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. 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. In "Reel Life Women: The Role of the American Female in Film During the Depression." Papas gives detailed scene-by-scene analysis of the four works, such as the following commentary on "It Happened One Night": [Claudette] Colbert wakes up to find [Clark] Gable gone. She begins to panic, again showing the audience that she is not really as tough as she wants to be. Gable, however, who has just gone out to get some food and a toothbrush, soon returns and dominates her life once more. He has had her dress pressed and sends her to the showers while he fixes breakfast. Whereas the night before he was playing father to Ellen, he now becomes her mother as well. In a famous sequence, he teaches her how to properly dunk and eat a donut. It seems as if he is always "teaching" her something, constantly asserting his control and superiority over her. When her father's detectives show up looking for her, Ellen and Peter carry out an hilarious charade, pretending to be a bickering married couple. Their portrayal of a poor, lowercalss husband and wife is a commentary in itself about traditional marriage roles. He yells, she cries and he threatens her with physical violence. It is funny, perhaps, because we are told it is only a characature, a parody.... The conversation turns to love and marriage. Ellen tells him that he could probably make some girl "wonderfully happy" and by the look on her face we are certain that she is talking about herself. Peter, however, must always appear to remain in control of the situation so he tells her that he has not met the right girl yet. Economics students Thomas Barkin and Leonard Mendonca turned their attention not to the Battle of the Sexes, but to that of the baseball diamond. Barkin explained "The Effects of Free Agency on Major League Baseball," while Mendonca looked at "Racial Discrimination in Major League Baseball." "The league is actually more competitive because of free agency" Barkin explains, adding that he dispelled early fears that free agents would raise player turnover and heighten inequities among teams. The system, he says, adjusts itself: In theory, the extinction of the reserve clause should not change the distribution of skill too much and therefore should not decrease the competitiveness of the leagues. The key point to remember is that contracts of players are transferable among teams in exchange for money and/or other players. If a player has a higher marginal revenue product for Team A than for Team B (because he is a hometown hero, or fills a gap at third base, etc.), one would expect Team A to bid more than Team B in the free agent marker. Similarly before the free agency system was pot into effect. Team A could have paid the money directly to Team B for the player. Since its marginal revenue product for the player is greater, it would be willing to pay Team B a sum equivalent to the marginal revenue product of the player for Team B "Baseball is really nice to study because there are good numbers," says Mendonca, who concluded that there is indeed racial discrimination in major league baseball. The admitted baseball buff also concluded that Blacks are over-represented at both ends of the salary spectrum but start out making less than comparable white players. Discrimination affects mediocre Block pros the most, Mendonca argues: It is not possible to reject the theory that Blacks are encouraged to play other sports, nor can it be conclusively said that white high school baseball coaches are not prejudiced against Black players in general and are discouraging them from playing baseball. It may be that white coaches are prejudiced against Blacks, and only when a Black player is clearly superior is he allowed to play. It is also possible that if Blacks are generally better athletes than whites, high school coaches may encourage Blacks to play football and basketball because they generally return more money to the school because of greater fan interest than baseball Since there is no evidence of racial barriers between the minors and majors it could be that this barrier exists even before professional baseball. Helene Sahadi York of the Government Department also discussed discrimination--that which women face in politics. She concluded that despite tremendous obstacles a "latent feminist constituency" exists among American voters. York administered a questionable to women at Radcliffe, Lesley College, Simmons College and Boston University, among other schools, and discovered consistent "feminist sympathies." However, she points out that: Despite generally strong agreement with feminist items and economic equity items, this sample of young women often shows hostility to the feminist movement and to feminists...94 percent of the respondents agree with the substantive clause of the ERA, "that equal rights under the law should NOT be denied on account of sex." Yet, by comparison, only 66 percent support the ERA versus 24 percent who are opposed. Ten percent are undecided, by far the largest group of undecided in 36 questions.... Respondents generally agree that women should have equal opportunities and be equal in all spheres, but 14 percent think that "women will end up with things they don't want--too much equality" and one-third (34%) agree that "there is such a thing as too mock equality.". The last question asked respondents whether they describe themselves as feminists Predictable more than a majority ($54) did not, whereas an unexpectedly high percentage (43%) did.... That feminism is seen as separatist or concerned exclusively with women troubles many of the respondents. One Radcliffe respondent, 21 associates feminism with "supporting the rights of women over the rights of men" A second contends that it means "divisiveness and isolationism which encourages women to focus on the quality of their lives and not on the general quality of all lives." Julie Tang of the History and Science Department focused on an individual rather than a broad field, producing a biography of the late Lawrence Professor of Chemistry Emeritus, George Kistiakowsky. Subtitling her work, "From Bomb Creator to Peace Crusader," Tang examined the background of the Manhattan atomic bomb project, in which Kistiakowsky played a major role. In the first biography of the prominent scientist, she used documents from the Harvard Archives; the Council for a Liveable World, which Kistiakowsky founded, and primary documents from his personal files. Tang met Kistiakowsky two years ago and received his permission to begin a biography. After he died last December Tang says, "I felt that it was something that I could de as a tribute to him:" She wrote: In the years from 1968 through 1982, Klstiakowsky took his message to the American people by becoming an outspoken critic of the government and its handling of nuclear weapons policy. Ironically, this was the man who had put the first nuclear weapon together with his own hands who had done so under a "native" trust in the wisdom and judgement of the government leaders, and believing that these weapons would make the world a safer place. Half a lifetime later, he became entirely devoted to trying to "undo the nuclear weapons." under the conviction that the world is drifting toward nuclear war, and hoping to bring about a change in attitudes which might prevent such a realization of his 1945 prophecy.... His new plan of action involved a monumental task trying to share with his fellow Americans a "rationality and vision" about arms control which he had developed over the decades since joining America's fledgling military science efforts at the start of World War II. Thus the years from 1965 on, Kistiakowsky covered the nation making speeches, writing articles, attending conferences, and holding seminars bringing to bear both his scientific background and the knowledge that came from many years of "insider's experiences" in Washington
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