Humanities

Moderator: Jessica Hawkins

History Panel 2: “British Colonial Perspectives”

The Process of British Colonialization in India
Brenlyee Meaux
Research Advisor: Dr. Chad Fulwider, Department of History

My project will make the argument that the British Raj reign would not have been implemented or nearly as successful without the British East India Company establishing dominion over India a century before the British Raj, establishing India as a resource rich playground for the British that could make Englishmen rich. My project will demonstrate how this century long financial process primed India for official British rule, while also highlighting the missteps and consequences of the transition, both for the British colonizers and businessmen and the people of India.

The Impact of Colonialism on the Emergence of HIV/AIDS
Milla Reddick
Research Advisor: Dr. Chad Fulwider, Department of History

For empires, colonies function primarily as a means of acquiring resources and generating wealth. This typically means that imperialistic nations want to spend the minimum amount of funds required to maintain control over a region, so their net profits are larger. So long as control of the colony is not threatened, empires are not heavily pressured to improve the quality of life for colonists, as can be seen in the lack of British intervention during Ireland’s Great Famine and famines in India from the mid-1700s onward. When colonies do receive aid, as the American colonies did in the Seven Years’ War, it is most frequently given in the form of military support because another imperialist power threatens to claim the colony for its own. However, starvation and military attacks are not the most pressing dangers colonial populations face. New arrivals to Virginia had roughly a forty percent chance of dying from disease in the first few years. Even colonists not heading to new places with new local diseases often suffered from infections due to inadequate access to clean water or overcrowding. The tendency to view colonies (and, by extension, their people) as resources to be exploited leads to empires building inadequate infrastructure which contributes to the spread of disease, while also preventing colonies from adequately addressing public health concerns themselves due to lack of resources. This behavior and its consequences play a role in the outbreak of various diseases.

The Influence of the Industrial Revolution on English Social Class Structures
Kylie Walker
Research Advisor: Dr. Chad Fulwider, Department of History

I include an overview of the industrial revolution and the economic changes that come from it. I cover the three distinct social classes that were further developed by the industrial Revolution in Victorian-era Britain. I explore how the upper class kept authority over lower classes throughout the process of industrialization. The article “Social Control in Victorian Britain” states: “The social order in Britain was subjected to immense strains by the processes of urbanization and industrialization...Those who [had] power, authority, and influence [sought] to use these to protect and preserve the state of things which [gave] them power, and to maintain the peaceful, and preferably contented, subordination of those less comfortable than themselves.” This illustrates areas to explore when researching the upper classes and gentry in this time period. I analyze how the rise of new industrial technologies and mass production alter or affirm criteria for class divisions.

 

Social Sciences

Moderator: Jessica Alexander

Examining the Boundaries and Barriers to Sexual Agency Among College Students
Marissa Lally
Research Advisor: Dr. Michelle Wolkomir, Department of Sociology

In many social venues, women have made progress towards gender equality, and they have made cultural space—despite persistent tensions--to resist traditional femininity and assert themselves at work, in leadership positions, and in their communities. Subverting traditional gender power dynamics and asserting sexual agency, however, is still fraught with substantial difficulties for many women. This research study explores these difficulties, examining why challenges to the gendered power dynamics of heterosexuality are particularly hard to negotiate. To explore this issue, I conducted in-depth interviews with 18 heterosexual undergraduate men and women at a liberal arts college in the deep south. Initial findings reveal a tension between compliance and resistance to traditional gender power dynamics. While participants voice support for gender egalitarian stances and oppose gender discrimination, they also still perceive men as dominant over women. This “dominance gap” is most prominent as the participants discuss their heterosexual experiences. The men conceptualize their role in sex as initiators and perceive sexual “success” as performance based. Women study participants largely fit their sexual actions into this framework, limiting themselves to responding. Because gender is relational and constructed in interaction, changing this dynamic to a more egalitarian interaction would likely require men to alter how they think about and enact masculinity. Until masculinity is reconceptualized to allow for feminine agency, women’s efforts alone to redefine femininity are constrained.

Kookaburras Laugh Cassowaries Are Deadly: The Role of Narrative Dialogue in Memory Encoding
Reginald A. Porter II
Research Advisor: Dr. Jessica Alexander, Department of Psychology

We use different memory processes to encode, store, and retrieve different kinds of information. It can be difficult to encode and consolidate information we learn in class, but we might effortlessly remember detailed conversations with friends. This study examines the role of narrative dialogue as a way to increase the memorability of information through episodic or narrative memory rather than solely semantic memory. Participants were presented with facts about an unfamiliar exotic bird species, in one of three presentation types: list, monologue, or dialogue. They completed an immediate recall test and a follow-up recall test after several days. All three groups did equally well at the immediate test, but participants who learned the information through the dialogue performed comparatively better than the other two groups at the follow-up test. Participants who learned through dialogue may have engaged more elaborative rehearsal methods and both episodic and semantic memory mechanisms.

 

CLC Group Presentation 1

Moderator: Lindy Broderick

Spiritual Formation

Tori Sparks, Haley Puckett, Meg Hamilton, Julie Barrios, Grayson Gulley, Jacob Colby
Research Advisor: Reverend Lindy Broderick, Christian Leadership Center

Spiritual formation has many different avenues to help an individual grow in their faith, such as: worship, song, projects, scripture, and bible study. Time has a way of changing the way that spiritual formation is present within our lives. At an impressionable age, such as the age of children (5-12), this could be a positive or a negative change. During a time of unprecedented events (COVID-19) our world was changed. In our presentation, we will be discussing the ways that education on spiritual formation in children (specific age of 5-12) has changed due to COVID-19, and the way that spiritual formation education was conducted before COVID-19.