senior capstone presentations - plu.edu filepacific lutheran university division of humanities...

PACIFIC LUTHERAN UNIVERSITY

DIVISION OF HUMANITIES

SPRING ACADEMIC FESTIVAL

MAY 2019

SENIOR CAPSTONE

PRESENTATIONS

The students and faculty of the Division of

Humanities warmly invite all students,

faculty, and the public to attend.

Please Join Us

As the culmination of their academic majors,

Pacific Lutheran University seniors present to

an open audience the fruits of a substantial

project, paper, or internship.

Professor Rebecca Wilkin

CLASSICS, FRENCH,

GERMAN AND NORWEGIAN

LANGUAGES AND

LITERATURES

The Spring 2019 Languages & Literatures Capstone class brought together 6 Classics majors, 4 German majors, 2 French majors (and 1 French minor), and 1 Norwegian major. Each student chose an “artifact” from a culture represented by their major and crafted an approach that would allow them to develop an original claim about it. They imagined themselves at a table, participating in conversation about their artifact with the scholars whose work they had sought out to inform their research. We had a wonderful variety of projects this year, with topics ranging from the consumption of papyrus among Egyptians to the autobiographical writings of a Syrian journalist refugee in France. The eating of unusual things was a recurring theme as was the retelling of fairytales, folklore, and legends. Feminist and gender-based approaches proved particularly compelling, from the penetrator/penetrated binary that shaped moral ideas in ancient Rome to the #MeToo movement's exposure of rape culture. These capstone projects show that Languages & Literature majors excel at discerning double meanings, empathize with those who hover between cultures, and that they use their learning to reflect on the nature and purpose of education. Above all, they demonstrate that mastery of another language multiplies one's intellectual resources while knowledge of other cultures expands one's ethical perspectives.

Seminar in Languages and Literatures Tuesday, May 14, 2019

Anderson University Center, Room 213

NORWEGIAN

2:00 PM Introduction and Welcome

2:10 PM Vince Adams

“The Lore, The Lady, and Ibsen: Selkies in The Lady From the Sea”

Break

LANGUAGES AND

LITERATURES

2:40 PM Krista Osborne

“From the Forest to the Nursery: The Grimm Brothers’ Robber Bridegroom”

GERMAN

Seminar in Languages and Literatures

Tuesday, May 14, 2019


GERMAN

3:00 PM Kayla Abler

“And No One Lived Happily Ever After:

Contesting Gendered Oppression in

Elfriede Jelinek’s Princess Plays”

3:20 PM Alysha Madison

“Women’s Voices: Christa Wolf's Kassandra and the German Democratic Republic”

3:40 PM Kayleigh Peterson

“Making Scents of Women: Rape Culture in the German Classic, Das Parfum.”

Break

LANGUAGES AND

LITERATURES

FRENCH

4:10 PM Emma Loest

“Courtly Places and Social Spaces: The Situated Self in La Princesse de Cleves”

4:30 PM Jessica LaPoidevin

"From Syria to France: Immigration and Identity in Omar Youssef Souleimane’s Le Petit Terroriste"

LANGUAGES AND

LITERATURES





Wednesday, May 15, 2019


CLASSICS

2:00 PM Introduction and Welcome

2:10 PM Gunnar Johnson

“Power-Hungry: Foucauldian Philosophy in Seneca's Thyestes”

2:30 PM Rachel Dixon

“Greece, Rome, and Moral Depravity: The Satires of Juvenal”

2:50 PM Ian Farrell

“Ambiguity in Storytelling as Political Critique in Vergil's Aeneid"

Break

LANGUAGES AND

LITERATURES

LANGUAGES AND

LITERATURES


Wednesday, May 15, 2019


CLASSICS

3:20 PM Christine Sohn

“Papyrophagy: A Brief History and

Nutritional Analysis”

3:40 PM Rachel Longnecker

“The Soul, Love, and an Ass: Fairy Tale as

Philosophy in Apuleius’ Cupid and Psyche”

4:00 PM Emily Ramey

“The Caveman’s Test: Effectiveness of the SAT in Modern American Education in Light of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave”

LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES

Professor Paul Manfredi

In this course students develop their discipline-specific projects within the broader field of Chinese Studies. As they pursue their research, capstone students provide frequent progress reports to classmates and faculty, culminating in final project presentations at the end of the term.

Chinese Studies

4:00 PM Kenn Anderson

"The Male Gaze and its Effect on the

Depiction of Women in China"

4:30 PM Chris Caudill

"Sichuan Rap: An Analysis of Sichuan

Rap 'Authenticity' and its Implications

for the Future of Chinese Rap."

