by Emma Lumeij '16 | Jul 20, 2014 | Humanities Internship |
This summer I am remotely assisting Professor Reckson with a book she is writing about ecstatic experience and performance in American literary realism. In the fall she will be doing research at the Library of Congress in D.C., and until then I’m helping her come up with resources and materials, primary and secondary, that might assist her research and writing about the Ghost Dance, a Native American spiritual practice and performance, most famously documented by American ethnographer, James Mooney, in his 1896 monograph, The Ghost-Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890. In a sense, I’ve become more familiar with the Ghost Dance these past few weeks. I’ve culled all kinds of texts about the Ghost Dance from the NYPL; I’ve searched Haverford’s Tripod entering things like– ‘ghost dance technology’, ‘ghost dance realist ideology’, ‘ghost dance representation’ – and have yielding some fascinating articles by contemporary scholars discussing the logics and limits of late nineteenth century technologies and ethnographic methodologies deployed in the documentation of this circa 1900 Native American practice; I’ve listened to Mooney’s 1894 recordings of Ghost Dance songs; so yes, I’ve familiarized myself with the material. And yet, despite my efforts to know a little more, I have a gaining awareness of what I can’t know and of what can’t be known. This waning sense of familiarity with academic insights and cultural artifacts is coupled by a gaining sense of wonder at that which teases at the boundaries, at that which exceeds discursive conceptualization. I find these seemingly contradictory senses native to the topic. While my research began broadly, more recently, I’ve been culling sources that...
by Emma Lumeij '16 | May 10, 2013 | Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery |
Each year the Haverford College Department of Fine Arts presents the work of its graduating seniors in the Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery. For the occasion, I interviewed Vanessa Hernandez, a senior Fine Arts and Spanish double major, who wrote a comic using zinc-etching plates. If you are curious to see what this looks like, check out all of the senior Fine Arts theses this weekend (Friday to Sunday) at the Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery. If you want to attend the opening reception, stop by the Cantor Fitz this Friday May 10th from 5:50-7:30. Vanessa Etching In progress storyboard Filled out storyboard Emma: So to start off, how did you first get into graphic novels? Vanessa: My interest in graphic novels started when a friend recommended me Alan Moore’s Watchmen. But I truly fell in love with graphic novels after I began reading Neil Gaiman`s Sandman series; after being immersed in that world of fantasy and beautiful artwork, I realized at that point that I wanted to be an illustrator. E: When did you first start thinking about making a graphic novel for your senior thesis? And what were some of the factors that finalized the decision? Can you tell me about the process? V: I didn’t exactly plan on doing a graphic novel per se; the format just lent itself to what I wanted to do. When I was figuring out the size I wanted my pages to be, I had to figure that out according to the plate size I had available. The zinc etching plates are 22×30 so I decided I could either have 6 very small plates (meaning one image...
by Emma Lumeij '16 | Apr 22, 2013 | Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery, Uncategorized |
Almost exactly one year ago, Haverford College’s Exhibitions Program entered all 1,920 Haverford students, faculty, and staff into a single-elimination skee-ball tournament called And the Winner Is… After over a month of competitive games, Nick Kahn ’14 won the tournament and a trip to Greensboro, North Carolina, in addition to a whole slew of other prizes ranging from a meeting with a chemistry professor to blow things up to a solo violin concert courtesy of another student. Studying abroad right now in Paris, France, Nick was kind enough to share a few anniversary words with me. Emma: So first off, if I didn’t know what skee-ball was, how would you describe it to me? Nick: I would describe skee-ball as a carnival game. There’s really not much to it; it’s a simple game. You roll a very dense wooden ball (or plastic, but I preferred the wood ones–in the tournament I always made sure mine were wood) up a ramp, aiming for the smallest of the scoring holes that you dare. The scores possible per roll range from 10 (or technically 0 of you miss the table) to 100; my strategy was to shoot for sustainable 50s and 40s. The 100s, for me, were only for use in emergency, if I really NEEDED 100 I would have gone for it, but that never happened. E: Had you ever played skee-ball before? N: Only at Chuckee Cheese. And I can’t remember being particularly good. E. Can you talk a little bit about tournament/gallery space? Had you been to the gallery prior to Winner— what did you think about its transformation...
by Emma Lumeij '16 | Feb 27, 2013 | SAVE AS |
What can someone meaningfully get out of a series of two-minute presentations that range in topics from digital scholarship to digital doodles? On January 31st 2013, 20 professors, students, and staff came together in the Philips Wing of Magill Library for Lightning Talks Round II. Sponsored by SAVE AS, Lightening Talks is an event where students and teachers can present their works and ideas within a two-minute time frame. The theme of this event was digital scholarship and the speakers addressed their work within this emerging field. While sitting in front of and along side my peers, faculty and friends I learned about the means and methods Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery interns implement while organizing exhibits. Aubree Penney taught me that there is a virtual Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery used by interns to simulate and organize exhibits prior to their arrival on campus. Who knew the simulation could consider the dimensions of an artist’s work to the hundredths of an inch? Some projects applied new tools to old problems. How do you visualize trends in the arrests of participants of Occupy movements across the country? How do you make this data accessible? Samantha Shain attacked the project of mapping these social movements via an animated map of the United States. Her project led her to more questions: “Why did the arrests happen in the places that they did? Are there special and architectural implications of where the arrests happened?” Other presentations questioned the very nature of those tools, and how they’re changing us. Professor Laura McGrane’s presentation titled “The User Paradox” addressed the anxieties and reservations many have towards computers, digital devices,...
