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Juancho Hurtado ’11 is a fire-breathing dragon. Well, not really. But he has experimented with the dangerous art of breathing fire this summer. His newly-acquired talent comes from his work at Teatro Taller de Colombia, one of the oldest street theatre groups in Colombia. He is studying street theatre there through the Emerson Grant Foundation, which was created in 1997 to promote collaboration with faculty on subjects that students find fascinating and worthwhile. His adviser and co-researcher is Professor of Theatre Craig Latrell, who stays in regular contact with Hurtado while he is out of the country.

The Oath of Lasagna is not a pledge to Italian food; it is a modern-day revision of the Hippocratic Oath, an ethical code of conduct for doctors. Historians believe that the Greek physician Hippocrates, the “father of western medicine,” wrote the Oath, thereby taking medicine from a practice of superstition to one of ethical obligation and rationality. This summer, Julianne Tylko ’10 is studying the relationship between the Hippocratic Oath and modern versions like the Oath of Lasagna, devised by Dr. Louis Lasagna in 1964.

In Bollywood movies, romance is trailed by an international shadow. The majestic palaces and cathedrals of Europe have become iconic of love themes in Hindi language movies. It is also common to see scenes of men sweeping women off their feet as mountains like the Swiss Alps rise to a clear sky in the background. The ways in which both women and nation are portrayed in Bollywood movies are fascinating to (Catherine) Fiona Kirkpatrick ’10, whose research this summer will analyze these gendered and nationalist discourses. Her collaboration with Assistant Professor of Anthropology Chaise LaDousa is funded by the Emerson Grant Foundation, created in 1997 to encourage students to work with faculty on research that suits their specific interests.

Having taken a class on research methods at Hamilton, Sanjana Nafday ’10 is well-versed in statistics. But when she heard that 50 percent of those arrested in the Kings County District of Brooklyn belonged to ethnic or racial minority groups, she didn’t need a hefty knowledge of numbers to understand that something was going on beneath the surface. The Bureau of Justice Statistics had reported that many of these individuals were from the lower economic strata or had poor educational background. To Nafday, there was an obvious hole in the study that she could not ignore. 

For Andrew Peart ’10, the literary movement known as Language poetry is the “pinnacle of modernist experimentation.” In the middle of our discussion at the library, he got up out of his seat and brought back Poetry magazine. Within seconds, he was pointing out what he thought were the best poems in the magazine.

A man with a red nose and white face paint strolls into a pediatric hospital. He greets a small child who has cancer. Pulling out a letter “e” made of construction paper, he shows it to the girl. The letter is solid brown, and when the clown asks her what it is, she looks confused. But then a smile flickers across her face: “Oh, it’s a brown ‘e,’” she understands. “A brownie!” A non-profit organization like Clown Care is small but has a huge presence in both the hearts of its clientele and the nation.

Although classes have ended for the 2007-08 academic year, 118 Hamilton students won't be going home right away. They'll spend at least part of their summer on campus conducting research with Hamilton faculty. Eighty-two students will conduct science research, 18 students will work with faculty on Emerson grant projects and another 18 will study public policy for the Levitt Center.