5:00 PM Alisa Grushkin

Experimental Calligraphy in

Contemporary China

5:30 PM Isaiah Huey

"China's Northeast Project: The

Goguryeo Controversy and its Greater

Implications"

Seminar in Chinese Studies

Thursday, May 16, 2019

Hong Hall, Main Lounge

LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES

Professor Giovanna Urdangarain

As the culminating course for the Hispanic Studies major, the HISP 499 seminar immerses students in three intellectually demanding fields. They become familiar with the realm of Critical Theory by studying some of the most important schools of thought as well as the most influential thinkers of those schools (Saussure, Barthes, Freud, Derrida, Lacan, Kristeva, Cixous, Foucault, Marx, Bhabha, Žižek, Anzaldúa, Benítez-Rojo, Stuart Hall.) Concurrently, students also learn about key concepts and methodologies related to research in literature, film and culture of the Spanish-speaking world. Finally, students undertake an analysis of primary sources (in Spanish) of their choosing, drawing from the theoretical framework they deem most pertinent for their texts and supporting it with the secondary sources they critically compile throughout the semester. At the end of the 15-week course, the aforementioned process culminates in the elaboration of a 20-page argumentative critical essay written in Spanish in which students deconstruct notions of race, ethnicity and/or gender, question representations of violence, reflect upon the ethical positions of the readership/audience, and discuss the nature of language and the potential or limitations of art..

HISPANIC STUDIES PROGRAM

LANGUAGES AND

LITERATURES

Seminar in Hispanic Studies

Friday, May 17, 2019


4:00 PM Introductory Remarks

4:10 PM Jordan Jasorka

“Lengua, migración y género: entre

Marruecos y España”

Q&A 4:30-4:40

4:40 PM Francisco Aragón

“Formular la masculinidad en ¿sexo?,

yes plis”

Q&A 5:-00-5:10

5:10 PM Biankha Pablo

“El feminismo, nueva frontera: Soltera

Codiciada”

Q&A 5:30-5:40

LANGUAGES AND

LITERATURES

ENGLISH

FICTION WRITING

Professor Melissa Slocum

This semester, we concentrated on the future of student writing. The more students understand their reasons for writing, their project’s worth, and the market, the better prepared they are for the writing field. Understanding what shaped their own writing was the semester’s goal for fiction is a purpose driven craft. It’s that purpose and our own rigor in craft that helps us as writers find where we best fit and what our strengths are. Considerable time was spent on professionalizing students as a writer including researching literary journals, crafting query letters and an artist’s statement, putting together a reading, and creating an outline for a longer project (novel, novella, short story collection, or multi-media collection). Throughout these assignments, I asked students to uncover what was at the core of their project and their character’s journey. Where do they want their writing to be published and how? What type of audience do they imagine would be interested and engaged in their type of work? How can rejection help the writing grow? What new techniques or ideas can be studied to strengthen craft? We read and analyzed contemporary fiction published within the past two years to take note of current trends in writing forms, themes, and styles. What’s trending in writing can be helpful and it can hinder the early writer to become something they are not. So we focused in depth on that balance between becoming their own writer and being inspired by other authors, including their fellow peers. By working within the foundation of a longer project, and by seeing worthiness in their writing, students ultimately gain the strengths and confidence to share their writing with the outside world.

Seminar in Fiction Writing


Anderson University Center,

Scandinavian Cultural Center, Room 101

4:45 PM Autumn Robbins

“Let Them Go… “

5:30 PM Jaclyn Kissler

“Gift”

6:15 PM Olivia Gray

“The Waters of Valldenia“

7:00 PM Rebekah Oglesby

“Solstice “

ENGLISH

Seminar in Fiction Writing


Anderson University Center, Regency 203

10:00 AM Heatherlee Huey

“No One Here Is Normal “

10:45 AM Rachel Rauch

"Extraordinarily Ordinary “

11:30 AM Jacob Goodman

“A Saving Grace “

12:15 PM Libby Postovoit

“Stargazer”

1:00 PM Rachel Sandell

“Bless Me”

ENGLISH

Professor Derek Robbins

ENGLISH

Our poetry capstone is centered on the idea of the poet as maker. We view the poet as a craftsperson, someone who shapes the raw material of experience, observation, and idea into a work of art through the skillful use of poetic craft. Throughout the semester students examined craft-based issues (such as lineation, image, tone, meter, and form) in the work of a diverse group of poets ranging from Emily Dickinson to Natasha Trethewey, Walt Whitman to Geoffrey Davis, and Elizabeth Bishop to Kaveh Akbar to name a few.

