All News

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.

Legendary trumpeter Clark Terry once said that true musicianship can be achieved through imitation, assimilation and innovation. This summer, Tim Carman ’11 intends to tackle the “imitation” aspect; working with an Emerson grant and Professor of Music Lydia Hamessley, he will create a manual of the most important drum grooves for drummers to study.

Over the past few years, people have become aware of a health threat in an unexpected place: traces of bisphenol-A (or BPA) that leach from reusable plastic water bottles. Because of his interest in endocrinology and toxicology, Dan Brimberry ’13 has decided to further pursue this subject with funding from an Emerson grant and guidance from Timothy Elgren, professor of chemistry.

If you told your 10-year-old nephew to eat three pieces of broccoli before he could eat dessert, he could probably figure out that eating four or five pieces would still get him that sundae. But at what age do children learn to distinguish ‘at least n,’ ‘at most n’ and ‘exactly n’ and apply them? Celia Yu ’12 received an Emerson grant to study the numerical acquisition of children with regard to their interpretation of such expressions.

Despite the constant quest to live a happy life, people in today’s complicated world are finding happiness increasingly elusive. Past philosophers have proposed how to be happy, but each suggestion is radically different. Advised by John Stewart Kennedy Professor of Philosophy Richard Werner, Jesica Lindor ’12 is analyzing philosophies on happiness through modern psychology through an Emerson grant.

Long thought to be the most objective of artistic mediums, film is slowly being acknowledged as subjective, the camera impacting its subject matter like in any other art. In conjunction with an Emerson grant and advised by Visiting Professor of Art History Scott MacDonald, Cameron Breslin ’11 is analyzing early ethnographic documentaries to determine how accurately and objectively they portrayed their anthropological subject.

Observed from the West, Hinduism appears as a complex, heterogeneous, polytheistic amalgamation of religious practices. But just below its multifaceted interior lies a concept that Westerners understand only too well: the control of colonization. Through an Emerson grant and the guidance of Associate Professor of History Lisa Trivedi, Kate Harloe ’12 will spend the summer investigating the roots of Hinduism as well as its contemporary incarnations in Indian society.