SPRING 2002 MAPS

AMERICAN STUDIES: "Thinking on Modern Black Gay Male Subjectivity Through the Lens of Literature Written by American Black Gay Men." Joseph Nelson. [Professor George Barlow]. In this MAP, I am going to situate the historical constructions of the black gay male subject. My project will seek to reach an understanding of the complex relations between a certain way of being (the modern black gay subject) and a certain way of understanding and acting in/on the world (love). My line of interrogation is formulated towards establishing what was/is necessary and indispensable for the constitution of a so considered black gay male subject. In short, my project will trace a historical ontology of the modern black gay male subject in order to develop an archaeology of the modern black gay male subject through a theoretical lens that is centered on the capacity to love and be loved.

ANTHROPOLOGY: "Senior Thesis." Benjamin Bloom [Professor Jon Andelson]

ANTHROPOLOGY: "Senior Thesis." Joseph Feinberg, Matthew Kaler, Christine Newkirk [Professor Doug Caulkins]

ANTHROPOLOGY: "Spatial Analysis." Carl Drexler, Ann Kolbeck, Nadia Manning, Dell McLaughlin, Robert Nalewajk, Travis Ormsby, Laurie Tolman Alexander Woods [Professor Kathy Kamp]. Students will explore prehistoric social, political, economic and ecological relationships through the analysis of spatial patterns, using concepts such as carrying capacity, optimal foraging theory, site catchment analysis, and central place theory. The course will include instruction in Geographic Information systems Analysis and students will conduct a major project applying GIS to the interpretation of a prehistoric social system.

ANTHROPOLOGY: "Senior Thesis." Jenny Haggar, Jennifer Thornton [Professor Kathy Kamp]

BIOLOGY: "DNA Damage Repair in Acinetobacter sp. Strain ADP1." Elizabeth Ottesen. [Professor Leslie Gregg-Jolly]. The purpose of this project is to investigate the DNA damage response of Acinetobacter sp. Strain ADP1. We will investigate the roles of several genes implicated in ADP1's response to DNA damage received during starvation phase growth. These loci will be investigated through phenotypic analysis of mutant strains. This work was presented in a scientific paper and in a departmental seminar during the spring semester of 2002.

BIOLOGY: "Senior Thesis." Emily Westergaard [Professor Kathy Jacobson]

BIOLOGY: "Dendrochronological Analysis of Flood Plain Management Along the Rio Grande River, New Mexico." Natalie Ceperley. [Professor Peter Jacobson]. This project will examine the effect of floods along the Rio Grande in central New Mexico on the growth of cottonwoods (Populus deltoides) in the Bosque del Apache national Wildlife Refuge. Disconnection from the flood pulse is hypothesized to induce a dramatic decline in the production of riparian forests. Increment core samples collected from two sites, one subject to regular flood pulses and one not, will be analyzed. Stepwise regression will be used to assess the relative influence of various hydroclimatic variables on tree growth. Findings from this project could provide valuable insights regarding the management of the river.

BIOLOGY: "Inverse PCR of Starvation Induced Genes." Robert Sanchez-Gulbrandson. [Professor Bruce Voyles]. I will draw upon the extensive literary review and techniques I studied over the last semester (including INV-PCR, DNA digestions and litigations, etc.) to accomplish two principal objectives: 1) to continue searching for gene products expressed during stationary phase; and 2) to explore the regulation of stationary phase genes. In particular, using selective media and substrate transfer experiments, I will attempt to uncover evidence for the existence of bacterial concentration-dependent quorum sensing in A. calcoaceticus. I intend to keep a detailed lab journal of my findings, prepare a poster presentation for the HHMI symposium in the spring, and perhaps deliver a brief seminar on my findings.

BIOLOGY: "E. Coli Resistance to T2." Ben Buelow. [Professor Bruce Voyles]. I will begin by knocking out the ttr and ompF genes in Escherichia coli. I will then use manganese ion substitution PCR to create a library of mutants of the ttr or ompF gene, which will then be transfected into the null mutants. Transfected mutants resistant to infection by T2 will be selected and their mutations characterized. In the analysis, I expect to find some trends in point mutation s that result in resistance, although I am not sure in what region of the protein (extracellular, intracellular, or transmembrane domains) these mutations will cluster. Mutations that result in a truncation or other block to expression of the protein entirely should also result in resistance.

FRENCH: "Around Moliere: Text and Performance from the 17th to the 21st Century." Emily Sahakian [Professor David Harrison] Conducted in French. Examines the signification of Molière's plays as created through different stagings from the era of Louis XIV to today. Explores the transformation of textual issues through modern performance practices. Topics covered: social stereotyping and individuality, the representation of women, comedy versus tragedy, religion and heresy, madness and reason, self-awareness and self-delusion. Presented results on campus April 2002.