Students began the semester writing weekly poems. Then, in the second half of the term we aimed to increase the size of our poetic canvas in the hopes of inviting ideas and experiences of more depth and complexity into our poet-ry. Students completed a multi-week "long poem project," examining and revisiting a single theme from several points of view. The resulting long poem (or sequence of poems) forms a substantial portion of each student's po-etic output this semester. The capstone presentation in-cludes this long poem along with other significant work completed during the students' poetry studies here at PLU.

POETRY

Seminar in Poetry


Anderson University Center,

Scandinavian Cultural Center, Room 101

7:45 PM Erik Carlsen

“Little Fists”

8:30 PM Alice Nguyen

“Being, Becoming, and to Be”

ENGLISH

ENGLISH

Seminar in Poetry



1:45 PM Malena Showalter

“In the Process of Becoming”

2:30 PM Ashley Corr

“In the Wink of a Heart’s Pulse”

3:15 PM Megan Daugherty

“A Vase”

LITERATURE

This literature seminar, Writing, Memory, and Trauma in Post-Slavery and Post-Holocaust American Narrative, considered how American writers have encountered the legacies of slavery and the Holocaust through literary projects that address gaps in the archive. We read theory about trauma, memory, and repair as we explored American post-slavery narratives like Toni Morrison’s Beloved, and Saidiya Hartman’s hybrid memoir/history project Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route. W.E.B. DuBois’s ruminations on the Holocaust during a 1949 trip to Warsaw served as our hinge text, for he was able to regard the destruction of Warsaw during the Holocaust through the prism of global racial violence. By engaging in what theorist Michael Rothberg calls “multidirectional memory,” we considered the experiences of African Americans in the post-slavery era alongside Jews following the Holocaust. We shifted our focus then to American post-Holocaust texts, reading another hybrid historical memoir project, Elizabeth Rosner’s Survivor Café: the Legacy of Trauma and the Labyrinth of Memoir alongside Art Spiegelman’s graphic Holocaust memoir/biography Maus. We concluded by reading multiple critical and theoretical essays speaking to the project of writing post-slavery and post-Holocaust narrative. The essays produced by students in this capstone all take up questions that emerged from our course readings and discussions.

ENGLISH

Professor Lisa Marcus

Seminar in Literature



5:30 PM Abigail E. Welch

“Eye” Remember: Sight and Prosthetic Memory in Arthur Miller’s Focus and Art Spiegelman’s Maus

6:15 PM Mathilde Magga

"Neither forgotten Nor Redeemed": Ruth Kluger's Still Alive and the Problem of Forgiving the Holocaust

7:00 PM Abigail Kunkel

Transcribing Trauma: Postmemory and Parasitic Progeny in Maus and Beloved

ENGLISH

7:45 PM Ashley Corr

“The Shared Fires in Our Past”: Barbarism in the Post-Holocaust Poetry of Sherman Alexie and Sylvia Plath

8:30 PM Richard R. Frohock IV

Disrupting Racial Episteme in the Post-Race Era




ENGLISH

10:00 AM Madeline Scully

Critical Fabulation and Truth:

Representations of a Violent Archive

in Beloved and Lose Your Mother

10:45 AM Emma Loest

Drinking the “Black Milk of

Mourning”: Breastmilk, Motherhood,

and Trauma in Beloved and The

Shawl

11:30 AM Elsa Kienberger

A Dozen “Memorable Poems”:

Translating Trauma in Ruth

Klüger’s German and English

Poetry

Lunch Break

ENGLISH




1:00 PM Ariel Smith O’Neal

“The Fate of a Designated Survivor:

Enacting Futurity through Storytelling

in Beloved”

1:45 PM Hannah Holderbaum

“Opening the Tobacco Tin: Unleashing

Trauma in Beloved”



Anderson University Center , Room 133

ENGLISH

In this capstone, we focus on creative nonfiction. Integrating the skills of the fiction writer, the journalist, and the poet, we write about experiences that are personal and cultural, individual and shared.

