Projects
Black Feminist Thought
AFRST 402/WMNST 402
Mariah Stember, visiting assistant professor of women’s and gender studies received a CAT grant to create a class project in WMNST 402/AFRST 402. Students created a podcast for their final project in Transnational Feminism, Feminist Activism and Africa.
“In terms of creativity, the students involved in the project honed their creative skills throughout the semester. From original conceptualization of their project topic and what person or organization they wanted to interview for their podcast, to the final design and creation of their website showcasing their podcasts, students were expected to be creative in their approach, thereby sharpening and honing their creative skills.”
The students that participated in this project refined their abilities and skills in a number of areas, including oral communication and interviewing skills, writing skills, technical skills (learning the program Audacity, used to edit the podcasts), project management skills (multi-tasking and organizing the many different parts of the project as they adhered to our class timeline and deadlines), and also qualitative research skills. The main area in which the students developed their aesthetic discernment was through their management and creation of the class website. The website showcases their podcast projects, and gave them the opportunity to work together choosing the website theme and template, color scheme and palette, images, and quotes to display on the site.
From Collecting to Curating: American Art from 1900 to 1950
Art History 310
Associate Professor of Art Rob Knight received a CAT Project Grant to support his team-taught course Art History 310: From Collecting to Curating: American Art from 1900 to 1950 with Michael Shapiro ’71, director emeritus of the High Museum of Art in Atlanta.
This course addresses this model in exciting ways that started with students interpreting historic artwork within the American context, followed by learning new methods of utilizing technology such as SketchUp and WordPress to demonstrate their aesthetic discernment in the exhibition design process while furthering their creative thinking. Students worked in teams to create virtual exhibitions to creatively demonstrate new skills developed during the course which also allowed for individual assessment.
Professor Knight worked with Doug Higgins (Instructional Technologist in LITS) to develop a WordPress website platform to house the virtual exhibitions curated and created by the student teams using SketchUp. The digital aspects of this course were critical to its effective execution and in particular to supporting Hamilton’s educational goals of Aesthetic Discernment, Creativity, and Disciplinary Practice.
Buddhism Business and State
Asian Studies 303
Abhishek Amar, 
associate professor of Asian studies, received a CAT grant to develop creative projects on Buddhist monastic sites, which could be a site portfolio, a story map, or a poster in Spring 2021. In the fall 2021, the students worked with ARCGIS Story map to develop a portfolio of a Buddhist monastic site through a careful study of textual, inscriptional, archaeological, and art-historical materials.
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Sample ARCGIS Story map: Kanheri Digital Portfolio by Nick Lyon ’22
Introduction to Music, Sound, and Technology
Music 270
David Bird, visiting assistant professor of music, received a CAT grant to create a student project in Music 270, Introduction to Music, Sound, and Technology. Students wrote music for specific locations around the Root Glen, resulting in a public sound walk that all members of the Hamilton community could experience using a smartphone and headphones. He implemented this project via the GPS Sound Walk application Echoes Labs.
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Alyssa Samuels ’25 writes about her sound walk in A Musical Tour Through Root Glen
Literature and Revolution
Russian 227
Jason Cieply, assistant professor of Russian languages and literatures, received a CAT grant for his Russian 227 course to create a literary journal. Students used InDesign in the creation of In Media Rus that included student writing and illustrations. Students also engaged with Hamilton’s Special Collections.
Cieply said, “This project involved disciplinary practice both in the conventional sense, learning the analytical skills involved in academic writing on culture, but also concrete skills that bridge academic training and real-world practice, some of which may come in handy in future professional contexts. I worked to expose the students to a variety of literary magazines, from the period covered in our course, from Hamilton’s Special Collections, and from contemporary Russia. My hope is that these encounters, coupled with their regular meetings about their vision for the project and written personal reflections, helped them to develop in terms of aesthetic discernment and creativity. Their conversations with editors like Pavel Arseniev and Christian Goodwillie, along with their InDesign training on LinkedIn, helped them to make strides toward mastering disciplinary practice.”
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Evan Robinson ’23 shares his reflections on Jason Cieply’s Literature and Revolution class
Art Through Sociology’s Lens
Assistant Professor of Sociology Jamie Kucinskas received a Project Grant to support her courses Introduction to Sociology, Sociology of Religion, and Race, Class, Gender. The final projects were taught in conjunction with the Wellin Museum’s exhibition SUM Artists: Visual Diagrams & Systems-Based Explorations.
Thirty-six students worked on final projects to design a creative object incorporating a sociological imagination, in alignment with C. Wright Mills’ distinction between “personal troubles” and “public issues” and the sociological quest to understand “what is going on in the world, and to understand what is happening in [oneself] as minute points of the intersections of biography and history within society.”
In creating their works of art, students were encouraged to think about how to use the piece of art as an informative piece of public sociology which provokes questions and raises awareness of a social issue in its audience. A website was created for the course, with support from LITS experts, to showcase student work and students’ interpretations of the SUM pieces of art from a sociological perspective.
