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- Creators: Barrett, The Honors College
- Creators: Novak, Gail (Pianist)
Note: This work of creative scholarship is rooted in collaboration between three female artist-scholars: Carly Bates, Raji Ganesan, and Allyson Yoder. Working from a common intersectional, feminist framework, we served as artistic co-directors of each other’s solo pieces and co-producers of Negotiations, in which we share these pieces in relationship to each other. Thus, Negotiations is not a showcase of three individual works, but rather a conversation among three voices. As collaborators, we have been uncompromising in the pursuit of our own unique inquiries and voices, and each of our works of creative scholarship stand alone. However, we believe that all of the parts are best understood in relationship to each other, and to the whole. For this reason, we have chosen to cross-reference our thesis documents.
French Vanilla: An Exploration of Biracial Identity Through Narrative Performance by Carly Bates
Deep roots, shared fruits: Emergent creative process and the ecology of solo performance through “Dress in Something Plain and Dark” by Allyson Yoder
Bhairavi: A Performance-Investigation of Belonging and Dis-Belonging in Diaspora
Communities by Raji Ganesan
The U.S. Navy and other amphibious military organizations utilize a derivation of the traditional side stroke called the Combat Side Stroke, or CSS, and tout it as the most efficient technique available. Citing its low aerobic requirements and slow yet powerful movements as superior to the traditionally-best front crawl (freestyle), the CSS is the go-to stroke for any operation in the water. The purpose of this thesis is to apply principles of Industrial Engineering to a real-world situation not typically approached from a perspective of optimization. I will analyze pre-existing data about various swim strokes in order to compare them in terms of efficiency for different variables. These variables include calories burned, speed, and strokes per unit distance, as well as their interactions. Calories will be measured by heart rate monitors, converting BPM to calories burned. Speed will be measured by stopwatch and observer. Strokes per unit distance will be measured by observer. The strokes to be analyzed include the breast stroke, crawl stroke, butterfly, and combat side stroke. The goal is to informally test the U.S. Navy's claim that the combat side stroke is the optimum stroke to conserve energy while covering distance. Because of limitations in the scope of the project, analysis will be done using data collected from literary sources rather than through experimentation. This thesis will include a design of experiment to test the findings here in practical study. The main method of analysis will be linear programming, followed by hypothesis testing, culminating in a design of experiment for future progress on this topic.
Shakespeare’s Case for Vulnerability: Giving Voice to Pain and Suffering is a combination of two pieces of work. The research centers around understanding the communication of pain and suffering and how this factors into our everyday lives, in combination with an interview and video project called Evolution of Woman. This project sought to determine the different facets of pain and suffering and how, specifically, Shakespeare communicates these concepts in his work. This work also explores how the representation of pain and suffering was different between male and female roles in Shakespeare’s writing. From this research, questions were developed to interview Shakespearean experts and actors. These interviews explore the details of portraying Shakespeare’s characters and how gender plays a role in the characters’ expression of pain and suffering, as well as what it means to be a female actor in plays that are dominated by male characters.
Rhetorics of criminality have long been written onto Palestinian bodies. From Dareen Tatour's imprisonment by the state of Israel to the U.S. detaining Adham Hassoun indefinitely as a "security threat", these rhetorics lead to material violence against Palestinians on a global scale, as well as on a discursive and interpersonal level. Communicative work which seeks to decolonize the Palestinian body in its various settings is vital to our survival in literal as well as symbolic ways. From a postcolonial perspective, we cannot extricate the individual from the communal, the local, the national, the global nor the universal. A postcolonial understanding of "survival" demands that we reflexively interrogate the Palestinian body in its sociohistorical complexity and on its own terms.
Autoethnography is uniquely situated as a method for postcolonial analyses of Palestinian survival. Chawla and Atay argue, "postcolonialism and autoethnography are inherently self-reflexive practices… that necessitate a centering of both the subject–object within a local and historical context" (4). In this performance, I introduce "unarcheology" as a postcolonial method for learning to love the Palestinian body. Using media and embodied performance, I stage a series of scripts comprised of poetic autoethnographic reflection, repurposed diary entries from an archetypal Palestinian "criminal," and the text of my father's indictment. These scripts, composed through a queer, collage-like method I call "unarcheology," are separated into temporal sections (past, present, and future) and audience members determine the order of their performance, thus demanding direct engagement in the performance's decolonial project. Staged on and around a single pile of dirt, this performance interrogates colonial barriers of criminality preventing the capacity to critically love Palestinians. It documents the survival that Palestinians are forced to embody- its goal, however, is the pursuit of critical, generous, decolonized love.