Last Friday afternoon was a time of academic and artistic celebration.
Classes let out early, and Detchon hall was transformed from an academic building to the festive grounds of the 8th annual Celebration of Student Research, Scholarship, and Creative Work.
The event resembled a combination of gala and carnival, complete with food, posters, suited students and would-be audience members shuffling back and forth from presentation to presentation.
The Celebration of Student Research, Scholarship, and Creative Work began in 2001. It is held each year on the last Friday afternoon in January. The students covered a wide range of topics, from the sublime messages of Maxim Magazine and perceived short-comings of bilingual education in secondary schools to rational synthetic strategies and the growing trend of single parenting.
“The Celebration is an important opportunity for Wabash students,” said Professor of Rhetoric Todd McDorman, who is also Chairman of the Celebration Committee. “It is a way to empower students in the search for new knowledge and to meet them outside the traditional boundaries of the classroom. On this score the Celebration, and even more so the process of producing the work featured at the Celebration, reflects the deep student engagement and close work with faculty that is at the core of the Wabash experience.”
Greg Slisz ‘10 definitely found his topic outside of the classroom.
In his presentation, Maxim Magazine and the Destruction of the Young Male, the sophomore presented his analysis of negative male stereotypes in the popular publication. In fifteen minutes, he took the audience through the history of “lad” magazines, like Maxim, which began in the United Kingdom as a type of comedic genre. He showed how the genre’s migration to America changed its focus from comedy to assumptions about masculinity.
In slide after slide, Mr. Slisz scrolled the pages of Maxim to show car ads, motorcycles, reckless behavior, violence, alcohol, money, and ultimately complete domination over women, dinner parties, and society in general.
“I got the idea from my freshmen tutorial class last year on Men and Masculinity,” Slisz said, who used the magazine as the topic of his research paper. “There are lots of ads as well as articles that encourage reckless behavior and emphasize speed and driving recklessly. I know all this seems like joking and all in good fun but men are more than twice as likely as women to die in car accidents. When you hear the jokes enough, they almost become ingrained in you, and you don’t even notice them anymore.”
While Mr. Slisz used a popular magazine to analyze its implied messages, Shayne Dube ‘09 used rap music and African-American tradition to do the same.
Mr. Dube explored the link between contemporary Hip-Hop and other African-American traditions in his presentation, “Hip Hop: A Survival of the Secrecy Tradition in African American Expressive Culture.”
A few hundred years ago, Mr. Dube argued, the behavior of enslaved African Americans was policed, and if they transgressed against that they could have faced severe punishment. Out of this, African-Americans had to develop a way to communicate with each other and do it in such a way that would probably not be detected. This coded communication was used to pass on information and survival techniques that would be useful to future generations.
Mr. Dube used the examples of African-American folk tales, Negro spirituals, and setting-specific songs, in which slaves would sing songs with slow tempos to regulate the pace of their work in the plantation so they would not overexert themselves.
The link to contemporary hip-hop refers to the conflicting and subtle messages found in some songs. Mr. Dube played a song that showed “the bifocal nature” of hip-hop, in which murder, racial epithets, and, derogatory views of women are expressed in the first part of a verse while education, respect, and forward mobility are evoked in the latter.
Mr. Dube argued that many rappers are trapped in a marriage with the recording industry in which they must perform songs that will sell, a mandate that often calls for negative themes. The choice to put the positive voice in the song is, said Mr. Dube, an act of deviance similar to the secrecy traditions to which he referred earlier.
Audience members thought Mr. Dube mastered the different ideas implicit in his topic.
“Shayne presented a skilful and perceptive analysis of the text and its context from a variety of perspectives—gender, ethnicity, economy, history, and culture—that converged around the central theme,” said Assistant Professor of English Agata Szczeszak-Brewer. “His talk was very engaging.”
Having listened to a number of presentations and walked around Detchon Hall, students and faculty members enjoyed the Celebration and opportunity to learn about different topics and exchange ideas about presentations.
“I think [the Celebration of Student Research] is a great idea,” said sophomore Jacob Castilow. “Bringing professors and undergraduate students together to work on things outside the classroom is something I don’t think happens anywhere else.”
McDorman agreed. There was much to be celebrated.
“From the perspective of the Celebration Committee, the event went quite well,” McDorman said. “There was a wonderful array of work presented, from nearly every academic discipline and field of study. Personally, I had rich conversations with students about psychology experiments (Abe Llamas) and thought provoking works of art (Steve J. Miller). All told, there were 83 entries at the Celebration on Friday--a record turnout for the event.”