Concordia College - Moorhead, Minnesota |  research@cord.edu

Concurrent Session 5

Concurrent Session 5 is 2:40 – 3:20 pm. Talks are arranged with interdisciplinarity and themes in mind.

Remembering KCC Jones A

The Birds: Hitchcock and du Maurier
Dominic Erickson, Mentored by: Dr. Don Rice

“I’ll Find You”: How the Traveling Cloud Museum Speaks for the Dead on Hart Island
Grace Weber, Mentored by: Zachary Oehm, Dr. Najla Amundson

Perception KCC Jones B

Across Bodies of Antiquity: Queering Ancient Greek and Roman Art in Museums
Colleen Egan, Mentored by: Dr. Richard Chapman

Purgatory and Protestantism: C.S. Lewis’ Unique View of Purgatory
Ingrid Jacobson, Mentored by: Dr. Roy Hammerling

Attraction Lab Theatre

Red, Rank and Romance Replication
Anastasha Bougie, Emily Mastin, Madison Asher, Mentored by: Dr. Mona Ibrahim

Strangers On a Train: Homosexuality in the 50s
Kay Franzese, Mentored by: Dr. Don Rice

Development Olin 124

Terms and Conditions Need Not Apply: The High Cost of China’s No Strings Development Aid
Marina Que, Mentored by: Joseph Kennedy

Lessons from Bhutan’s Effort on Carbon Neutrality
Aviskar Giri, Mentored by: Dr. Kenneth Foster, Dr. Jennifer Sweatman

Gender & Power Integrated Science Center 201

Mara Salvatrucha: America’s Gang
Emma Vogel, Mentored by: Dr. Lisa Twomey

The second presentation will be given in Spanish – all are welcome!

Violencia Contra Las Mujeres en El Salvador
Hannah Papenfuss, Mentored by: Dr. Fanny Roncal

Education Integrated Science Center 260

College Hockey Recruiting Networks
Eli Swanson, Mentored by: Dr. Dan Biebighauser

Building Discourse Communities: Lowering Affective Filters while Raising Retention
Alexandra Rankin, Toby Kindem, Mentored by: Dr. Cassandra Glynn

 

Abstracts:

The Birds: Hitchcock and du Maurier

Dominic Erickson

One of Alfred Hitchcock’s most celebrated and viewed films, The Birds, is inspired by real life news events following various bird attacks and Daphne du Maurier’s short story of the same name. Both are well known and have been reviewed by many scholars, yet the two are much different from one another. Hitchcock’s The Birds varies from the du Maurier story because of the difference in the feeling of space. Daphne du Maurier’s The Birds setting is a suburb of London, Cornwall, ten years before the movie was set. It follows Nat, a farmhand, and his family as flocks of birds begin attacking humans in kamikaze fashion, prompting them to hole up in their house and ration their food. Hitchcock’s The Birds sees the small town of Bodega Bay, California, and how they all react to the birds’ presence. They traverse quite a bit throughout the town. du Maurier’s story gives a sense of claustrophobia, evident by the constant setting of the farmhouse, and Hitchcock has crafted a massive backdrop for the events. The feeling of each has a large impact on the overall tone of the works, and although they follow a similar plot, they convey entirely different ranges of emotion. The setting, not the story, is the sole reason for this to happen.

Mentored by: Dr. Don Rice

 

“I’ll Find You”: How the Traveling Cloud Museum Speaks for the Dead on Hart Island

Grace Weber

Hart Island is a small island off the coast of New York City. Though seemingly insignificant, for over 150 years it has been acting as a mass grave for the poor and unclaimed, going unrecognized. The Traveling Cloud Museum aims to give stories back to those buried on Hart Island since 1980. The museum is the creation of the non-profit Hart Island Project. To recognize those buried on the island, the Traveling Cloud Museum asks visitors to identify the dead and tell their stories. The museum acts as a digital memorial and works to commemorate those so often forgotten by society. It urges us to ask: how does the Traveling Cloud Museum speaks for the 68,113 people buried on Hart Island since 1980? To analyze the memorial, we can turn to Aaron Hess’s 2007 article “In digital remembrance: vernacular memory and the rhetorical construction of web memorial.” Hess provides three components through which to analyze the effectiveness of digital memorials in expressing common voices: digital durability, agenda setting function, and interaction with readers. By analyzing the Traveling Cloud Museum through Hess’s model, we draw implications about the challenging of class barriers as well as the future of other digital memorials, like the Traveling Cloud Museum.

