Senior thesis can be capstone of four years
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Tina Lai '00 questions a
dreamer for her senior thesis in Psychology
(Photo by Denise Applewhite)
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April is the cruellest month" wrote poet T.S. Eliot, and many Princeton seniors whose theses are due this month will agree. Still, those same seniors often find extraordinary satisfaction in the thesis, the capstone of their Princeton years. Following are a few cases in point.
Sharing AIDS
In the Department of Anthropology, K.C. Roney is writing a thesis tentatively titled "'We all die together': Ubuntu and the Sharing of AIDS in a South African Township." She is also earning a certificate in African Studies.
"Ubuntu in the Xhosa language is generally defined as community solidarity," Roney explains. "In normal life, it means that people share whatever they have with the rest of the community. If a person has a windfall, the community can expect to benefit from it; if a person is in trouble, he or she can expect help from the community.
"We're seeing young people use ubuntu as an excuse to spread the AIDS virus. They say, 'I don't want to die alone,' and 'We should all be in this together.' So even when they know proper AIDS-prevention techniques, they ignore them. I'm studying this response both as a twisted form of a traditional cultural metaphor and as a rebellion toward the West."
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K.C. Roney (l) with health
worker Cynthia and patient Nuru from Nomzamo Health
Clinic and fellow volunteer Kate Weingartner of
Trinity College in Cape Town, where she did
research for her senior thesis in Anthropology
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"Doing this thesis has definitely rounded out my Princeton career," says Roney. "It takes the subject I was most interested in and made me an expert."
Darwinist ideas in watercolors
Art and Archaeology major Mark Best is writing on Winslow Homer. "I'm looking at Homer's work from 1881 to 1892, studying the development of Darwinist ideas in his water -- colors (which then become oils once he figures out the idea he is trying to express). I'm linking Homer to the broader social and political events of the 1880s driven by social Darwinism--for example, the defense of trusts in Andrew Carnegie's The Gospel of Wealth."
An internship last summer at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, DC, helped focus Best's interest in American art and gave him the opportunity to explore other aspects of 19th-century culture.
Writing a thesis, he says, distinguishes a Princeton education from "an ordinary education spent writing papers and taking tests." Here, he is "looking deeply into something and having my thoughts evaluated by a world-class professor [John Wilmerding, C.B. Sarifim '86 Professor in American Art] who respects my opinion and judges it critically. He makes sure you think."
Composing community in China
In East Asian Studies, Jeff Knapp's working title for his thesis is "Composing a New Form of Community in China." He is studying the influence of Western ideas of nationalism on China from 1880 to 1920 by looking at the evolution of music in China during this period. He is examining the songs missionaries brought to China; the music brought by secular groups (military and jazz bands); and the "School Songs movement," in which, he explains, Chinese students studying in Japan brought back Japanese songs that were really Western songs.
Knapp says, "There are different levels of community, of which the highest level is the nation -- nationalism, love and loyalty for one's country. One can see the evolution of Chinese popular music creating a new groundwork for this community."
A clarinetist in the University Orchestra who is also earning a certificate in music performance, Knapp has taken the equivalent of 10 semesters of Mandarin (including a summer in Beijing). He has had to translate much of the material used in his research, so his work combines Chinese language, and historical and musicological analysis.
Working on the thesis "brings together the two things that consume my life at Princeton -- music and my major," he says. "Good deal."
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Abigail Wasserman in the lab
where she works on her senior thesis in Geosciences
(Photo by Denise Applewhite)
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In Geosciences, Abigail Wasserman is studying "The Formation of Symplectic Lamellae in Nakhlite Martian Meteorites."
"I'm looking at textural features that are long, thin intergrowths of two minerals contained in the Martian meteorite Nakhla," she says. "'Symplectic' means 'wormy,' and "lamellae' means mineral growth in thin parallel lines. In order to understand their formation, I'm attempting to reproduce them in the lab."
To do this, Wasserman says, "I used a piston-cylinder high pressure apparatus to synthesize the mineral olivine, which is the mineral that contains the lamellae in the actual meteorite. Then I took pieces of the synthesized olivine and put them in a high temperature furnace under controlled oxidizing conditions. After varying time periods, I took the experimental charges out of the oven, polished them and identified mineral phases with an electron microprobe."
A highlight of the experience has been "getting to look at an actual piece of the meteorite -- to study something that was once on Mars." Wasserman recently presented her work at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston, Texas.
She initiated her research as an intern at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, DC, but "it was the support of my adviser, Assistant Professor of Geosciences Thomas Duffy, and the department that allowed me to continue. This kind of intense, scientifically relevant experimental work is not something that students at other schools have the chance to do," she notes.
Citizen participation
For her thesis in the Politics Department, Jennifer Arwade is examining citizen participation in city planning .
"I'm comparing the Minneapolis Neighborhood Revitalization Program -- in which planning and implementation powers, as well as resources, are delegated to neighborhood associations -- with citizen participation in Trenton, where there is no formal process."
In both cities, Arwade conducted interviews with municipal employees, the staff of neighborhood associations and neighborhood residents. A highlight of the research for her was the opportunity to meet "incredible people who are doing extraordinary work in their communities. Whenever I started to get tired of conducting interviews, I would call someone and they would get really excited about my project, and that would make me excited again."
On the basis of her research, Arwade believes that "citizen participation needs to occur through formal processes or programs that are city-wide so as to equalize the ability of each neighborhood to participate. In addition, planning and implementation powers and resources should be given to neighborhood groups, because neighborhoods can often respond to community needs more quickly than the city."
Like many seniors, Arwade has worked closely on her thesis with a senior faculty member -- Todd Professor of Politics and Public Affairs Jennifer Hochschild, who "has been completely supportive and helpful from the first day I walked into her office."
Lucid dreaming
In Psychology, Tina Lai is studying lucid dreaming -- the phenomenon in which someone who is dreaming becomes aware that they are dreaming. Often, she says, a dreamer is able to control and direct the course of a dream; when this happens, "the person's mind is awake but the body is asleep."
Lai, who is also earning a certificate in East Asian Studies, hopes to understand the cognitive basis of lucid dreaming. "Dreamers," she says, "often become lucid because they notice something odd in the dream; the oddity causes them to realize, 'This must be a dream.' I'm trying to see if lucid dreamers are better than non-lucid dreamers at recognizing incongruities."
Using students, she tested recognition of the congruity or incongruity of drawn and photographic images in people who have lucid dreams and people who don't. The incongruity might be something that violated a physical law (such as an object floating in air) or that created an odd situation (a cow in the middle of a freeway).
Lai has found that "lucid dreamers are able to attend more accurately to incongruous elements within images than non-lucid dreamers -- which supports the hypothesis that lucidity arises from recognition of such elements."
The experience of designing, researching and conducting such a study, she says, "has allowed me to appreciate what trained psychologists do and enhanced my understanding of methods in behavioral science."
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