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For the past several years, the economic downturn has been making headlines, and so it seems uncommon to study a market specifically for its stability. Yet this is precisely how Mao Ding ’14, a recipient of a 2011 Emerson Summer Grant, plans to spend his summer, researching the reasons behind the surprising steadiness of the Chinese real estate market, which was expected to collapse in 2008 or 2009.

The banjo can reveal much about socioeconomic class, slavery and music in the 19th century. Catherine Crone ’13 certainly sees the value in this often-neglected instrument. She will spend this summer researching the banjo in order to build an Internet resource about its past and its significance. Crone will be working under an Emerson Summer Grant with Professor of Music Lydia Hamessley to create their project, “A Study of Banjo Instruction Manuals from the 19th Century.”

The subject of medieval times frequently conjures up images of knights, chivalry and the iconic and mysterious King Arthur. Most historians agree that King Arthur is probably only a legend, yet his image pervaded medieval history and politics. Meghan Woolley ’13, a recipient of a 2011 Emerson Summer Grant, will spend the summer exploring the role of Arthurian legend in English monarchies of the 12th to 16th centuries.

Twenty-two students have been awarded 2011 Emerson Summer Research grants.  The students receive a stipend and spend the summer working collaboratively with a Hamilton faculty member, researching an area of interest. The Emerson recipients and their projects will be featured in stories on the Hamilton website in the coming weeks.

Still highly controversial, China’s One-Child Policy has had many effects on the population. One of the least-known is what Olivia Lin ’12 calls “left-behind parents,” or parents who are left in China because their only child is studying in another country. Guided by Assistant Professor of East Asian Languages and Literatures Zhuoyi Wang, Lin is filming a documentary about left-behind parents through an Emerson grant.

Over the past 30 years, writer and director Pedro Almodóvar has created some fascinating and controversial films, and he has received worldwide recognition for it. Almodóvar's work has a surprising number of similarities with Greek tragic playwright Euripides. With an Emerson grant and guidance from Margaret Bundy Scott Professor of Comparative Literature Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz, Andres Matlock ’12 will analyze and compare the two.

Ethnically, religiously and linguistically distinct, the Uyghur people are very different from the rest of Chinese citizens. The Chinese government’s recent push to make Mandarin the only language spoken in China has raised questions in the community about Uyghur and Chinese citizenship. Yan Zhong Zhen ’13 is studying the definition of citizenship and the plight of the Uyghur people through an Emerson grant.

In his neighborhood of Flushing, Queens, Xiang Wang ’12 watches as the lifeblood of the Chinese immigrant community is drained away. Some of these immigrants, out of a desire to “get rich quick,” have turned to gambling. Wang is working under an Emerson grant to further explore the causes and effects of this detrimental trend.

Cynical, suspicious and propaganda-filled, France was not a pleasant place to be in the years between World War I and World War II. Despite having fought on the same side of the war, France and the United States reacted very differently to it, as is shown in their film and print media. Kelsey Brow ’12 received an Emerson Grant to dig deeper into these differences.

One fictional and the other expository, novels and maps have a unique and little-studied relationship. But if maps on their own are misleading, the potential for misinterpretation is even greater when they are used in fiction. Michael Harwick ’11, working with Professor of Comparative Literature Peter Rabinowitz, has been awarded an Emerson grant to analyze the relationship between readers and the maps that riddle the fiction they read.