Arts & Humanities

How can walking change how we understand the world around us and our place within it? This project utilizes walking art as a means of re-building community in a small town. Toano was once an active, walkable village, but the expansion of Richmond road destroyed half of its historic architecture and left the small town to decline. In recent years, the Toano historical society has been working to not only preserve but revitalize Toano. This project expands upon their efforts with the creation of a self-guided walking tour that will allow locals to access interactive archives about various sites that reveal their layered meanings. The archives combine archival research, oral histories, artistic interpretations, site-specific activities, and creative thinking prompts. This project will bring to light previously marginalized narratives of place, incentivize walking as a rehabilitative practice, and strengthen a collective sense of locality and community. 

Student Major(s)/Minor: GSWS and Psychology

Advisor: Michael Gaynes, Art

Many people have noted that African-American people have long had a complicated, love-hate relationship with their hair. Their hair has undergone politicalization, and their hair often symbolizes socio-political affiliations. This project will examine black hair beyond politicalization and self-perception, and explore how hair reflects personal sentiments and assertions of individuals across the black diaspora. In this project, black salon practitioners and regular black people across all ages and genders were interviewed on their personal experiences with their hair in-person or via zoom. Through theme coding, similar themes across each individual manuscript was accumulated. The purpose of this research is discover whether or not the importance of black hair goes beyond the physical and tangible world and into realm of the spiritual, religious, and unseen. 

Student Major(s)/Minor: Business Analytics and International Relations

Advisor: Brad Weiss, Anthropology

When the colony of Charleston, South Carolina was founded in 1670, white colonists exploited the labor of European indentured servants, enslaved Indians, and enslaved Africans. This project aimed to answer the question of how African slavery came to dominate the colony’s economy and provide its labor force. Based on secondary and primary sources, this research analyzes the rise of African slavery in Charleston’s economy, Charleston’s own economic growth, relations between Indians, Africans, and European settlers, and the African and Indian slave trades. African slavery grew in Charleston primarily because of deteriorating relations between white colonists and indigenous people, colonists’ expanding rationale specifically justifying African slavery, and the rise of the African slave trade.

Student Major(s)/Minor: History

Advisor: Fabrício Prado, History

This research is the beginning of my Honors Thesis work, and I’m asking how do modern-day witchcraft practices look in areas with higher levels of historic witch-trial based tourism. I will be taking an anthropological approach, comparing interviews with witches I’ve met in Salem, Connecticut, and Virginia to find differences/similarities. I will also engage in tourism in each area and take field notes for my research. My goal is to understand how the modern religion is shaped by historical implications and capitalism fed by witch tourism. Salem has the most apparent witch tourism, then Connecticut, and Virginia with the slimmest and I hope to find out how that impacts the practices of current witches. I anticipate finding that witches who are more able to profit off of their practice have fonder relationships with tourism than witches who do not, with the highest profit being in Salem.

Student Major(s)/Minor: Religious Studies

Advisor: Annie Blazer, Religious Studies

In exploring “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” by Harriet Jacobs, this project emphasizes how literacy is an embodied risk and experience for protagonist Linda Brent. Linda withdraws her body from slavery by hiding in her grandmother’s garret and isolates herself from her community and its stories. Within enslaved communities, storytelling is a survival method that helps mitigate the realities of slavery; without a storyteller to turn to, Linda becomes a storyteller through letter-writing. This research examines writing through a socio-historical context to reveal the complex interplay between danger and freedom: the attic is physically disabling in how it constrains Linda and symbolically enabling in how it gives her the autonomy to write. This analysis underscores how, through writing, Linda acts as a distancing mechanism for Jacobs, allowing Jacobs to protect her community’s stories from the influence of slavery and (re)write her story without being redrawn into it.

Student Major(s)/Minor: English, Creative Writing minor

Advisor: Richard Lowry, English

This project will explore the concept of Appalachians as a cultural other in America, particularly with regard to how they see themselves as a defined group. Through an examination of the Hatfield and McCoy feud of the late 19th Century, this research will dive into how the legacy of yellow journalism and media fetishization has shaped the understanding of Appalachia for those inside its own borders. An analysis of important pop culture works such as the Hatfield and McCoy miniseries from the History Channel and the Hatfield McCoy Dinner Show in Pigeon Forge Tennessee will reveal deep set prejudices against Appalachians and provide a greater understanding of how the outside world places labels on Appalachians that they themselves internalize.

