SENIOR COHORT
Greg Allen (Stilwell, Kansas)
Major: Political Science
Minor: Anthropology
Mentor: Andrew Rehfeld
Project title: “Rethinking Political Institutions”
I am investigating the cognitive biases and heuristics that tend to lead individuals to make predictable types of judgment errors. Specifically, I am looking at methods to compensate for these errors in the realm of government institutions. Such methods have the potential to greatly improve the choices of decision makers as judged by themselves.
Robin Meyer (Manteca, California)
Majors: Anthropology, Spanish
Minor: Applied Linguistics
Mentor: Dr. Joachim Faust
Project title: “The Linguistic Ecology of Spain’s Basque Country”
I am interested in how people who grow up speaking two languages understand themselves as bilinguals. What do they see as the psychological and/or social advantages and disadvantages of being bilingual? What are their opinions of the languages they speak and the fact that they speak them? For my MKUHF project I am looking at these questions in the context of the Spanish Basque Country.
Travis Proctor (Fort Scott, Kansas)
Major: Religious Studies
Minor: Classics
Mentor: Professor Roshan Abraham
Project title: "The demonology in Justin Martyr's 1 Apology and Late Antique Religion"
My Merle Kling Undergraduate Honors Fellowship project will examine the demonology in Justin Martyr’s 1 Apology. Throughout the work, Justin presents these shadowy spirits as the enemies of Christianity and the impetus for a plethora of lies, plagiarisms, and obstacles to the gospel. My project first aims to explore what ancient sources may have contributed to Justin’s demonology, and, by extension, the implications this may have for our understanding of what Christians believed about demons at this time. Secondly, I will examine how Justin utilizes demons as part of his apologetic agenda. Next, I will discuss how Justin’s 1 Apology, especially through its demonology, establishes Christian identity through its creation of boundaries via negative branding. Finally, I will place the previous three questions in a larger context by exploring the implications of Justin’s demonology in relation to locative and utopian religions. More specifically, I will examine what importance Justin’s demons may have for the posited evolution of Late Antique religions from location-based traditions to utopian-escapist systems centered on ‘holy men.’
Laura Soderberg (Little Rock, Arkansas)
Majors: English Literature, Physics
Mentor: J. Dillon Brown
Project title: “American Perspective on the Orient”
I am studying how American literature portrayed the Middle East during the second half of the nineteenth century. My project will have a particular focus upon divergences from the better studied European Orientalism. Examples of such divergences include a stronger compulsion to establish the US as a global power and more intense attention to the racial composition in the region. I have been working so far with popular authors like Joel Chandler Harris, Lew Wallace, and Mark Twain.
JUNIOR COHORT
Lurit Bepo (Arlignton, Texas)
Majors: Biology and International and Area Studies
Minor: Public Health
Mentor: Dr. Carolyn Sargent
Project title: “Defying Bubbled Circle Classifications: Identity in African Immigrant Populations in St. Louis”
Iam interested in the process by which black African immigrants and refugees integrate into the St. Louis community. In particular, I am lookingat how they define themselves in modern Americansociety, how they adapt to life in St. Louis, the extent to which theyretain their native culture, and the historical, social, political, andeconomic factors that affect each of these issues. Using this information, I want to investigate the implications for immigrant and refugee health.
Michael Dango (Colorado Springs, Colorado)
Major: English
Minor: Women, Gender, & Sexuality Studies, Physics
Mentor: Dr. Joachim Faust
Project title: "Legal Discourses on Sex and Sexuality"
I am interested in how the language of American law, with an emphasis on the Supreme Court's formation and interpretation of it, has conceptualized sexuality, especially within the past 50 years as homosexuality and bisexuality have arisen as visible and at times panicked foci of attention. My project draws from cognitive linguistics to explore the metaphors, dichotomies, and presupposed (perhaps incoherent) categories that legal discourse has deployed to help make sense of this arena.
Betty Gibson (Pleasant Valley, Iowa)
Major: Art History
Minors: French and German Mentor: Professor John Klein Project Title: "The Liberation of Color in Modern Art"
I am currently reseaching decorative art in France from about1880-1930. I am especially interested in the work of Claude Monet,Paul Gauguin, and Henri Matisse because these artists seem to work inthe gray area between the definitions of high and low art in thisperiod, causing confusion for critics, fellowartists, and the art viewing public (as well as today's art historians). I am consulting primary textsabout decoration from the period such as Henry Havard's dictionnaire de l'ameublement and The Grammar of Ornament byOwen Jones.
Howie Rudnick (Worcester, Massachusetts)
Majors: History, Economics Mentor: Jean Allman Project Title: "SNCC in '66: The Impact of the 1966 Coup in Ghana on the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee's Relationship with Africa and its Perceptions of Pan-Africanism"
Evolving out of an interest in the ways that Black Americans have historically related to Africa, my project examines how members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committe (SNCC) engaged the African continent both politically and as an ideological concept in the 1960s. I am investigating how the organization reacted to the 1966 coup of Kwame Nkrumah's government in Ghana and what this response might say about the group's evolving connection with the African continent and vision of Pan-Africanism.
Congratulations to our newest Fellows, sophomores Andrea Fondaw, Michael Rao, Stephen Aiken, Deanna Parrish, and Ezelle Sanford!
2009-2010 Fellowship 
"While studying abroad in Cape Town, my Hoopes Undergraduate Research Award allowed me to film a documentary on the role that education is playing in the reconciliation process in post-apartheid South Africa and move outside of the classroom in my exploration of the practical application of classroom knowledge in everyday life."
