Arts in Action: A Knox College Community Arts Project | Kathleen Ridlon
Arts in Action invites students to consider how artistic endeavors and community engagement are linked. Using the research and philosophy of Community Based Learning and Social Practice Art students will develop skills in social engagement, community partner development, and collaborative teaching centered on designing and implementing arts workshops in the Galesburg community. The goal of the course/project is to provide students with the necessary pedagogical skills to undertake teaching community workshops in a chosen artistic field or genre while being exposed to diverse populations, settings, and administrative considerations when working with a community organization. Students will experience putting their learning to use in the community where they live and they will learn how to facilitate discussion and reflection exercises to emphasize the reciprocal nature of teaching and learning. These experiences demonstrate how we can move beyond the artist presenter/performer role into a participant/community connection experience.
Form-Function Relationships in the Jaws of Seals & Dolphins | Nick Gidmark
Jaws are fundamental to how animals bite, chew, and communicate. Strength and motion of the jaw are fundamental to performance – they determine what you can eat and how. These attributes are determined by a myriad of factors – muscle size and shape, jaw/skull geometry, and connective tissues like tendons & 2ligaments. In this collaborative project, we will examine the motion and strength of dolphin and seal jaws, comparing their biomechanical performance with what they eat. We will use dissection and virtual datasets to estimate the range of motion, feeding behavior, and muscle biting forces in these species to answer questions like: How are skull mechanics different between dolphins (which have long noses) and seals (with shorter, stockier faces)? Does muscle anatomy (leverage, size, shape), and therefore forces, vary across these species? How do these different shapes both work for catching the same fish prey? Are other aspects of skull shape -- like the mellon, which is used for echolocation in the dolphin – causing tradeoffs in form?
Princess Problems: Feminist Perspectives on Disney's Live-Action Adaptation | Samantha Seybold
The Disney Princess franchise has long sparked pointed criticism from feminist scholars and activists, and for good reason. The franchise reinforces and celebrates a very narrow, regressive ideal of femininity that draws heavily on patriarchal values. With its live-action film releases, the Walt Disney Company has thus given itself an unusual task: to reinvent its overwhelmingly traditional princess protagonist so that she can be more effectively marketed to modern audiences who care about female agency and empowerment. Develop your interdisciplinary research skills this summer by embarking on a collaborative project that examines Disney’s live-action princess adaptations. We will practice critically analyzing films as cultural products and consider how Disney’s adaptations replicate (perhaps even subvert?) broader ideologies about gender, race, class, sexuality, and disability. Given Disney’s outsized cultural influence, its attempted reinventions of its wildly successful princess franchise play a significant role in shaping mainstream conceptions of femininity, gender, and power.