2004 Recipients of The Robert M. Golden Medal For Excellence in the Humanities and Creative Arts

Albertina Antognini
"The Literary Practice of Philosophy:
The Phenomenology of Palomar"
Albertina Antognini is not the first critic to point to the strong influence of European Phenomenology on the literary production of the Italian author Italo Calvino. Few books and essays on Calvino exist that do not highlight, in one way or another, the importance of Phenomenology for Calvino's writing.

What would be new and intellectually important, then, about Albertina Antognini's honors thesis? To put it very soberly, she examines this claim more seriously than anybody before her. In doing so, she takes Calvino-criticism to an entirely new level. Rather than performing a more or less inspired Calvino-"interpretation," Albertina Antognini has engaged in a very thorough and difficult philosophical exercise.

She bases her work on an astonishingly secure and detailed familiarity with Husserl's philosophy (to whose work she was introduced by Professor Follesdal). She carefully traces both elementary and complex phenomenological motifs in one of Calvino's most famous texts, "Mr. Palomar." The literary and philosophical competence that she displays would constitute the clear equivalent of a double major. Her work is on the level of an excellent advanced graduate student in philosophy or literature.

Noah C. Barron
"In Some Enchanted Way, Inverted: Melville's Moby-Dick"
Noah Barron's honors essay is wildly imaginative, ambitious and fully realized. It compares favorably with some of the best published work by established Melvilleans. 

Barron examines how two main novel threads — a treatise on the nature of reality and a common seaman's account of a voyage — vie for narrative authority. The problem with the metaphysical narrative is that all "perfect abstractions are poor representations of the vibrantly alien actuality of the world order." Melville uses inversion, as Barron makes amply, ingeniously clear, to nullify any category it is placed in, thereby "capsizing what escapes both specificity and abstraction."

Building on Melville's "shocking sharking behavior," Barron demonstrates that the world upside down is not unlike the world right side up (the sharks are hunted by human sharks). Reality-bending behavior rather than escaping allegory or metaphor reverses its terms: Christ is a metaphor for Moby-Dick rather than vice versa.

Thesis advisor Jay Fliegleman writes: "In its fleshed out version, ‘In Some Enchanted Way’ offers a tremendous provocation to thought and helped me to better understand Moby-Dick, a book I've taught my entire career."

Julie S. Glasser
“Imagining Post-Soviet Reality: Depictions of Justice and Gender in Dar’ia Dontsova’s Detective Fiction”
This is an ambitiously conceived, brilliantly executed thesis that uses literary, historical and sociological methods to examine the tremendous popularity of murder mysteries in post-Soviet Russia.

Glasser closely analyzes three novels by Russia’s most popular writer, Dar’ia Dontsova. The detective novel, Glasser observes, makes an “unspoken promise to leave the world in order at the end of the case.” That promise appeals strongly to readers grappling with a rapidly changing economic and political situation. Glasser presents Dontsova’s novels as negotiating among the polarized discourses around justice and gender in today’s Russia.

In her second chapter, she shows that Dontsova’s heroines are now bold, now bashful. They hesitate between the old Soviet rhetoric that encouraged women to be autonomous and the “New Traditionalism” adopted by many contemporary Russians.

Glasser left no stone unturned in her research, considering that she only began studying the language in her sophomore year. So the hundreds of pages she has read in Russian for this project testify to her enormous effort and tenacity. These have paid off in an illuminating and provocative piece of original scholarship.

Tristan D. Ivory
"Behind the Seams: West African Hip-Hop Fashion Boutique Workers in Japan"
Tristan Ivory’s highly original and beautifully written thesis focuses on male guest workers from West Africa who are engaged in the hip-hop fashion boutique industry in Japan.

Tristan interviewed both Japanese youth and West African male guest workers in Osaka and Tokyo. He considers how ideas of race, gender and nation are shifting in an increasingly globalizing Japan. He examines how the Japanese youth who fetishize and consume hip-hop fashion perceive Blackness, African-ness, and Japanese-ness. He shows how African guest workers negotiate their place in what is commonly perceived to be a racially homogeneous society.

Tristan shines a spotlight on a previously unacknowledged economic segment and pattern of migration created by global markets. He situates his ethnographic material in an excitingly interdisciplinary framework. The material is informed by various theoretical discussions in the fields of Diaspora Studies, theories of race, Japan Studies and American Studies. Tristan is an insightful and remarkably disciplined scholar who has displayed tremendous intellectual boldness.

Anna K. Kerrigan
"The Poor"
Anna Kerrigan is most deserving of the Golden Award for her thorough dedication in writing and directing a senior thesis of the highest quality. “The Poor” is dramatically compelling in its character portraiture and executed directorially with originality and invention. From research to final production, Anna was vigilant in her efforts to create an authentic portrait of spiritual and material ‘poverty.’

Artist-in-Residence Cherrie Moraga writes, “Anna possesses that critical combination of talent and highly-motivated self-discipline that distinguishes the student artist from the professional. She succeeded beautifully at it. I look forward to the future contributions to the practice of theater Anna will surely make in the years ahead.”

