The last time a scholar had investigated the life of the third century Christian martyr Sainte Foy was in 1020, in the midst of a cult fascination with the 12-year-old mystic. Amy Remensynder figured it was about time to update the literature."

The History and Literature concentrator began researching the Sainte Foy cult sophomore year and this spring produced a senior honors thesis that Medieval History Professor Richard M. Fraher calls "a better piece of scholarship in this field than the last book that was published" on saint worship.

The cult of Sainte Foy (Faith), says Remensnyder, reflected a crucial transition from earlier, more imposing representations of saints to post-11th century cult figures, who, she explains were "merciful, tender, personal figures." In addition to reviewing documents and books on her subject, the senior actually visited the French village of Conquers, center of the Sainte Foy cult. She describes it as "a very, very wild area, overlooking a mountainy river gorge--I thought I would die trying to reach it."

Few seniors go to such lengths in writing theses; fewer still receive the type of praise accorded Amy Remensnyder, whose work garnered summa grades. But each year, undergraduate scholars here produce a startling variety of senior projects, examining everything from baseball business practices to Depression-era film styles to a pre-pubescent saint who "restored vision to men and to horses and resurrected dead mules and children."

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Remensnyder explains in her work. "Sanctus et Novitas" (Saintliness and Novetly) that:

Animals were not less worthy of Sainte Foy's attention, but it was not so much for the sake of the animal as for that of the owner that she performed such miracles.... The second type of personal miracles that made Sainte Foy essentially unique were called joca ("jests").... In these joca Sainte Foy overlooked no detail, no matter how small, or seemingly unimportant.... Sainte Foy helped one of [the 11th-century author] Bernard's pupils find a prayer book that he had lost in a forest near Angers. She filled a gourd with wine to refresh several hot and thirty pilgrims....

Several of the joca which evince Sainte Foy's attention to detail related to the liberation of prisoners. In one account a miraculous ass appeared out of nowhere on which the freed man rode off with his chains still dangling about him. The ass disappeared just as mysteriously. In another instance, she released a nobleman, Raymond, and as he was feeling through the door that she had opened for him, a woman holding out a pair of shoes suddenly appeared before him. She inquired if he was the same Raymond whom Sainte Foy had just delivered. She then handed him the shoes and told him to put them on and hurry to get away while he could. Of course, this was no human woman: "this opportune help made him realize that she who was before him was none other than Sainte Foy."

In other areas, directly relevant books have never been published Susan Moffat wrote "Proust: about "The Remembrance of Things Past." In examining "What we do when we read and why it's pleasureable." the History and Literature concentrator first challenged deconstructionist critic Paul de Man, who calls Proust's text "unreadable," then did a analysis of the text, comparing the pleasures of reading, eating and sex.

Drawn from "The Joy of Sex" and "The Joy of Cooking," Moffat's introduction begins with columns of words of abstract terms about reading in French, sex acts and objects, and ways of preparing mushrooms. Affirmation  Armpit  About Babel  Bathing  A la Schoener Babil  Big toe  Bisque and clam Bords  Bites  Broiled Brio  Blowing  Broth Clivage  Bondage  Butter Communaute  Boots  Canape Corps  Butterd bun  Canning Commentaire  Chains  Cauliflower and Derive  Chastity belt  Creamed Dire  Chinese style  Croquettes Droite  Clothed intercourse  Dried Echange  Corsets  Florentine Ecoute  Dancing  Frozen Emotion  Discipline  Identification Ennui  Exercise  Lima beans and Eavers  Feathers  Marinated Exactitude  Femoral intercourse  On toast Ketiche  Feuille de rose  Onions in wine and Guerre  Florentine  Peas and Imaginaires  Foursomes and moresomes  Rice ring Inter-texte  Friction rub  Ring or mousse Isotrope  G-string  Ring mold with sweetbreads Langue  Gadgets and Gimnicks  Sauce Lecture  Gamahuche  Sauteed

a. Roland Barthes, Le Plaisir du texte, table of contents. b. Alex Comfort, ed., The Joy of Sex, table of contents. c. Irma Rombauer, The Joy of Cooking, s.b. "Mushrooms."

Read across, rather than down, the above becomes a poem. Call it Civilized Man. Only he gives names to, let alone catalogues reading, sex, and eating. The difficulty of the task is revealed in the bizarre logic of classification, which is no more advanced than the "certain Chinese encyclopedia" in a passage by Borges, quoted by Foucault, in which it it written that "animals are divided into: (a) belonging to the emperor, (b) embalmed, (c)tame, (d) sucking pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies." We now have animals organized into phylum, class, order, family, genus, and sppcies, but even in this age of home computers it is difficult to talk about reading, eating and sex in any ordered manner. Inter-texte, Friction rub, Ring or mousse makes at least as much sense as Florentine, Frozen, Identification, Lima beans and. But the second should go together while the first should not. The tables of contents from Le Plaisir du texte and from The Joy of Sex are not only in alphabetical order but in page order. Dr. Comfort having decided that the logical order of sex acts is alphabetical, M. Barthes having decided that the logical order for the alphabet and words thereby attached might as well be numerical. The name "table of contents" might as well refer to a dinette strewn with random articles of consumption....

This is a test. But not only a test. My essay is on reading and I am testing the limits of my reader I have got his her attention and he she is either with me or against me.

People with large adoring audiences were the subjects of another senior thesis this year but one set in a very different era. Thania Papas combined her interests in History and Visual and Environmental Studies in investigating the treatment of women in four Depression-era films.

Comparing the heroines of "It Happened One Night" (1934) "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town" (1936). "The Philadelphia Story" (1939) and "Woman of the Year" (1941). Papas concluded that for the time period, these characters could be considered "feminists in their own right--strong intelligent women who exuded self-confidence" but that the mavic plots were designed to return them to their "proper place" in society.