Informed by course readings, inspired by convictions and values, seminar participants craft their projects out of memories, observations, and research. Through deep engagement with a theme, each writer creates a singular voice that “exists behind the writing, infusing the prose” (Jennifer Sinor, in Flash Nonfiction, ed. Dinty Moore). Creative nonfiction projects affirm Patricia Hampl’s claim: “Each of us must possess a created version of the past . . . If we refuse to do the work, . . . someone else will do it for us” (I Could Tell You Stories). These capstone projects gift us with lessons in art as emotional, psychic, and physical survival. They teach us to look back in order to move ahead.

CREATIVE NONFICTION WRITING

ENGLISH

Professor Callista Brown

ENGLISH

Seminar in Non-fiction Writing



3:15 PM Robert R. Carrasco

“Tough Cookies: Letters to Our Son”

Professor Samuel Torvend

RELIGION

The Religion Department promotes the scholarly study of religion in a culture that continues to be influenced by robust religious commitments. In this year's cohort, senior capstone students have engaged in this scholarly work that nonetheless sheds light on contemporary issues: the role of inclusive language for women and men and the divine; the prophetic, critical voice that criticizes corrupt political leadership; dismantling gender and ethnic walls with loving kindness; empowering women of color to live in hope; and discerning a diversity among American Buddhists that calls into question time-worn models.

We look forward to hearing the fruit of patient scholarly research from this cohort of emerging scholars in religion.

Seminar in Religion


Hague Administration, Room 101

2:00 PM Yina Finch

Out of the Branches:

A Study of American Buddhist Identities at the Tacoma Buddhist Temple

Faculty Advisor: Dr. Erik Hammerstrom

2:30 PM Peanina Porter

Womanist Hope

Faculty Advisor: Dr. Kevin O’Brien

3:00 PM Raj Kumar

Justifying power through engineered

faith: Monarchical leadership and

prophetic Integrity in 1 Kings 22

Faculty Advisor: Dr. Antonios Finitisis

RELIGION

Seminar in Religion


Hague Administration, Room 101

3:30 PM Kate Schneider

Words Have Power: Inclusive language in Lutheran hymnody

Faculty Advisor: Dr. Marit Trelstad

4:00 PM Jenise Cavness

Hesed (Lovingkindness) in the Book of Ruth

Faculty Advisor: Dr. Antonios Finitsis

RELIGION

Seminar in


Anderson University Center Room 213

PHILOSOPHY

In this year’s Philosophy Capstone, we studied the political philosophy of Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), with a special emphasis on her seminal work The Origins of Totalitarianism. Originally published in early years of the Cold War, it is widely considered to be the best theoretical text yet written on the nature of totalitarian systems, as exemplified both by the Nazi and by the Bolshevik regimes of Hitler and Stalin, respectively. In our encounter with this work, we also explored its connections with other aspects of Arendt’s thought, such as her views on the human condition, in general, as well as her views on the nature of violence and evil.

Professor Michael Schleeter

Seminar in Philosophy



2:00 PM Jordan Jacobs

“The Consequences of Automation on

the Human Condition: A Discussion of

Hannah Arendt's Vita Activa and the

Reduction Thereof”

2:30 PM Jess Alley

“What Are We Missing?: The

Relevance of Hannah Arendt's Origins

of Totalitarianism to Genocide Studies

in the Twenty-first Century”

3:00 PM Zeke Naranjo

“Bonding the Broken: Assertively

Addressing Atomization’s Appetite

(Absolutely Assuring the Absence of

Apocalypse)”

PHILOSOPHY

Seminar in Philosophy



3:30 PM Natalie Hull

“Totalitarianism and the End Times:

How Arendt's Philosophy Exposes a

Moral Weakness in the Evangelical

Eschatological Belief”

4:00 PM Dawson Faker

“Machine Morality: Totalitarianism’s

Total Destruction of Ethics”

4:30 PM Bo Frohock

“The Human Victim: An Existential

Definition of ‘Crimes Against

Humanty’”

PHILOSOPHY

Humanities Capstones Spring 2019

Pacific Lutheran University

Division of Humanities

Tacoma, WA 98447

www.plu.edu/humanities

The Division of Humanities at Pacific Lutheran University

is comprised of the Departments of

English (including Children’s Literature and Culture, and

Publishing and Printing Arts),

Languages and Literatures (including Chinese, Classics, French,

German, Hispanic Studies, Nordic Studies and Southern

Lushootseed),

Philosophy, and Religion,

and is also affiliated with these programs:

Chinese Studies, Environmental Studies,

Global Studies, Holocaust & Genocide Studies,

Native & Indigenous Studies, Scandinavian Area Studies and

Women’s and Gender Studies.

senior capstone presentations - plu.edu filepacific lutheran university division of humanities...

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