2002 - 2003 School Year

To view their research project, click on the title of each paper. 

The Representation of Buffalo Soldiers in Today’s Society
Kate Alexander

     This is a study that examines the ideas and perceptions that American society has of the Buffalo Soldiers. Doing a historiographic analysis of the literature written about Buffalo Soldiers and conducting a survey on what people know about Buffalo Soldiers is helpful in understanding who these people were and what they have become today. Results indicate that there are multiple and conflicting definitions for the Buffalo Soldier and that people learn about Buffalo Soldiers from a variety of sources, including books, television, and songs.

Class Thoughts: The Significance of Income in How People Think and Talk About Class
Carolyn Ambrose

     The purpose of this study was to gain a clearer understanding of the American view of class and class structure. Where their ideas about class come from, how people locate themselves and others within this structure, what their conceptualization of class means to them and society at large, and how the changing structure of class impacts them and their perceptions of class. Through interviews, surveys, and a study of current literature, the historical foundations of current class thought were unearthed. But these foundations are being threatened by the current shrinking of the middle class in defiance of the ethos of the American dream that has been held on to for so long. The result is a confusion and mistrust of the American class structure and an increasing class awareness that was not nearly so prevalent in years past.

Patriotism Then and Now:
December 7th vs. September 11th
Te-Hina T. Ickes

     This is an in depth study of the response of American citizens to the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 and the more recent terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 and how these individual responses compare and/or contrast to one another. This study also examines a broad spectrum of attitudes and ideas surrounding patriotism. I spent several weeks conducting interviews with individuals who were between approximately the ages of 18-25 at the time of the bombing of Pearl Harbor (1941 group) as well as those individuals who were approximately between the ages of 18-25 on September 11th (2001 group) in hopes of uncovering how their personal visions of patriotism may have been altered or reinforced as a result of each respective attack. This project shows that the 1941 group, for the most part, supported decisions made by the American government in the wake of Pearl Harbor and considers that support an integral characteristic of being a truly patriotic citizen. The 2001 group, on the other hand, does not reach a consensus and appear to be ostensibly unsure of what it means to be truly patriotic.

It’s Like Brothers Across the Waters:
International Fandom, Identity, and Celtic FC
Jeff Peden

     My research focused on overseas fans of the Scotland-based Celtic Football Club (Celtic FC) from the Chicago Celtic FC Supporters Club (CCSC). What I hoped to understand was what role Celtic FC played in the formation or reaffirmation of national and religious identities of the members of the CCSC. Also, I wanted to look at what sort of perceptions and images the CCSC members had of Celtic FC outside of the direct sport context.
     Catholicism has had a rather unwelcome, and somewhat confrontational, place in Scottish society. This confrontational nature is perhaps epitomized by the long time rivalry between Scotland’s two biggest clubs, Glasgow Rangers and Celtic FC. Called the ‘Old Firm,’ this rivalry has come to be more than just a game between cross-town rivals; it is a battle between dominant and subaltern identities within Scottish society. Each club has become associated with a national and religious identity. Rangers has become associated with being British and Protestant; whereas, Celtic has become associated with being Irish and Catholic. The local fan bases for these clubs, while all being from Scotland, have also taken on these identities.
     My research consisted of participant observation and interviews. I observed the CCSC gather four times to watch games, two of which were Rangers-Celtic matches. I also did eight interviews of members of the CCSC.
     What I found was that Celtic FC’s Irish/Catholic identity was very much recognized and acknowledged. Furthermore, Celtic FC was viewed as a symbol of the immigrant Irish, itself founded to help immigrant Irish. While the Irish/Catholic identity of Celtic FC is prevalent among fans in Glasgow, there was an emphasis on the immigrant. This symbolic status, thus, makes Celtic FC an institution all Irish, both immigrants and those living in Ireland, can share. While Irish immigrants might experience various aspects of Irish culture, St. Patrick’s Day for example, differently, they can always talk about Celtic FC. What results from this is the elimination of Celtic FC as being anything Scottish, aside from a participant in the Scottish league. However, this doesn’t mean there is a perception of exclusion. In fact, the exact opposite is the case. Celtic FC is viewed as the embodiment of inclusiveness and openness to difference; while, the Celtic FC supporters are an ever-welcoming brotherhood.

