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Inspired by his own family's immigrant history and a Russian history course he took with Professor Shoshana Keller, John Keirouz ’22, spent a summer researching Russian religious communities and how their experiences affected the way they related to the U.S. and the way they tried to organize and run their churches.

The roots of modern social issues can be traced to any given corner of world history, provided one knows how to follow them. White supremacist and patriarchal ideas, for example, might underpin the dynamics of 17th-century English court ceremonies — at least that’s what Hannah Petersen ’22 is considering in her Emerson grant research project on the presentation of “otherness” in Stuart period antimasques.

The idea of a summer research project might bring to mind images of laboratories and libraries. But for Malik Irish ’22, it looks a lot different. The sociology and art double major is currently working on music videos to accompany an EP he’s writing titled Fantasy World: Living in the System.

Andrew Little, a music and creative writing double major, undertook a research project to “make an instrument out of the whole color spectrum.”

The idea for Luis Colli’s ’22 Emerson Grant research project has been years in the making. After immigrating to the United States from Venezuela, he noticed parallels between the 18th-century South and North American revolutions — but when he pointed these connections out, Americans tended to resist them.

The COVID-19 quarantine was often defined by feelings of boredom, loneliness, and anxiety. But for David Li ’24, the slog of pandemic “Blursdays” gave way to something far more positive: artistic inspiration. This summer, Li will be working on a dramatization of the quarantine experience through an Emerson project titled “Time(s) Out of Joint: Dramatizing Time Perceived in Social Isolation.”

Hamilton College has received a $400,000 grant from the Fred L. Emerson Foundation of Auburn, N.Y., to use as seed funding for a new advising and learning program the College will launch in 2021-22.

As a math major considering a graduate degree in applied mathematics, it didn’t take Summer Sheng '21 long to realize that a pandemic-based project would be relevant to the emerging crisis and to him personally.

With a grant from Hamilton, Charlotte Guterman ’22 spent a summer researching the colonization of the American landscape in art.

Student summer research is underway, with students and faculty collaborating on projects remotely via Zoom. Here, Gus Huiskamp ’21, describes his Emerson Foundation research project about the philosophical and literary movement, Negritude.