Student Major(s)/Minor: History

Advisor: Jay Watkins, History

TikTok’s reading community, often called BookTok, has greatly influenced book sales in recent years. This project’s goal was to gain a better understanding of BookTok creators and the books they recommend. I compiled and analyzed a set of videos from #BookTok, and I read the fourteen books that were most frequently mentioned in these videos. Most videos I found were published by female-presenting creators, and most books mentioned twice or more in the dataset were written by women. The fourteen books I read are all either romance novels or feature a significant romantic subplot. Most of these fourteen books have white main characters and lack queer characters. This suggests to those interested in publishing that women who enjoy reading romance are influential consumers at the moment, and may be a call to those using BookTok and seeing only books featuring straight, white characters to diversify their bookshelves.

Student Major(s)/Minor: English and Marketing

Advisor: Elizabeth Losh, English and American Studies

During my summer research, which I conducted in preparation for my honors thesis, I examined dimensions of space, location, and culture to understand how followers of Roman Mithraism expressed their devotion in diverse contexts. My project focused on ancient cult communities of the god Mithras, a Persian-associated solar deity with exclusive rites spread across the expanse of the Roman Imperium. Combating long-held theories about the cohesiveness of Mithraism, I set out to reveal how the diverse canon of mithraic symbols, rituals, and associations was adapted to fit the geographical, spatial, cultural, and psychological needs of individual mithraeum communities. This summer, I created an interactive map of the Roman Empire and its mithraic temples, and began the process of analysis and comparison necessary for my thesis. Examples of mithraea and their geographic, spatial, and cultural context will be displayed in my presentation.

Student Major(s)/Minor: Classical Studies

Advisor: Molly Swetnam-Burland, Classical Studies

The common definition of a creative work is one which is original and valuable, however implicit in that definition is the assumption that the work is created intentionally. This paper examines what the necessary conditions are for an AI model to generate a creative work, not just a work that looks creative. To this end, the paper examines the minimum conditions for a model to understand semantic content and act intentionally. This paper draws upon Chalmers' 1992 response to Searle's Chinese Room argument, which describes a clerk in a room who translates English to Chinese using a series of keys and manuals, without actually knowing any Chinese themselves.

Student Major(s)/Minor: Mathematics, Minor: Philosophy

Advisor: Matthew Haug, Philosophy 

In "The Abolition of Man", C. S. Lewis criticizes the tendency of science to pit man against nature. He envisions a “regenerate science” which would radically re-orient man’s attitude towards the natural world. I argue that Lewis’ vision is being realized in the domain of human anthropology through John Paul II’s "Theology of the Body" (TOB). In the Abolition’s fictional counterpart "That Hideous Strength", Lewis deals with the way modern science puts man at odds with his own sexual nature through contraception. This test case allows for a comparison between TOB and Lewis’ views on sexuality and human embodiment, a much-understudied domain of Lewisian scholarship. I accomplish this by demonstrating that Lewis opposes the use of contraception from implicit principles made explicit in TOB. Viewing TOB as an example of a “regenerate science” has profound implications for understanding Lewis’ “sacramental view of man” and the "Space Trilogy" as a whole.

Student Major(s)/Minor: Physics and Philosophy

Advisor: Jon Thompson, Philosophy

This project analyzes the teaching of flamenco dance in Andalucía, Spain. What do the dance teaching methods reveal about historical and cultural context of the region? I will focus on the traditional dance form of Andalucía: flamenco, which manifests itself in various styles depending on the region. As a dancer myself with no experience in flamenco, I will investigate the processes and institutions through which flamenco dance is taught and the results of these systems. The objective is to analyze from a foreign perspective the culture of flamenco dance education (especially in the city of Cádiz where I conducted most of this project) and relate it to deeper issues of cultural production in terms of dance. What happens to dance education when the performances are aimed at a foreign audience? How has pedagogy evolved in response to globalization? I aim to make visible the invisible: the training that occurs to develop the dance that serves as a figurehead of Spain for so many foreign tourists.

Student Major(s)/Minor: Math, Minor: Hispanic Studies

Advisor: Francie Cate-Arries, Hispanic Studies

Scalawags were native Southern whites who supported freedmen’s Republican vision of political and social transformation after the Civil War. Reactionary forces popularized the term “scalawag” to castigate this group, and in doing so policed the boundaries of their imagined Southern nation and whiteness itself. This project analyzes how conservative Southerners reacting to the Civil Rights Movement referred to scalawags in textbooks and discourse with a focus on rhetorical mechanics. Using the state of Virginia as a case study, this paper argues that Scalawags’ incongruous, muddled position in Lost Cause memory reveals that the primary criterion of Southern nationhood was not whiteness, but rather commitment to white supremacy.

