Undergraduate Research Conference

The MLC Undergraduate Research Conference in spring semester is a fantastic opportunity for both faculty and undergraduates in MLC to hear about research in our department. As part of their Honors Thesis, all current honors candidates are asked to present their work, joined by students who have completed distinguished research papers in the Research Seminar (CLTR 389), as well as those undergraduates who have done exceptional translation projects through the Literary Translation Studies program.

Here is a sample of recent Undergraduate Research Conferences and participants:

2019 MLC Undergraduate Research Conference

Panel I: God & Justice

  • Carrie Heusinkveld, "Vivons, si vers la vie on peut me ramener”: Nature, Divinity, and the Afterlife of Tragedy in Garnier’s Hippolyte and Racine’s Phèdre" (Honors Thesis)

  • Ben Goehring, "The Death of the Author of Life: Roland Barthes and Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor"

  • Sarah Murphy, "Signifying Social Injustice in Émile Zola’s Le Ventre de Paris" 

Panel II: Race & Gender

  • Maria Hackett, "The Illusion of Inclusion: Unpacking Racial Bias in Soviet Film and Literature"

  • Siobhan Seigne, "Confessions of a White Widowed Male: Feminist Discourse in Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita" (Honors Thesis)

  • Jixuan Liu, "Expectations on Gender Roles and Preordained Rules in Japan: A Conformist Society Revealed behind Convenience Store Woman"

 

2018 MLC Undergraduate Research Conference

Panel I: Feminist Interventions

  • Alexis Wallace, "Critiquing Chernyshevsky's Feminism: An Analysis of What Is To Be Done?"

  • Jacqueline Meyer, "A Feminist Analysis of Les Fruits d'Or"

  • Emma Dudley, "Tristana: Feminist, Antifeminist, Or Unfinished" 

  • Madeline Clark, "The Subject-Object Binary in Contemporary Japanese Literature: The Shōjo vs. Mother Trope (Honors These)

Panel II: Gender, Psychoanalytical & Post-Colonial Critiques

  • Alyse Shulimson, "Gender Performance and Transgender Identity in Pedro Lemebel's Tengo Miedo Torero [My Tender Matador]"

  • Thomas Listopadzki, "The Semiotic Compulsion in E.T.A. Hoffmann's The Sandman"

  • Cherish Blackman, "Defining the Other to Define the Self: Mikhail Lermontov's Orientalist Critique in Hero of Our Time"


2017 MLC Undergraduate Research Conference

Panel I: Sciences, the Non-Human, and the Human(ities)

  • Sara Xu, "Godzilla vs. Superman: One World or Two?"

  • Hailie Keliuotis, "Mind-Body Duality and the Definition of Humanity in 'I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream'"

  • Andrerw Tarbox, "Poetry as a Medium Through Which the Mapuche Responded to Scientific Racism of Intellectuals in the Nineteenth Century"

Panel II: Deconstructing Normal Notions

  • Bethany Warnock, "'Murder in Balloon Town': Deconstructing Gender Roles and Pregnancy"

  • Ellen Grinnell, "Redefining the Normal: Treatment of Mental Illness in 'La gallina degollada'"

  • Daniel Aliber, "Nostalgic Notions: The Power of the Return"

 

2016 MLC Undergraduate Research Conference

Session I: Photography, Film, and Cultural Critique

  • Grace Grande, "The Crossroads of Art: Exploring Modern Spanish Photography Through Chema Madoz" (Honors Thesis)

  • Nina Baek, "Second Wave Feminism in Godard's Breathless"

  • Nikki Fox, "Authenticity and Ambiguity: Challenging Gender Stereotypes in All About My Mother"

  • Alysha Alani, "Colonial Violence and Liberation in Claudia Llosa's Milk of Sorrow"

Session II: Freud, Jung, and Documentary Truth

  • Alexandra Cohen, "Phallic Phantasies: Freud, Sex, and Carmen"

  • Matthew Sisto, "Haruki Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: A Psychoanalytic Approach"

  • Angela Remus, "Legal Testimony, Literary Testimony, and the Production of Truth" (Honors Thesis)

 

2015 MLC Undergraduate Research Conference

  • Emma Alperin, "Torn in Two: One Man's Impossible Struggle to Find His Path in Colonial Cameroon"

  • Natalia Godyla, "Mikhail Shishkin's The Light and the Dark: A Contemplation of Russian Postmodernism"

  • Lina Meghji, "Death, A Companion for Life: Mortality in the Work of Federico García Lorca"

  • Benjamin Landwersiek, "Transformation of the Face in Spanish Photography"

  • Alberto Carrillo Casas, "Storytelling and the Theatricality of Sound: Translating Vargas Llosa's Arabian Nights"

 

2013 MLC Undergraduate Research Conference

Session I: Women Writing on Gender, Language, Identity, and Power

  • Liza Maizel, "The Ambiguity of Dreams and the Feminine Experience"

  • Veronica Price, "Indistinct Distinction and Blurred Blurriness: Boundary Dissolution and Identity Formation in Toni Morrison's Sula"

  • Lucian McMahon, "Subservience: Female Empowerment in Jean Rhys's After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie"

  • Kristen Scherb, "That's News to Me: The Challenges of Translating La dieta de las malas noticias/The Bad News Diet"

Session II: Traumas, Specters, and Obsessions in Film and Literature

  • Lev Earle, "Looking at Horror: Why We Find Ourselves Obsessed with Our Fears"

  • Peter Kalal, "To Be and Not To Be: The Haunting of Kafka's 'Das Urteil'"

  • Leslie Gordon, "Cat and Mouse and the Nazi Past: The Struggle Between the Repression of Memory and a Need to Write"