Danielle Leavitt and Dr. Patrick Madden, Department of English Because anti-Soviet sentiments dominated the western stage for roughly the past century, very little literature exists in regards to post-Soviet daily life in former Soviet countries and cities. Specifically interesting are the socio-economic differences that emerged in former Soviet communities following the fall of the Soviet Union. Our project […]
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Self-Shaping and National Identity in Transylvania
Nick Jones and Dr. Lance Larsen, Department of English My project involved researching and observing Romania’s Székely population and their efforts to maintain cultural autonomy despite their minority status in Romania. The Székely people are a Hungarian-speaking group of disputed origin that has lived in Transylvania for at least 1,000 years, and currently they comprise […]
Don’t Judge a Voice By Its Color: The Influence of Visual and Linguistic Cues on Racial Profiling
Alex Jennings and Dr. Wendy Baker-Smemoe, Department of Linguistics and English Language Linguistic profiling1 has emerged as an area of research only within the last decade. Several researchers have shown that people who speak non-standard, ethnically-tied dialects are treated less favorably than their Standard American English (SAE)-speaking counterparts. However, no known studies have shown the […]
How Performative are Ideophones in Pastaza Quechua?
Roseanna Hopper and Dr. Janis Nuckolls, Department of Linguistics and English Language With my ORCA grant, I set out to investigate the performance qualities of ideophones, a category of words marked by a specific speaking style in Ecuadorean Pastaza Quechua. I planned to use software to determine phonetic properties of the words and compare to […]
Hope Rises in the Leprosy Colonies of India: Examining the Mission and Success of Rising Star Outreach
Kelsey Elayne Holloway Murdoch and Dr. Francesca Lawson, Department of Humanities I began my quest to graduate with University Honors during my freshman year at Brigham Young University. I was encouraged by friends, family, and professors, and I loved the challenge of the Honors Courses and the cultural exploration stimulated by the Great Works requirements. […]
Emerging Voices from the “Paper Cut” Country: Contemporary Salvadorian-American Poetry
Jonathan Garcia and Dr. Susan Howe, Department of English When we studied modern American poets in Dr. Howe’s Poetry 319 class, I wondered if there were also Salvadoran-American poets out there, as both my parents immigrated to the U.S. from El Salvador in the 1980s, fleeing a bloody civil war. At the same time I […]
The Video Essay: Introducing an Increasingly Relevant Sub-genre
Jacob Cutler and Dr. Patrick Madden, Department of English Teaming up with Inscape (BYU’s journal of literature and art) has proven to be fundamental for my ORCA project. In addition to publishing two of my video essays, Inscape has published my short essay explaining and introducing the concept of the video essay. I have included that essay below […]
Prophets, Scripts, and Nations: Hmong Religious and Ethnonational Borders in Northern Thailand
Belinda Ramirez and Dr. Jacob Hickman, Department of Anthropology As a sociocultural anthropology major, my ORCA project entailed spending three months on an ethnographic study. I chose to conduct this study in northern Thailand among the Hmong, a small hill tribe ethnic group. During my stay in a Hmong community near Pua, Nan Province, I […]
Religion and Jane Eyre
Bradley Kime and Professor Paul Kerry, Department of History Modern readers might be surprised to learn that the 1847 publication of Jane Eyre caused an uproar. Plenty of critics praised the novel’s author, but many of the loudest voices were shocked by its content. In a satirical essay the next year, Edwin Whipple surveyed the literary […]
Closing the Gap: Defining the Determinants of School Dropout in Rural Mexico
Ashley Dymock and Dr. Tim Heaton, Department of Sociology My research examined the motives behind school dropouts occurring between primary and secondary schools in Guanajuato, Mexico. It involved both preliminary quantitative analysis as well as field research that was both qualitative and quantitative in nature. I am currently in the process of evaluating the data […]