Student Major(s)/Minor: History, Minor: Biology

Advisor: Melvin Ely, History

This project seeks to address who were the first South Asian and South Asian American students admitted into the college and the implications that their presence had on broader Asian American narrative. It also seeks to find the patterns within Asian faculty employment and the implications they also had on the broader Asian American narrative. We employed archival research and conducted oral histories in order to pinpoint specific individuals pertinent to the research. We found South Asian students and faculty of Asian descent from 1950-1990 and established a national and local historical context to better understand the racial and social climate of that period. Our results mirror changes in immigration and employment laws concerning Asians and Asian Americans. Our findings help contextualize the individuals’ experiences at William and Mary and in the local community. 

Student Major(s)/Minor: Shravya Harish, Biology; Crystal Wang, History and English

Advisor: Deenesh Sohoni, Sociology

Over the summer, the KAASE Initiative under the APM Research Project worked on South Asian American history curriculum development, tying local Asian American history at William & Mary to national contexts taught in schools in the United States. Research methods included archival research and, most importantly, synthesizing what we found to digestible pieces of content for both educators and students. This research aimed to accommodate educators who may not have the time or resources to incorporate more Asian American history into their day-to-day lessons to provide a more inclusive education for students in Virginia. By creating useful curriculum, this research project hoped to provide more opportunities for educators and students to learn about Virginia's Asian American history. 

Student Major(s)/Minor: Government and Asian Pacific Islander American Studies

Advisor: Deenesh Sohoni, Sociology and Asian Pacific Islander American Studies, Esther Kim, Social Studies Education at the School of Education

This research project examined an eighteenth-century inquisitorial case against a woman accused of witchcraft near Burgos, Spain. Occurring at a time in which the Spanish Inquisition supposedly stopped prosecuting witchcraft, this research project has combed through testimonies and personal statements from the accused. Ultimately, my research has found that the stereotypes of witchcraft in the most significant series of inquisitorial trials in the Basque country in the early seventeenth century travelled and persisted at least through the eighteenth century. That the inhabitants of local towns were attuned to telltale signs of witchcraft was significant, as they reinforced the notion that the witch continued to be a figure that defied cultural norms. Moreover, that the inquisitors sought to pursue this case, though the sentence never came to fruition due to the death of the accused, demonstrates, in part, continued interest in pursuing inquiries on witchcraft.

Student Major(s)/Minor: History

Advisor: Lu Ann Homza, History

This sociolinguistics project investigates how NFL fans talk about their favorite football teams. A survey evaluates participants on contexts in which they use positive or negative language to refer to their team. Participants also rate their team’s success and the importance of being a fan to their identity. Some results seem intuitive: e.g., participants are more likely to say they would speak positively about their team when asked to imagine they are speaking to an opposing team’s fan. Other results are less predictable: about half of the participants who believe their team is at least somewhat successful respond that they would say their team is “the worst.” Due to the small sample size, further sociolinguistics research should be conducted to determine if such patterns exist in a wider population of sports fans. Psychologists may also study reasons why these patterns exist and potential effects on wellbeing or self-esteem

Student Major(s)/Minor: Linguistics and Psychology

Advisor: Leslie Cochrane, Linguistics

Born from the Occitan movement in the 1970s, calandretas are primary or secondary schools based on linguistic immersion in Occitan, a regional language spoken in southern France. Their founders envisioned calandretas as a place to transmit the Occitan language to children who otherwise would only speak French, and they developed a blend of interactive pedagogies to create an environment conducive to active language-learning and appreciation of local culture. My research, conducted during the 2023 William & Mary summer study abroad program in Montpellier, France, looked at the current situation of the calandretas and the reasons why parents continue to choose calandretas for their children’s education. I privileged information sources like calandretas’ websites and interviews with teachers and administrators to see what parents exploring options for their children would find. I conclude that calandretas are well-established as an education option and use Occitan to animate bilingualism, alternative pedagogies, and cultural heritage. 

Student Major(s)/Minor: Linguistics and Chemistry

Advisor: Michael Leruth, French and Francophone Studies

The non-identity problem attempts to explain the moral permissibility of procreative acts that determine a future person’s existence. If we accept that this person’s life is worth living, then we must also accept that these procreative acts are permissible. However, some scenarios appear to show that this claim is not true, which generates a problem. For example, the non-identity argument says it would not be immoral for a teenage girl to deliberately conceive a child even though she lacks the resources to be a parent. I evaluated promising justifications and proposed a solution that explores how the agent’s motives affect our intuitions about these cases. The non-identity problem has implications in bioethics issues like in-vitro fertilization: where prospective parents can deliberately select for embryos with deficient traits. Another implication is climate change: we can either continue or reduce our carbon emissions, and each choice produces a different set of future people. What are our moral obligations to them?

