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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.

After our trash leaves our hands, we in the U.S. like to pretend it no longer exists. But to people in Mokattam, an informal settlement just outside Cairo, Egypt, sorting and recycling garbage is essential to their livelihood. Working with Assistant Professor of Government Peter Cannavo, Caitlin O’Dowd ’12 was awarded an Emerson grant to investigate the relationship between the waste system and social justice in Mokattam.

Edgy, scary, stylish, sinful: gay culture is viewed in different ways by different communities in the United States. But for black men in the LGBTQQI community, their doubly marginalized status creates tensions in all of the communities to which they belong. Working with Associate Professor of Africana Studies Angel Nieves, Randall Mason ’11 is using his Emerson grant to investigate the lives of black gay men.

Many Americans underestimate the art of Japanese animation known as anime. Not only is anime a multi-billion-dollar industry in the United States alone, but it reincarnates important aspects of Japanese culture that may not otherwise be as accessible to American audiences. Alex Benkhart ’11 is investigating the characteristics and popularity of the Japanese heroine that echoes back to earlier tenets of Japanese culture.

When it comes to the mind and the body, we live immersed in two opposing viewpoints. While many of us believe in the power of science and the firing neurons of the brain that account for many of our actions, we continue attributing our sensations and thoughts to a separate concept of the “mind,” an abstract entity only loosely connected to the physical body. Working with John Stewart Kennedy Professor of Philosophy Richard Werner and through an Emerson grant, Himeka Hagiwara ’11 is exploring the mind-body dichotomy and the conflicting perspectives that are so prominent in our culture.

The mission of the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, a nonprofit corporation headed by folk artist and cultural icon Pete Seeger, is to protect the waters of the Hudson River from pollution and degradation. This summer, Emerson Fellow Jacob Sheetz-Willard ’12 is researching how Pete Seeger’s Clearwater movement transcends environmental activism and becomes a cultural movement similar in organization to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. 

Hamilton has no formal pre-law program, but that doesn’t stop a large number of graduates, many of whom have degrees in economics or government, from pursuing a law degree after Hamilton. With so many students choosing law school, some faculty members ask “How do we better prepare students with interests in becoming lawyers?” The possible solution? A new major that would draw on classes from multiple disciplines and would, hopefully, be attractive for students who anticipate a future in law.