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)
Major: Anthropology, Spanish
Minors: 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”
I am studying the enculturation process of black African immigrants in St. Louis and investigating the role that this process plays in the formation of an ethnic and social identity. In particular, I am looking at how black African immigrants define themselves in modern American society, how they adapt to life in St. Louis, the extent to which they retain their native culture, and the historical, social, political, and economic factors that affect each of these issues.
Michael Dango (Colorado Springs, Colorado)
Major: English
Minor: Women, Gender, & Sexuality Studies, Physics
Mentor: Dr. Joachim Faust
Project title: "In or Out: Sexual Orientation and Cognitive Frames of Metaphor"
This project studies the dichotomies that may structure contemporary and colloquial American thought. Specifically, it is interested in how a construction of a homosexual identity as a spatial space (i.e. a "closet") in supposed "opposition" to heterosexuality may inform thoughts not only on desire, sex, and the "opposite" sex, but also on language itself.
Betty Gibson (Pleasant Valley, Iowa)
Major: Art History
Minors: French and German Mentor: Professor John Kline Project Title: "The Liberation of Color in Modern Art"
I am interested in theories about color in art, particularly those beginning to develop during the 20th century with the collapse of the Academic art system. More specifically, with my project I intend to investigate the fact that much of the rhetoric that describes color during this period genders color as female and line as male. I have already been looking into the historical context for this gendering, by tracing the path of the disegno/colore debate up until the point of early Modernism. I am also interested in David Batchelor's book, Chromophobia and the work on color done by John Gage.
Dustin Palmer (Lowell, Indiana)
Majors: Political Science, American Culture Studies
Mentor: Professor Krister Knapp
Project Title: "SNCC and Friends: Through Radicalization and Separatism"
My project explores the intragroup conflicts and eventual decline of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the "shock troops of the Civil Rights Movement. I am interested in SNCC's relationship with an informal support network in the North, characterized by "Friends of SNCC" groups. I hypothesize that SNCC's increasingly caustic public persona and separatism impaired Friends of SNCC groups' ability to effectively fundraise, hastening the abrupt decline and disappearance of SNCC.
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.
2009-2010 Fellowship 
"The faculty and staff in Arts & Sciences are incredibly supportive, whether you’re pursuing a study-abroad opportunity or organizing a community service project."