Student Major(s)/Minor: Biology

Advisor: Philip Swenson, Philosophy

My thesis explores how Charlotte Brontë's "Jane Eyre" and Harriet Jacobs' "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" depict private spaces as an epicenter of women's resistance against 19th century powers that stem from the aftermath of Western colonialism. Both Jane Eyre and Linda Brent are forced into spaces that degrade their physical and mental well-being. When both women emerge from these spaces, they continually encounter forces within private settings that attempt to diminish their physical and metaphorical bodies. Revoking and reinstating power in both Jane and Linda provides a framework to examine women's subordination under powers stemming from Western colonialism, as well as their powerful and passionate resistance against oppressive powers in the 19th century. My research specifically explores how British and American powers, after Western colonialism, compare and contrast in their representations of oppressive forces in Jane's and Linda's private spaces. I also look at how imbalanced power dynamics and setting can be used to reveal specific historic powers that act to continually diminish both Jane and Linda in their respective novels. Their powerful triumphs in private spaces, when read alongside the after effects of Western colonialism, thus reveals a transgressive narrative of female resistance that is characteristic to both the plot of Charlotte Brontë's "Jane Eyre" and Harriet Jacobs' "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl."

Student Major(s)/Minor: English and Psychological Sciences

Advisor: Deborah Morse, English

Dual language programs provide students the opportunity to learn English and a secondary language (which in most cases is Spanish). Through these programs, these students tend to perform better on standardized tests than their peers who are not enrolled in these programs. To date, there is limited research on these programs at the middle school level, and through this research and literature review, I aim to demonstrate the positive effect they can have at the secondary level. With this research, I aim to analyze both qualitative and quantitative articles looking at the setup of these classes, along with what subjects are taught in which respective language.

Student Major(s)/Minor: Government

Advisor: Katherine Barko-Alva, Dual Language Education

This year, our research continues to delve into the historical context of black removal in the triangle area and its surrounding neighborhoods. We aim to narrate the evolution of a black community built by prosperous black merchants for their own people from the ground up. At its pinnacle, this area faced displacement through eminent domain to revitalize Williamsburg for the greater good. This redevelopment meant the displacement of the black community to preserve a colonial (white dominant) sacred space. Our research sheds light on this often overlooked narrative, emphasizing the vibrant livelihood and love that once thrived, its abrupt disruption, the resistance efforts against the city and Colonial Williamsburg's initiatives, and the enduring legacy of the community.

Student Major(s)/Minor: Breyonna: Psychology major, Public Health minor; Phoebe: Sociology major, History minor

Advisor: Amy Quark, Psychology

As part of my thesis, I am examining the relations between Jews and Christians in sixteenth-century Italy, during the later part of the Renaissance. By looking through records of the Inquisition in Venice and Florence—which have been collected into a book and digitized—I am analyzing sex crimes, as sexual relations between Jews and Christians were illegal then. I plan to do a microhistory on one of the cases, which means that I am using a small event to shed light on bigger questions, such as: How did a marginalized group (Jews) interact with the dominant group when such a fraught topic as sex is concerned? How did both communities react to such transgressions? There is scholarly controversy on how often Jews and Christians interacted, and I hope to shed some more light on this topic. 

Student Major(s)/Minor: History, Minor: Religious Studies

Advisor: LuAnn Homza, History

The project focused on answering the question of “How does gender affect media perceptions of women in high government offices, specifically the office of the Vice President?” Using the New York Times as the primary publication for which the research is centered 150 articles will be randomly sampled for Vice President Harris and President Biden during their first six months in the Vice Presidency. The articles will then be coded based on how much they pertain to the Vice President, explicit mention of their gender/race, character traits ascribing them, etc. It is predicted that the findings from the content analysis will indicate that during the first six months of her Vice Presidency, Kamala Harris’s gender, race, and competency will be discussed more in news media compared to that of Joe Biden in his first six months in the role of Vice President. 

Student Major(s)/Minor: Anthropology, Government

Advisor: Mackenzie Israel-Trummel, Government

This research explores what the Chinese neoliberal generation––a generation born in the late sixties and early seventies that does not follow recent intellectual trends in reevaluating Reagan-Thatcher neoliberalism––is thinking under current political, social, and economic milieu. It considers how they respond to evolving sociopolitical circumstances within China, thereby reflecting on how neoliberalism, once considered universal, is simultaneously integrated and debated in a foreign context. The research is primarily based on written sources produced over the last decade (especially memoirs, published interviews, editorials, and blog entries) and aims to produce an annotated bibliography of literature on Chinese neoliberalism available for future scholarly use.