Mentored by: Zachary Oehm, Dr. Najla Amundson

 

Across Bodies of Antiquity: Queering Ancient Greek and Roman Art in Museums

Colleen Egan

A queer museologist analysis of Sleeping Hermaphrodite argues that recontextualizing and reinterpreting ancient artifacts bridges classics and museum practice. Historical queerness will be visually explored through examples of ancient art in permanent collections and understood by queering classical understandings of androgynous bodies such as Hermaphroditus, the myth of Tiresias, and various genderqueer depictions of Dionysus. These ancient Greek and Roman artifacts will connect historical understandings with the visual experience of museums, revealing both a historically censored queer heritage and how queerness appeared in antiquity. Queer museology challenges the cisheteronormative ideals and privileges that have fundamentally shaped museum practices. It refuses the pattern of institutional censorship that emerged in antiquity, occurring with the excavated and privately collected artifacts in the eighteenth century, and continues into modern day, as seen in case studies with “Out in Chicago” (2011-2012) at the Art Institute of Chicago or “Queering the Museum” (2010-2011) at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. The lens used in this essay offers an exploration of LGBTQIA+ interpretations in museums by embracing the multifaceted history of sexuality and gender and visualizing historical queerness through ancient Greek and Roman art.

Mentored by: Dr. Richard Chapman

 

Purgatory and Protestantism: C.S. Lewis’ Unique View of Purgatory

Ingrid Jacobson

A controversial, little-explored area of Christian theologian C.S. Lewis is his opinion on purgatory. As a Protestant, Lewis came from the Reformation tradition of viewing purgatory as heretical. However, Lewis subscribes to the Catholic belief in purgatory, eschewing traditional Reformation teachings on the subject. According to Lewis, purgatory is not a place of punishment, but a sanctification process. A Lewis view of purgatory could influence Lutheran teachings on the subject. Research for this essay was conducted through the Carl B. Ylvisaker Library’s access to religion databases, including JSTOR, Academic Search Premiere, and the ATLA Religion Databases. Works of several Christian mystics and theologians, including St. Augustine, Catherine of Genoa, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Jacques Le Goff, Alan Bandy, and Harvey Egan, were analyzed along with C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce and Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer. Books by C.S. Lewis scholars Gilbert Meilaender and John E Thiel were also used to further analyze C.S Lewis’ position on purgatory.

Mentored by: Dr. Roy Hammerling

 

Red, Rank and Romance Replication

Anastasha Bougie, Emily Mastin, Madison Asher

This paper takes a look at the association of red with attractiveness, healthiness and rank. Specifically this study is a replication of Elliot et al., (2010) third experiment. We and other researchers are interested to find if red can increase perceived attractiveness among other qualities. Multiple studies using similar and different techniques have had success in supporting this hypothesis. The color red has typically been associated with feelings of love and romance, but also danger and failure. When a person looks at another person that includes red in the picture, they will either consciously or unconsciously rate the person as more attractive. This finding has also been shown in animals that use red to show signs of fertility, love or in attempt to be more attractive. Studies find that men who have increased red in the face are rated as more attractive perhaps due to increased fitness. Red is associated with success in the workplace, suggesting the person is stronger and more confident if they are wearing red. Our methods will include using a survey composed of a picture of a man surrounded by a red or gray border and then asking female participants various personality questions about the man and if they are attracted to him. Statistical analysis includes an independent t test to make sense of results. Our predicted results are expected to be along the original results, specifically to find statistically significant results.

Mentored by: Dr. Mona Ibrahim

 

Strangers On a Train: Homosexuality in the 50s

Kay Franzese

In Hitchcock’s Strangers On a Train, Homosexuality is a theme that’s not openly talked about. Hitchcock worked around this concept so that the theme of homosexuality would still be present. At the time the movie was made, homosexuals were not accepted into society due to political beliefs. This movie was released in the era of McCarthyism, and people suspected of being gay or lesbian were thought to be security risks that were more susceptible to Soviet influence. Therefore, paranoia rose and LGBT members were oppressed. Displaying homosexuality openly would have been very controversial in this time, but the hidden theme makes the film all more interesting because the audience can see the repression of Guy’s sexuality in a society that would not let him express himself. The film also displays the paranoia of Guy and Bruno being almost indistinguishable from other heterosexual males. Hitchcock’s film displays the result of the fear that lingered during the Cold War that caused the societal pressure that led to the repression of homosexuals.
Hitchcock made Bruno and Guy’s characters very similar in the sense that they were both homosexuals. Both men were gay, but Bruno embraced his homosexuality more freely than Guy. Guy repressed his homosexuality by rejecting Bruno’s advances and having relationships with women. Guy still exhibited homosexual tendencies such as showing care towards Bruno throughout the film. This indicates that Guy might have also wanted to be with Bruno but was prevented by society.