The Martial Arts Experience:
Small Towns of the Midwest
Laura Pilcher

     The purpose of my project is to look at the interests and the reasons behind the interests that have influenced college aged practitioners to train in the martial arts. I would like to understand how they first heard of the martial arts, what intrigued them so much about it that made them begin training, what it is about the training that keeps them from quitting, if a religion or spirituality affects their practice in any way, as well as how much they know and understand of their art.
     The majority of the research has been conducted in two neighboring small Midwestern towns, approximately four miles apart. I am mainly concentrating on two Kuk Sool Won (a Korean martial art) studios, one in each of the two downtown areas; I will refer to them as Studio #1 and Studio #2. In addition to scholarly research compiled for the project and a review of popular media on the martial arts, I was also able to interview the owners, instructors, and some of the students at both of the studios. To supplement the information obtained from the interviews, I trained at both of the studios as a form of participant observation.
     I analyzed how the official aims and 'creed' of the art of Kuk Sool Won, as stated by its founder, compared with the observations and interviews I conducted with the participants concerning their reasons for practicing it. I discovered that there was an inconsistency between the two. The official aims stressed that obedience, national loyalty, cooperation, equality, and world peace while the American practitioners appeared to be more motivated by physical conditioning, self-defense, motivation, and confidence. Thus, one way of looking at this, is to perceive a process of an Americanization of the martial arts occurring in the United States today.

Put ‘Native’ in Quotation Marks
Social Roles of English in Tanzania and India
Reedy

     This study is an extension of a short research project I began while attending the ACM program “Nation Building and Development in East Africa”. During the four and a half months of the program I lived primarily in Dar Es Salaam, while also spending two weeks in Zanzibar as well as two weeks in the rural Kilombero region near Ifakara. During this brief exposure to a few of the rural and urban settings within Tanzania, I became interested in the somewhat ubiquitous presence of the English language. As the exclusive medium of higher education, I often saw English used as a language of discourse among professors and students at the University of Dar Es Salaam, since I lived on the campus grounds while in Dar, where my host father was a professor of linguistics. However, the presence of the English language extended itself in some form to virtually every member of the community, through code shifts, multilingual advertisements, and imported, nativised words (e.g. teksi, kompyuta, televisheni, etc). American slang had a significant presence in youth culture, while bus passengers were witnessed on more than one occasion switching to English to demand bus fare after initial requests in Swahili were ignored. It became clear that whether one was rich or poor, living in urban or rural areas, held a college degree or never finished primary school, English still played some role within their daily social life. I wish to frame my research question around an investigation of what social roles the English language has come to play within various global communities. I have hypothesized that the social significance surrounding English will be influenced by the country’s colonial experience, religious demographics, and relations within the international community. While focusing my inquiry on Tanzania, I have broadened my research to include interviews with English speaking Indian students at Knox College.

Female Television Fans and Internet Community
Sarah Walker

     Since the 1960s, female media fans have gathered into communities of interest surrounding television shows, miniseries, and films, but now, those communities are moving onto the internet. My research studied ten women who are active in this community to attempt to better understand these communities. The communities are formed through chat, e-mail and e-mail lists, and weblogs (or webjournals), through the personal relationships that the women in them form. The women often join to simply to not feel alone in their enjoyment of a particular media source, but end up finding friendship, a supportive community through difficult times, or an means of escape from a stressful life. These friendships often spill over into the outside world, as the members of these communities meet off-line and form relationships that they describe as more honest than any they could have with someone who did not know about their fan activities. These venues have provided for them a place where they are valued for their thoughts and their interests, rather than for looks or social skills. The internet is vastly changing the way their community operates, in one way, making it easier for the members to get to know each other as people and not simply by their reputation in the larger fan community, but it is also drawing fire from the members of communities formed before the internet as these online communities become more and more visible, thereby destroying the anonymity fans have always enjoyed.

Declarations of Rights
A Study of the Voices from the Makah Whaling and Inuit Sealing Struggles
Lee Wiles

     Interaction between humans and other animals has been a ubiquitous aspect of the human experience. Animals, whether they possess a true voice or not, are inextricably linked to the meanings we have given to them. Our views of animals determine our decisions regarding the way we act toward, for, and/or with them. Our interpretations of animal thought, feeling, behavior, abilities, and desires have caused different human groups and individuals to kill, save, preserve, love, fear, ignore, exterminate, and grant rights to animals. They have led to the rise of the modern slaughterhouse as well as to the creation of no-kill animal shelters. They have caused people to exterminate entire species while leading others–and in some cases the same people–to honor the interests they believe animals have not to be harmed or killed.

Identity Issues In Biracial Youth
A Qualitative Study
Ryan L. S. Williams

It is known throughout our country that racism has been one of the biggest problems that our society has ever had to deal with. Despite all of our efforts to try and rid our nation of this ugly aspect, it continues to exist today. Granted, that it is not as nearly as large of a problem as it has been in the past. And it was not even until a few centuries ago that our society began to accept the mixing of the races. Interracial marriage has been a very controversial topic both in the past and to this very day. The issue thickens when you narrow this issue down to the mixing of Caucasian Americans and African Americans.

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