NEW JERSEY SCHOLARS PROGRAM 2002

June 23 - July 26

The Birth of the Modern: the European and American Technological Revolution in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

Gary Baldwin

The History portion of the program focused primarily on the multitude of causes and effects of the Industrial Revolution, which left in its wake a politically, socially, and economically transformed world. Along the way we discussed issues of imperialism, radical social activism, and the benefits and problems of urbanization, all of which have their roots in the industrial transformation of the nineteenth century.

Megan Ambrus: Eternally Intertwined: the Relationship between China and Europe

Eric Cooperman: Socialism Betrayed: the Socialist History in Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty Four

Alex Curio: Mass Production and Advertising in American; or, How Coca-cola Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Santa

Tanisha Douglas: Jamaica: At Last Ready to Chop Them Down

Andrew Gentile: How Nazi Ideology Was Reflected in the Architecture and City Planning of Berlin Or How the Ugliest Brains in World History Designed the Ugliest City in World History

Trey Kollmer: Green Pieces: The Corruption of the Preservationist Movement as it Leads Popular Environmentalism

Ellen Leszynski: The Vietnam War or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Television Coverage

Gerardo Tirado: The Threat of the Degerate

Rucha Vankudre: Imperial Propaganda Or How the Middle Class Learned to Stop Worrying and Love British Culture

Brian Daniell

The Art History portion of the Program focused on the birth of modern art, in particular on the break from Renaissance tenets in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the subsequent move toward abstraction. Study included images oft the industrial world; the impact of new materials and techniques on modern art, architecture and design; and the effect of media saturation in the latter half of the twentieth century. We concluded with an introduction to architectural postmodernism.

Jonathan Au: The Fusion of German Political Goals and Artistic Styles in the Third Reich

Ali Dhanaliwala: The Documentation in Western Painting of the Shift to Modern Medical Techniques

Timothy Mein: The Role of the Photograph in the Development of the American Sports Icon

Timothy Petrella: The Acceptance of a New Aesthetic in Twentieth Century Urban Architecture

Meshele Scipio: Causes of the Decline of Christian Imagery in Nineteenth Painting

Ramsey Stephan: Contrasting Depictions of the Railroad in Europe and America in Nineteenth Century Painting

Nina Terrero; John Sloan: Art and Socialism in Twentieth Century New York

Katie Weber: The Decline of French Academic Painting from 1880-1910

David Munns

The History of Science segment dealt with understanding various historically specific scientific methodologies. From Darwins thoughts on evolution, and the changing nature of medical practice in India, to the discovery of the structure of DNA, each class sought to understand the powerful social forces at work in claims of universal knowledge. The social relations of science are especially important view examined in an historical context. Overall, my section asked the question: What is Science?

Desmond Beirne: How has society reacted to news broadcasts indicating the presence of extraterritorial life, and how had society been prepared to receive the news.

Simran Dhillon: How has the debate concerning human cloning changed over time, from Huxley's time to our own?

Evan Fox: How have scientific and mathematical studies of chaos opened the doors for news forms of art?

Erin George: With respect to the early assimilation of radio, and other technological innovations, why did H.G. Well's War of the Worlds broadcast generate panic in Grover's Mills, New Jersey?

Ross Karpman: How did Upton Sinclair's The Jungle affect the improvement of sanitary conditions?

Kevin Pham: What effect did the Cold War have on American espionage technology?

Priya Srivastava: In which ways was the advent of oral birth control a significant scientific development in contraceptive technology, and how was its importance reflected in feminist literature of the times?

Beth Welinsky: How has the treatment of psychiatric disease evolved, and how have more current ideals inspired books such as Prozac Nation?

Jadwiga (Wiska) Radkiewicz

In the music section of the Scholars Program the students had the opportunity to examine the effects of the advancement of technology on 20th century music. On a micro-level, the course explored the concept of electronic music and its specificity, its history and esthetics. From a larger perspective, the development of new music was presented in a context of the evolution of music throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. In such a context, the innovative and often challenging vocabulary of electronic music is viewed as an inevitable consequence of the quest for originality and novelty sparked by Romantic artists and relentlessly pursued by Modernists. This approach was also chosen in order to demonstrate that the perceived gap between todays "serious" avant-guard music and popular culture is only apparent.

Cynthia Lee; Leon Theremin: Under the Soviet Union's Communist Regime

Byron Lu: Pop Music – Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Rampant, Reckless, Raging Consumerism

Veronica Slaght: Two Guys Named Claude: Impressionism in the Music of Debussy and the Art of Monet

Kara Ellen Tappen: The Effects of Digital Technology on Music

Wilburn Williams

The literature portion of this program focused on the displacement of traditional conceptions of divinity and humanity by new myths deriving their power from the authority of modern science and technology. Goethe's epic transformation of Faust from a blaspheming magician into the heroic man of science inaugurated a line of speculation that produced men with the power to create life (Mary Shelley's Frankenstein) and to make machines that think and feel (Richard Powers' Galatea 2.2). The celebration of human reason in these works was echoed in Romantic and modern poetry (Walt Whitman's "To a Locomotive in Winter," Hart Crane's "The Bridge," and A.R. Ammons' "Corson's Inlet," e.g.). These developments culminate in the cinema (another new technology), where the offspring of man's fecund ingenuity are simultaneously threatening (the murderous HAL 9000 computer in Stanley Kubrick's 2001, A Space Odyssey) and consoling (the unconditionally loving Robot Boy in Steven Spielberg's A.[rtificial]I.[ntelligence]).

Jessica Avery: What are the causes for the various failures of European imperialism as reflected in the works of Joseph Conrad, and to what extent is his assessment accurate?

Alyssa Briody: U.S. support for Columbian rebels as reflected in the works of Gabriel Garcie Marquez

Jordan Ecker: How have changes in human sexuality during the industrial revolution and post-industrial period been depicted in film and art?

Minoah Finston: How did the diverse musical movements and the explorations of harmonic structure and style in the 19th and 20th centuries influence literary composition in the same era?

Anoop Rathod: Compare and contrast how Hard Times, The Jungle, and Fight Club deal with the issue of problems in workers lives in the 19th and 20th centuries

Jonathan Stern: What were the spiritual and philosophical implications of the emergence of city life, and how were they interpreted in Kafka's Metamorphosis?

Chris Urban: How did the economic theories developed in the 18th and 19th centuries contrast with the portrayal of society in Hard Times and The Paradise of Bachelors?

Katie White: How did the social climate in the post WWII period influence the representation of political themes in film?

Irene Yang: How did the distopian societies depicted in Brave New World, 1984, and Paris in the 20th Century reflect the growing discontent and pessimism about social problems created by the industrial revolution?