Student Research

Ben Salzman ’13 has always been fascinated with science, space exploration and music, but upon entering Hamilton, his chosen academic path gravitated toward the areas of music and art. He has since discovered a unique method of combining art and science in working with Leonard C. Ferguson Professor of Music Sam Pellman to create visual accompaniments for musical compositions.

While studying in Dublin, Ireland, Genevieve Nierman ’13 constantly came across references to early 20th century author James Joyce and his famed work Ulysses. She became intrigued by Dublin’s obsession with the novel and was awarded an Emerson Foundation Summer Research Grant to study the relationship between Ulysses and Dublin and to discern what attributes of the novel are responsible for its international success.

With an interest in Russian that began in high school, Grace Lee ’13 spent the past year studying in St. Petersburg where she was surprised by the prevalence of Russian folklore symbols even in the busy city.  This summer she pursued a research project on the interplay between Russian folktales, culture and politics with the support of an Emerson Foundation Summer Research Grant.

A picture may be worth 1000 words, but Kathleen Herlihy ’14 is only looking to find a few, albeit in a very literal sense. She is studying the use of sign language in art, a topic which she says has yet to be comprehensively analyzed by any scholarly work. She received an Emerson Foundation Summer Research Grant to pursue an initial scholarly analysis on this subject under the guidance of Assistant Professor of Religious Studies Erich Fox Tree.

Creative writing concentrator Martin Cain’s poetry has already appeared in a number of literary journals, so his award of an Emerson Foundation Summer Research Grant to pursue a study focused on “pastoral” poetry should come as no surprise. Cain ’13 was also the youngest writer to attend Middlebury College’s prestigious Bread Loaf Conference in 2011.