Arianna Regalado '18 explores the Jesuit movements in Asia during the 16th century, the challenges they faced, and the transmission of Christianity to Japan that followed into the 20th century.

Pelumi Botti '16 evaluates the methods and policies adopted by postcolonial governments to rid the capitals of Tanzania and Nigeria of harmful colonial legacies and thus decolonize the African urban space.

Rita Marquez '16, Alejandra Cuin Miranda '16, and Andrea Aguilar '16 chose to produce a podcast about ethnic studies classes in high school for their course on the Politics of Inequality.

Hannah Ruebeck '16 examines the implementation and effects of India's school-based iron supplementation program. Iron-deficiency anemia is the most widespread nutritional deficiency in India. More than half of school aged children there are anemic. In 2013, India's federal government instituted the Iron and Folic Acid Supplementation Program. Hannah uses school-level program uptake data to study the variation in implementation of the IFASP.

Gloria Samen '18 looks at how and why human trafficking exists and persists and ways that people and groups can use our economic agency to create meaningful change.

Emily Schultz '15 looks at Catalonia, the wealthiest of Spain’s 17 autonomous communities. It has its own language, a long history, and its own parliament and government. Does this mean it should become an independent nation? Within the past few years the Catalan independence movement has intrigued many, and has become the focus of her senior honors thesis. Emily discusses her research on the many political, historical, cultural, and social roots of Catalan nationalism. She also outlines how...

Sophia Vale '17 and Jessica Yung '17 examine Murakami's work in the context of Japanese and global history, pop culture, and his uniquely scripted personal life. Despite their international popularity, his works remain enigmatic. Murakami’s short stories and novels are wild, surreal journeys that are, at once, entertaining and full of meaning, even if the meanings are difficult to unpack. Sophia and Jessica address how Murakami uses his literature to comment on modernity and westernization in...

Seraphina Oney '16 examines Margaret of Anjou, one of England’s most infamous medieval queens. Villified by Shakespeare, Margaret was coined a "she-wolf of France" like one of her predecessors, Isabella of France. Margaret had the unfortunate luck of being married to a king who was unable to rule. In addition to lacking the militaristic qualities that made his father such a famed ruler, Henry VI also inherited a form of schizophrenia through his Valois ancestors, which incapacitated him as a...

Elaine Tang '15 asks if lower levels of Social Security benefits force retirees to move from high-cost to low-cost locations. We know little about how levels of Social Security benefits influence elderly migration and location choice which may have important implications for the welfare of the elderly, especially if it affects their proximity to their children. A simple comparison of retirees with higher versus lower benefit levels is problematic since the two groups systematically differ in...

Kathleen Zhu '15 looks at Cuba to see if democracy is the key to differential outcomes in the treatment of the global HIV epidemic. There are 35.3 million people living with HIV/AIDS, with 1.6 million deaths from AIDS annually. But the prevalence rate and mortality rate are not evenly distributed internationally, as 95% of HIV infections occur in the developing world. The HIV epidemic varies dramatically from country to country; for instance the estimated HIV prevalence rate in Thailand is...

Iris Lin '15 and Marika Psyhojos '15 examine the factors behind the drastic decrease in the rate of non-urgent care sought by ER patients in the last 20 years. They debunk the myth that non-urgent patients alone cause EDs to be overpriced, over-packed, and overused. As a result of a number of health economic trends and forces, only 8-12% of patients in the ED today seek non-urgent care (NHAMCS, 2011). Certainly, there is room to reduce health care spending due to non-urgent ED visits (and we...

Isabella Dougherty '15 examines the Veterans Affairs Disability Compensation (VADC) program, which provides cash benefits for qualifying disabled veterans. It has been growing rapidly since 2001. The drivers of the program’s growth are not well understood with worsening health as one possible driver, but recent liberalizations of medical eligibility criteria may also play a role. This study deconstructs the recent growth in the VADC program into the share due to worsening veteran health and...

Zoe Magid '15 and Elena Scott-Kakures '15 examine whether Tea Partiers are actually ideologically distinct from Republicans. What causes such an anticipated gap will allow them to further explore the Tea Party, its relationship to the GOP, and their futures in American politics. They are interested in resolving these questions, and learning about the ideological composition of Tea Party members. Though some existing literature has predicted a swift end to the Tea Party, much as with the...

