00-1:30
Paper
Changing Perspectives and Approaches in Southwestern Archaeology, 1880-1960
Kimberly Antunes
This presentation considers how Southwestern archaeology methods and theories have changed over the past century or so. Here this analysis considers the approaches of the major archaeologists working in the Southwest, the questions they were asking, and why they pursued these kinds of changing questions. Through this research in one regions of the U. S. we can understand changing patterns in the archaeology of other regions. Although much has been made of dating techniques and using pottery to establish a sequence, there was much more going on in the archaeology of the American Southwest that dating, sequences, and stratigraphy. In particular the presentation considers the important foundational work of Alfred V. Kidder.
1:30-2:15
Paper
Explorations in the Early History of Anthropology: Frank Boas in Chicago
Robert Welsch
Anthropologists have long celebrated Boas as the father of American anthropology. His program at Columbia University produced the majority of the first generation of anthropologists, beginning in 1901. But why did Boas end up in New York in the first place? This paper outlines Boas’s early career at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, and how he jumped at the chance to work with Frederic Ward Putnam from Harvard, who had taken charge of Anthropology at the Chicago World’s Fair. Putnam later purchased these collections for the new Field Museum. Boas expected to be appointed Curator, but soon learned that he had been passed over and the Museum hired W. H. Holmes from the Smithsonian. Boas’s departure from Chicago has long been a mystery. But recent research in the National Anthropological Archives and the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, and in the Special Collections of the University of Chicago suggests that Holmes’s hiring over Boas had perhaps been arranged by a geologist! This was Thomas C. Chamberlin, the first professor of geology at the University of Chicago. This paper explores some of the details that are now coming to light.
2:15-3:30
Demonstration
Digital Re-imagining of Creative Nonfiction
Margot Douaihy, Chelsea Bitter
Why do true stories captivate us? What do storytelling techniques offer the health sciences? In this blog, Chelsea Bitter re-imagines Creative Nonfiction craft theory in ways that resonate for her as a Physical Therapy major. During the 2016 fall semester, Chelsea created digital applications for hallmark texts from the EN209 syllabus, and, in turn, wove theories of postmodernism (Wexler), imagined memory (Pearson), quest storytelling (Didion), and interviewing techniques (Lopate/Moore), into a multimedia collaboration. Chelsea created a robust network of cohesive and fragmented narratives, selfies, and marginalia. She integrated artifacts, memories, dialogue—anything that can be shared—to add to a growing collection of ""true story"" nodes. In her blog, and thus any iPhone screen, we see landmark Creative Nonfiction by Alison Bechdel, David Foster Wallace, David Small, and Maggie Nelson come alive in new ways. During a time where a typical social media user sees 54,000 words per day, Chelsea’s blog acts as a digital map that invites visitors to stay, make connections, and reflect. This digital CNF experiment creates a learning space fueled by inquiry without the limitation of a specific destination.
3:30-4:30
4:30-5:30
Performance
My Antonia, a dramatic adaptation
Gerald Burns, Donna Decker
Willa Cather's classic novel, My Antonia, has been adapted for the stage by Jarrett Dapier. An ensemble consisting of Franklin Pierce faculty and students, and young actors from the local area, and under the direction of Project Shakespeare founder Deborah Thurber, will reprise a stage reading of this play, first performed for the Big Read celebration this past fall. The abbreviated script captures the essence of Cather's original, and the reading is enlivened by costuming, props, music, and an action scene or two.