Student Major(s)/Minor:  Chinese Studies, Government

Advisor: Michael Hill, Chinese Studies

Research on the early Roman Empire often focuses on the emperors and does not delve into the power of the traditional Roman aristocracy or the rising class of senators from the provinces. This project will look at the symbols and power of aristocratic identity in Tacitus’ historical works within the context of the transition between the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire and Tacitus’ own identity. Tacitus was a Roman official without a traditional Roman aristocratic background and he was born in the provinces, far from Rome. This project will compile information on and analyze how the interrelation of memory and power in the traditional Roman aristocracy (such as the importance of ancestors, family, naming practices, etc) is used by historical figures in Tacitus’ works and how that use is portrayed by Tacitus.

Student Major(s)/Minor:  Classical Studies, Environment and Sustainability

Advisor: Jess, Classical Studies

Investigates the conservation movement in Chicago particularly as it relates to the Commission on Chicago Landmarks (CCL). The CCL is a branch of the Department of Planning and Development. The establishment of the CCL means that today much of Chicago’s historic architecture is under the legal protection of Chicago’s government and are therefore unable to be torn down or modified without approval. However, the Commission is relatively young, having only been established in 1968. Meanwhile, numerous significant buildings relevant to Chicago’s architectural history as well as Chicago’s culture have been lost, such as the Chicago Stock Exchange, Garrick Theater, Home Life Insurance Building, and more. The loss of the sites is not indicative of a weak conservation movement, but rather a weak government body. Other conservation-minded organizations were involved in preservation in Chicago, and these bodies are also examined for their role in aiding the CCL. This project seeks to investigate what buildings and circumstances prompted Chicago to start the Commission on Chicago Landmarks. Through archival research, the history and role of the Commission from its early roots to the contemporary day are examined. 

Student Major(s)/Minor:  Art History (Concentration in Critical Curatorial Studies), History

Advisor: Sibel Zandi-Sayek, Art History

In 1954, Maryknoll Sister Marian Peter (also named Marjorie “Margarita” Bradford Melville) was assigned to teach at a Catholic girls’ school in Guatemala City in 1954. Concerned by the treatment of the poor, predominantly Indigenous people in the Western Highlands, she organized student volunteer work to help these communities. These experiences taught her students the importance of social justice work and exposed Sister Marian Peter to revolutionary movements and ideologies. After discovering her activities in December 1967, the Maryknoll Order expelled Sister Marian Peter, alongside some of her colleagues and students, from Guatemala. Using press coverage, Sister Marian Peter and Tom Melville’s memoir, and declassified CIA documents, we aim to compare the different narratives surrounding this event. We plan to use these sources to reconstruct the details of these events, parsing out how intention, opinion, and memory can be used both to purposefully and intentionally shape narratives.

Student Major(s)/Minor:  Laina: Government and History, Mayra: Psychology

Advisor: Betsy Konefal, History

In 1803, the last year of the Haitian Revolution, 57 ships voyaged from the soon-to-be black-led nation of Haiti to Charleston, South Carolina. By 1805, trade between these two spaces had almost entirely diminished. Through constructing a database of ship voyages in Charleston in 1803 and 1805 and in Cape Francais from 1804 to 1806, this project seeks to analyze how Haitian independence transformed trade networks between the U.S. South and Haiti.

Student Major(s)/Minor:  History, Government

Advisor: Fabrício Prado, History

In the language acquisition process, English-speaking children commonly make errors with pronoun case–for example using the object me for I as the subject of a sentence. Spanish is similar to English in that it also has case distinctions only in pronouns, but differs in that subject pronouns are optional (pro-drop), and object pronouns are typically clitics that come before or attach to the verb. Analyzing transcripts from monolingual Spanish-speaking children and bilingual English- and Spanish-speaking children, this study examined pronoun case acquisition cross-linguistically to help answer the question of what processes and sensitivities are universal and which are language-specific, based on the input that the child receives. Overall, monolingual Spanish-speaking children made pronoun case errors at a much lower rate than their English-speaking counterparts, and bilingual English- and Spanish- speaking children made fewer errors in English than their monolingual English-speaking counterparts.

Student Major(s)/Minor:  Linguistics, Mathematics

Advisor: Kate Harrigan, Linguistics