Oset Babur '15 pinpoints the influences of eurosceptic parties in the European Union, by focusing on the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) and the Danish People’s Party (DPP). Euroscepticism will be broken down into ’hard’ and ’soft’ branches, based on the kinds of impacts suggested by each parties; a ’soft’ influence over the concern of state sovereignty might be a party’s decision to support discourse that is skeptical of a united Europe, while a ’hard’ influence may be proposing...

Abigail L. Golden '15 relates her experience in the Calderwood Seminar on Environmental Communication and Synthesis, taught by Jay Tuner. Bee pollination is required to produce over 35 percent of world food crops and, since 2004, honeybees have been mysteriously dying at alarming rates. In order to learn more about the status of local bees, Abigail attended a meeting of the Norfolk County Beekeeper’s Association (NCBA), where she met and interviewed Tony Lulek. Lulek is the former president...

Tiffany K. Chan '15 describes her Calderwood interview with Wellesley biologist Yui Suzuki. Suzuki is an evolutionary-developmental biologist who focuses his research on insect metamorphosis and regeneration. By conducting embryonic studies on several different insect species, he studies the change and control of developmental processes both throughout an individual’s lifetime but also in the evolutionary context of a species. Tiffany interviewed Suzuki as the final assignment for my...

Two Wellesley students describe their experiences in the inaugural year for the Calderwood Seminars in Public Writing. Seminar goals include empowering students’ voices; engaging in public writing; and having students respond to their peers. Most seminars required students to conduct an interview with professional in their field as final assignment — the capstone of a capstone course. Jody interviewed Gina Maranto, a prize-winning science writer. Dania interviewed Biology professor Heather...

Lauren Chen '14 looks at Argo, North by Northwest, and Friends with Benefits as examples of filmic self-reflexivity. Film is a medium in which realistic representation not only combines but also collides with fantasy, where these two contradictory elements of storytelling both intertwine and coalesce to create new perspectives. Film is a marriage of the real and the fake, the building and breaking down of illusion that helps to create cinematic perspective.

Katherine Leung '14 looks at 5 landmark Supreme Court cases which forever altered the landscape of American privacy law and the permissibility of Americans’ decisions about how to construct their families. She explores the legal, social and cultural ramifications of legislating the American family ideal. These cases were decided by nine men, and influenced by the men and women who challenged antimiscegenation laws, birth control bans and abortion restrictions. This talk explores the...

Emma Rackstraw '14 captures some of the longer-term effects (up to a decade later) for the recipients of the Honduran Conditional Cash Transfer program, PRAF. The simplicity of giving money to the poor for a specific and pre-approved purpose appeals to many stakeholders in the field of development, from policymakers to economists. In education policy, conditional cash transfers have been found effective in improving school attendance/ enrollment and short-term learning, as well as lowering...

Michelle Lam '14 discusses the impact of China's stimulus package known as "Appliances to the Countryside. The 2008 financial crisis sent shock waves throughout the world and spurred incredible reactions, one of which was China’s $4 trillion RMB stimulus. In addition to stimulating the economy in the short run, the package also aimed to increase living standards of those in rural areas and to jumpstart a culture of consumption. Starting with pilots run in 2007, the Chinese government paid a...

Emily Weddle '14 shows how patronesses like the Princesse de Polignac and Coco Chanel contributed greatly to the Ballet Russes. The troupe dominated the avant-garde world of early twentieth century Paris with ballets that brought together the greatest artistic and musical minds of the time. Their ascent into stardom was realized through the hard work of figures like Igor Stravinsky, Erik Satie, Pablo Picasso, and their founder Serge Diaghilev. Very few scholars have recognized these women for...

Lauren Richmond '14 describes the role of the Whitney Museum in defining the character, canon, and history of American art in its opening years (1931- 1937). In the early twentieth-century United States, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney became one of the most important patrons of American art. Her efforts to promote American artists, whom she believed did not have enough support in the art market, eventually culminated in the founding of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. It was one...

Talia Schwartz ' 14 looks at preschool peer pairs, examining whether preschool children understood the differences in peer relationships. She used a story that featured characters that had a range of relationship levels with the protagonist. Subsequently, children were interviewed about relationships with real peers. Talia hypothesized that children would distinguish between playmates and friends, that real friends would be associated with emotional support, and that playmates would provide...

Frances G. Leeson '14 describes how Jackie "Moms" Mabley directly contributed to the civil rights movement while assuaging the difficult process of achieving consensus within activist movements. Although women are often excluded in the popular memory of both the civil rights movement and black comics in the United States, the most financially successful, and arguably influential, black comedian of the 1960s was Jackie “Moms” Mabley. She appeared on stage as a bedraggled, grandmother figure...