GERMAN: "Senior Thesis." Jeffrey Kramer [Professor Dan Reynolds]

HUMANITIES/SOCIAL STUDIES: "Space & Place in Europe and the Mediterranean, 400-1600." Tariq Omar Ali, Marcy Brant, Whitney Davidson, Joseph Feinberg, Preeti Gupta, Jacob Isserman, Sarah Liebman, Sarah Neilsen, Matthew Wilson [Professor Elizabeth Dobbs, Professor Marci Sortor] This interdisciplinary, advanced seminar will explore medieval and early modern conceptions and practices of space and place in Europe and the Mediterranean. Our readings will draw on a wide range of primary materials: medieval and early modern maps, pilgrims' and travelers' accounts, city plans, art and architecture, literature and plays, and the work of humanists. Through our readings, we will examine the perspectives and experiences of Christians, Muslims and Jews, women and men, nobles and common folk, those who roamed the seas and those who lived out their lives within city and cloister walls. In the second half of the semester, each student will pursue an independent, mentored, research project. Students with a reading knowledge of Old or Middle English, Latin, French, German, or Italian will have opportunities to use it in their research. To see a short syllabus for the course, go to http://www.grinnell.edu/courses/hum/s02/hum395-01.

INDEPENDENT: "Factors Affecting Tea Earnings in Kenya and Sri Lanka." Margaret Orwig [Professor Wayne Moyer]

MATHEMATICS/COMPUTER SCIENCE: "NP-Hard Problem Heuristics." Chris Galicia. [Professor Ben Gum]. The family of NP-Hard problems consists of optimization problems for which there exists no known efficient algorithm. To deal with this deficiency, approximation algorithms have been developed which produce "good enough" solutions efficiently. Since approximation algorithms produce good but not necessarily optimal solutions the quality of solutions can vary according to the specific algorithm and problem. In order to qualitatively compare the desirability of applying a given algorithm to a problem, several of the more promising algorithms will be implemented and their run-time and the quality of their solutions will be analyzed. This will result in an experimental comparison of approximation algorithms and recommendations for a solution strategy to apply to the given NP-hard problem.

MATHEMATICS/COMPUTER SCIENCE: "Flows on Two-Dimensional Manifolds." Daisuke Ueno. [Professor Marc Chamberland]. There are two things that I would like to investigate in this independent study. First I will study dynamical structures on compact two-dimensional manifolds such as the torus, Klein bottle, and Projective Plane and categorize them qualitatively. Second, and more fundamentally, I will consider planar dynamics with and without structural stability and study the equivalent dynamics on the Poincare sphere. Further, I will study when dynamics systems can be folded onto a two-dimensional manifold and whether the structural stability assumed in the planar dynamics will persist that manifold.

MATHEMATICS/COMPUTER SCIENCE: "Senior Seminar: Topics in Geometry." Katharine Anderson, Logan Axon, Benjamin Blehm, Tiffany Brunk, Amanda Cook, Jared Corduan, Morgan Page, Audrey Porter [Professor Emily Moore]

MATHEMATICS/COMPUTER SCIENCE: "Senior Thesis." Michael Yohay [Professor Henry Walker]

MUSIC: "Senior Project." Inger Bergom, Ryan Jones [Professor Jon Chenette]
Inger presented "Composition and the Creative Process in Children" as part of the Steiner Award competition for creative work in music, April 2002.

Ryan presented "Paul Hindemith's Konzertumusik for Brass and Strings: An Analysis Informed by His Theories of Music," April 2002.

MUSIC: "Senior Project." Devin Hughes, Hisako Watanabe [Professor Doug Diamond]

MUSIC: "Senior Project." Allyson Carnes [Professor John Rommereim]

MUSIC: "Senior Project." Phillip Hales [Professor Nina Treadwell]
Presented "Space, Music, and the Production of Black, Gay Identity" on campus, April 2002, which won the Department of Music's Steiner Award competition.

MUSIC: "Senior Project." Natalie Kneip [Professor Roger Vetter]

POLITICAL SCIENCE: "Senior Thesis." Halima Hakim, Amanda James, Joseph Newbold, Vanessa Pierce, Pranita Sharma [Professor Wayne Moyer]

POLITICAL SCIENCE: "Senior Thesis." Garrett Oakes Hansen [Professor Jack Mutti]

RUSSIAN: "Need Title." Aimee Hutton [Professor Kelly Herold]

RUSSIAN: "Senior Seminar." Caleb Lindley, Erin Schmidt, Kimberly Smith, Anna Thelen [Professor Anatoly Vishevsky]

SOCIOLOGY: "The Dominican Diaspora in New York City." Sagrario Rosario. [Professor Chris Hunter]. For this independent project I am interested in exploring the identity discourses of Dominican-ness and American-ness that have emerged in the Dominican Diaspora situated in New York City since the tragedy of September 11. The focus of the study is to discover the patterns that personal narratives of some Dominicans may reveal about the trajectory and experience of being Dominican and American citizens in the United States. In order to carry out this project, I will conduct short and long open-ended in-depth interviews of Dominican Americans, all of which will be tape-recorded. All the short interviews, in addition to being tape-recorded, will be filmed. This project will culminate with a final interpretative 10-page paper and a 30-minute documentary open to the general public and the Grinnell College community.