Mentored by: Dr. Don Rice

 

Terms and Conditions Need Not Apply: The High Cost of China’s No Strings Development Aid

Marina Que

In 2013 Chinese President Xi Jinping announced the One Belt One Road Initiative. Focused on addressing gaps in infrastructure, China began funding critical infrastructure projects across Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. While NGOs, such as the World Bank and IMF have the ability to finance such projects, NGOs will often times offer aid that has “strings” attached, meaning that countries must meet specific requirements in order to be eligible for aid. In contrast, China offers aid to developing nations with “no strings attached.” This lucrative offer from China enables developing nations to build infrastructure and theoretically improve quality of life. However, China’s use of no strings aid is ushering in a new age of economic imperialism. By strategically investing in projects, China is able to gain access to specific resources needed to support its growing population, forcing developing nations to depend solely on Chinese aid in order to grow their economies. In order to further understand this issue, China’s motivations must be examined through the lens of Dependency theory. This theory focuses on the flow of resources flows from “periphery” underdeveloped states to “core” wealthy states, while latter benefits at the expense of the former. The application of Dependency theory creates an opportunity to further examine the agendas behind no strings aid and the dangers that it poses to developing states. Throughout this research I focused on identifying links between developing countries with struggling economies and infrastructure projects that China has not only funded, but economically benefited from.
Mentored by: Joseph Kennedy

 

Lessons from Bhutan’s Effort on Carbon Neutrality

Aviskar Giri

Global warming is one of the biggest environmental threats at the present world. Countless numbers of conventions and meetings have taken place to come up with possible mitigating measures to reduce the effect of global warming. However, the latest scientific research and studies show very poor progress regarding its reduction. Bhutan, a small landlocked country nestled between India and China has stepped onto the international stage to fight against climate change by becoming the first carbon negative country in the world. Similarly, Bhutan sets an example for other developing and developed countries to learn from and take immediate actions.  This research will be broadly based on analysis of current environmental policies and regulations in Nepal and Bhutan. Valuable resources and information about Nepal’s regulations will be provided by the senior environment official, Mr. Manoj Aryal, from the government of Nepal. Similarly, the final policies will be formulated with the help of Dr. Kenneth Foster from Concordia College. The purpose of this study is to provide a systematic review of environmental policy and regulations between Nepal and Bhutan and come up with a possible solution to be presented later to the environment officials of Nepal.

Mentored by: Dr. Kenneth Foster, Dr. Jennifer Sweatman

 

Mara Salvatrucha: America’s Gang

Emma Vogel

I researched the MS-13 gang, and how it specifically relates to the topic of immigration today in the United States for my inquiry class: No Country for Lost Children. The research is significant because it provides background and understanding about one of today’s controversial political issues. My thesis is that a better understanding of MS-13 and motives for joining it are the first steps in creating anti-gang legislation and rehabilitation programs that work. It is supported by intensive research from a variety of sources, including current news articles, scholarly journals, and books. I found that the American gang culture was first created by the discrimination of minorities in the 1800s. As these minorities assimilated to American culture, the gangs disappeared. In 1980, a war in El Salvador caused many El Salvadoran refugees to flee to America. In the face of discrimination, they created a gang called the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13). In an attempt to weaken MS-13, America began deporting gang members back to El Salvador. However, these deportations ended up exporting the American gang culture to Central America, causing a rise in violence. This caused more refugees to flee to America. Trump is generating fear around MS-13 to try to convince Congress to end the visa lottery, complete the Mexican border wall, and stop chain migration. However, very few members of MS-13 immigrate to the United States. Rather, new members are recruited in America as minorities face discrimination and lack other options to gain respect or stability.

Mentored by: Dr. Lisa Twomey

 

Violencia Contra Las Mujeres en El Salvador

Hannah Papenfuss

The presentation will be given in Spanish – all are welcome!

The objective of the presentation is to show the prevalence of violence against women in El Salvador, while also exploring the factors that contribute to this phenomenon, such as gang violence and cultural attitudes. It will end with a discussion of possible solutions to combat the issue.

Mentored by: Dr. Fanny Roncal Ramirez

 

College Hockey Recruiting Networks

Eli Swanson

This project was created as a part of the Credo Networks class last fall and analyzes the connections between Division III college hockey recruits, the junior programs that these players come from, and teams’ ultimate success at the NCAA level. The intent was to try and find a tangible link between successful teams and specific tendencies in recruiting tactics. The project involved compiling and cleaning data, as well as building interactive networks that can help to illustrate and compare various teams’ methods and recruiting targets.

Mentored by: Dr. Dan Biebighauser

 

Building Discourse Communities: Lowering Affective Filters while Raising Retention

Alexandra Rankin, Toby Kindem

This session will give teachers concrete ideas and examples for building a discourse community.  These ideas aim to increase students’ proficiency and confidence in the language, strengthen relationships, and ultimately lead to greater retention.

Mentored by: Dr. Cassandra Glynn