Lecturer Kay Kostopoulos adds: “I have had the great pleasure to be Anna's acting teacher over the past two years at Stanford, and have found her growth to be remarkable in this area as well. Her openness, availability, sensitivity and intelligence as an actor informed her excellent work as writer and director of ‘The Poor.’”

Eric J. Kramon
"Giving South Africa ‘A More Human Face’: The Black Consciousness Movement and Transformation in South Africa"
Before, the Black Consciousness Movement was seen as mostly a political movement with a single apical leader, Steven Biko. Eric Kramon's exploration of the evidence brought to light several other domains of work by many black consciousness workers. These can be found in community organizing, in literacy campaigns, in the arts and in the creation of what was called a "black theology."

This thesis broadens our view of the movement for the first time. It gives us a real feeling for a youth intelligentsia and young symbol-makers who are creating theories of change and rehabilitation for ordinary South Africans and South African communities. One conclusion that emerges from his work is that this movement was trying to create a new valuation for the battered average South African Black.

Meredith C. Narrowe
“Sundance, Hollywood and Independent Film: The Foundations and Influence of America’s Most Famous Film Festival”
To understand the significance of the Sundance Film Festival, Meredith Narrowe searched the festival archives and conducted interviews with filmmakers and festival organizers. She sifted through an abundance of reviews and press clippings, as well as attending the festival itself.

The resulting thesis is almost unbelievably coherent: a tightly organized history from the New Hollywood of the 1970s to the independent market of the new century. She highlights the powerful role Sundance has played in that movement. Meredith points to the sustained attempts by the festival to reinvent itself in ways that allowed it to carry on its mission. This is despite the fact that Hollywood is a very different film industry than the one the Sundance Film Festival initially found.

The celebrity atmosphere and increasingly entwined relationship between the festival and Hollywood notwithstanding, this thesis demonstrates that Sundance plays a significant role in feature film, documentary, minority and digital filmmaking.

Marden F. Nichols
“Bringing Home the Triumph: A Recontextualization of the Odyssey Frieze”
This superb and beautifully written thesis breaks new ground. It centers on the Odyssey Frieze, a major cycle of fresco paintings from Late Republican Rome. It has been long neglected by scholars, who see it either as evidence for a lost Greek Masterpiece or focus only on its narrative scenes. Marden Nichols has instead done something strikingly original, examining the frieze in terms of its visual, spatial, cultural and historical contexts in mid-First century BCE Rome.

She shows us how the disintegrating Republic’s deeply fraught politics of culture played themselves out in individual choices and artworks such as the Odyssey Frieze. She allows us to understand the frieze as a live element and one patron’s intervention into a complex and world-changing time. At every turn of the page there are original insights, persuasive arguments and important implications. Marden’s acute, subtle, visual analysis of the frieze and her sophisticated, innovative use of comparanda leads to compelling analysis of how the frieze resonated within a Rome revolutionized by contemporary cultural and political developments.

This thesis is of professional caliber in its originality and quality of the writing and is likely to make an important contribution.

Ranjana M. Reddy
"Private Donations to Public Schools"
Recognize this thesis on "Private Donations to Public Schools" for the following:

• Combining a powerful and confident theoretical analysis with a wide variety of empirical evidence on private donations to public schools in California
• Drawing upon tireless energy not only in data analysis but also data collection, creating a valuable data set for future researchers
• Displaying an uncommon intellectual vitality and contagious enthusiasm for all aspects of her thesis and for political theory in general
• Producing a thesis that formed the foundation of two presentations to academic conferences, where her peers were professors and not undergraduate students
• Infusing her theoretical ruminations and arguments with a passionate commitment to real children and real schools, evidenced in her coming work as a teacher in New York City
• Successfully defending her thesis with rigor and intelligence in an oral defense, becoming an intellectual peer in the eyes of her examiners

Zachary C. Schauf
"Conformity to the Word: William Harrison and the Dilemmas of Reformation"
Zachary Schauf has written an outstanding thesis. He uses a recently rediscovered manuscript, now held in the British Library, to reconstruct the mental world of the well-known Elizabethan clergyman and writer, William Harrison.

Such intensive archival scholarship, involving demanding paleographic skills and a high tolerance for the vagaries of Tudor language, would be impressive in a doctoral student. In an undergraduate, it is quite remarkable. Schauf is the first person to make systematic use of this new Harrison manuscript. It would therefore not be an exaggeration to say that his research should be regarded as cutting-edge empirical work. It represents a tremendous accomplishment.

Armando Yanez
"Anna Maria Matute: The Battlefield of Surrendered Childhood"
Armando’s thesis is a detailed, textual, historical study of the Spanish Civil War effects on the innocent children of the Republican and Loyalist forces. He integrates methods from literary, historical, psychological and sociological studies.

Armando ground his analysis in the lived experience of the elderly subjects he interviewed in Spain and carefully situated his arguments in their historical context. By doing this, he made an original contribution to the field of childhood trauma studies.

Armando is an exceptional writer, who has organized a complex argument in this thought-provoking thesis. He humanized the suffering experienced by the subjects at a time when war and its effects weigh heavily on the minds of many. This is a truly superior work of scholarship.

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