On Saturday, April 20, Sarah Carlson ’13 and Maria Klingele ’13 were presented the inaugural Phi Beta Kappa Liberal Arts Scholar Award at the 24th annual John Wesley Powell Student Research Conference luncheon. According to the Illinois Wesleyan chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, this award fosters and celebrates student research that “engages, translates and bridges academic disciplines and/or crosses traditional academic boundaries.” Each applicant for this award submitted a research paper, either a senior seminar paper, honors research paper, or senior-level independent research paper; a work of art, music composition, film, collection of poetry or research that stemmed from experiential learning.
“The Phi Beta Kappa motto is “Love of learning is the guide of life.” My last four years at Illinois Wesleyan have taught me to strive to embody that message in everything that I do,” said Carlson, a senior anthropology major from Galena, Ill.On Saturday, April 20, Sarah Carlson ’13 and Maria Klingele ’13 were presented the inaugural Phi Beta Kappa Liberal Arts Scholar Award at the 24th annual John Wesley Powell Student Research Conference luncheon. According to the Illinois Wesleyan chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, this award fosters and celebrates student research that “engages, translates and bridges academic disciplines and/or crosses traditional academic boundaries.” Each applicant for this award submitted a research paper, either a senior seminar paper, honors research paper, or senior-level independent research paper; a work of art, music composition, film, collection of poetry or research that stemmed from experiential learning.
Carlson’s paper explored the cultural significance of personal adornment for the Ilongot peoples of the Philippines, a project she began over the summer as an intern at The Field Museum in Chicago. Examining these ornaments also led her to an analysis of how the “historical context and racial climate of the collecting culture is an important component in understanding the stories these objects have to tell” and the necessity for museums to practice “active engagement with members of the culture that produced the objects and with museum visitors to display the meanings that objects can communicate.”
Klingele, a senior French and francophone studies major from Glen Ellyn, Ill., analyzed Maryse Condé’s autobiographical fiction Le cœur à rire et à pleurer. The novel details Condé’s journey from childhood to adulthood and the societal contradictions she experienced living in both the Caribbean and Paris. In her paper, Klingele focused on Condé’s contributions to psychoanalytic theory, feminist literary criticism, and post-colonial theory in her rejection of the society’s discourse of the “Other.” Klingele argued that “through rejecting these marginalizing theories, she inhibited écriture féminine, a revolutionary form of feminist writing.”
“This research taught me about myself and I hope that others can benefit from the message that Maryse Condé conveys. I think it relates to everyone as it discusses the multiple oppressions working within our society,” Klingele said.