Senior Thesis Poster Session Pix

Congratulations to seniors for presenting their posters this. Thanks to everyone who came to support our students and thank you, especially, to our first and second readers who shared their time and expertise with our museum studies students. Special thanks to Tina for the pix below:) See more info on Twitter: https://twitter.com/RITmuse  Readers: stay tuned to this page for update from our rising seniors!

The Chapter is Finally Closed But...

Whew... It was rather a long way to pay off! But it is sort of safe for me to say I have completed my senior thesis. I hope so! Today was all we had looked forward to--RIT's College of Liberal Arts Poster Session! It was very incredible experience when presenting my poster and my findings to faculty, students and community members. I truly enjoyed explaining my findings with them and even discussed with them on the current issues, e.g., women's rights, civil rights, and etc. Ironically, some of them admitted that they actually did not know much about such issues in details, which shocked me a bit.

From what I have learned in my research, it is essential to find as many issues as you can in order to comprehend the aspects of the issues, and arm yourself with a knowledge and understanding of issues. Understandingly, it is also hard to find the sources that are not academically rigorous and/or heavily bias in nature. If someone was interested in researching on current issues, I would encourcage them to stay focus and dig more on those, rather than just choosing a topic on one issue where he or she may not be able to grasp an understanding of that. The current issues are often sensitive, let alone to discuss those.

While my senior thesis might be completed, I will continue working on my website of Prospects of Mankind.

Presenting at the Poster Session

      After many hours of research and hard work, I can finally say that I have completed my senior thesis project! As stated in my last post, it sometimes felt as though this day would never arrive. Today, I had the opportunity to attend and present my findings at RIT's College of Liberal Arts (COLA) Poster Session. Featured here were posters of undergraduate student research from the Department of Psychology, the School of Communication, the Museum Studies Program, and the Digital Humanities and Social Sciences Program. 

      It was wonderful to posit my findings and discuss various aspects of my project with faculty, students, and community members. In my research, I found that 1970 was the peak year of the Second Wave Feminist Movement. I also found that editorials and lifestyle articles improved over the period I assessed and advertisements were more positive around the peak year, but regressed later in my analysis. Many people commented that they liked how my content was displayed in a magazine layout format. I conversed with several faculty members regarding their firsthand experience with mass media representation of women's roles during the time period I assessed. While my analysis is of images from nearly 50 years ago, it is interesting to see that similar messages still appear in magazines today, perhaps more subtly. However, I think mass media representation and construction of women's roles is dramatically changing in magazines, on television, and more. I believe that part of this is due to the digital age. People can express their discontent in a variety of ways online through social media posts, blogging, commenting, and emailing. I am thankful that the RIT Archive Collections' Vogue magazines and The Vogue Archive database were available to me and that I had the opportunity to analyze print media from 50 years ago. I believe mass media, such as magazines like Vogue, provide an insight to the past and its culture that otherwise would be lost or forgotten if they were not preserved physically or digitally. While I am graduating on Friday, I do see my work with this project continuing on, as I am deeply passionate about it.

Sneak Preview - Poster session

Interested in knowing what Museum Studies majors do for their senior projects? 

Come to the College of Liberal Arts Senior Capstone Project Poster Session to see the capstone posters for the Class of 2016! The poster session will be held on Tuesday, May 17, 2016 from 11:00 am to 1:00 pm in the University Gallery 

on the RIT campus (07B, Room 2765). 

All are welcome. The event is free with ample refreshments :) 

Accessibility State of Mind, Starr

In the final stages of thesis writing, I have worked to create cohesion between the sections of the work. Structurally, the project establishes a linkage between how accessibility has been conceptualized in the museum field and how efforts have been implemented to support socially inclusive practice.

Through consulting with advisors and practitioners in the field, it is apparent that the distinction between legally compliant and truly inclusive practice is, increasingly, a concern of museums. It is comforting and intriguing to know that this thesis supports current dialogues among museum practitioners.

Discussion of the scope of this work led to the addition of a section regarding universal design as a best practice and fundamental ideal underlying access efforts. Further problematizing the application of access efforts, universal design ideologically supports the belief that all material, experiences, and offerings by an institution should be accessible in as many ways, and to the broadest audience as possible.

My thesis now seems like an old friend, so familiar. With the many other assignments, projects, and pieces of writing that I have worked on in the past few weeks, there is always a strange comfort in returning to it. The project has evolved significantly since my proposal at the beginning of the year. It has been a learning experience of give and take, exploration, and a broadening of understanding.

As we approach the end of this process, I am lucky to be continually fascinated and challenged by this topic area. One of the case studies discusses several access efforts supported by The Museum of Modern Art. Front-line staff now receive training regarding the experience of diverse visitors to The Museum. In the video, director Glen Lowry discusses underlying philosophies of access:

“I think that accessibility is also a state of mind. It isn’t simply something that you do. It is something you have to think about, be committed to, it doesn’t reside in one person or one department. It resides in a mindset of the institution and I think once you commit yourself that way and everyone is thinking about: how can you make the experience of visiting the museum as accessible and engaging as possible to as broad and diverse an audience as possible, magic begins to happen.”[1]

---

[1] The Museum of Modern Art (Producer). 2015. “Accessibility Training Video”.

Senior thesis reflection

It's almost at the end of the road with the MUSE program for us senior students. It's almost at the end of the chapter for us and beginning of a new chapter for all of us. I would like to acknowledge my supporters (MUSE faculty and staffs, my family and friends) who believed in me and encouraged me to pursue my goals. I truly am thankful.

My experience with senior thesis was pretty difficult than I anticipated. I started off with Deaf Studies collection with Laurent Clerc, a Deaf and Mute educator from France, and ended up with a thesis focusing on Online Exhibition and a case study at American School for the Deaf.  The transition wasn't easy and I consider this challenge as an learning experience to help me overcome any obstacles later in life.

I'm currently working on revising my thesis paper before submitting for final review and advisor signatures. Recently,  my 1:3 (one to three) meeting with Dr. Julie Decker, Dr. Mary Beth Kitzel and a sign language interpreter, we had a healthy discussion about certain areas with my paper which needed some revisions, filled up and reviewed my poster before finalizing it.

WHOAAA! IT IS ALMOST TIME TO END! O_O

I am very excited to complete my senior thesis that I have worked so hard for a year. In other words, I am looking forward to close that chapter for good (well, perhaps not). When I am almost completing my thesis, I have realized that I have come so far--I mean, I have researched the transcripts of Prospects of Mankind and the historical sources on Eleanor Roosevelt and Prospects of Mankind, analyzed the current issues and their impacts upon people, and created a digital exhibit that allow the users to access the works of Eleanor, as well as the current issues like the Civil Rights, the Refugee Crisis, and Women's Rights that are often included in the discussions in general. I am very proud to pull this off successfully.

Right now, I am waiting on the final feedbacks and also working on the poster for the final time.

One more thing...

I STILL CAN'T BELIEVE THAT WE ARE GRADUATING SOON! CONGRATS EVERYONE!!

Reflections on thesis research and survey, MFanton

Looking back, I realize I followed my original research plans loosely, and spent far less time at The Strong than I had anticipated. Fortunately, I conducted a lot of research early on in conjunction with another pinball related project, and I noted sources that I might use for my thesis even back then.

The survey I conducted was challenging, but it revealed some unexpected characteristics of the female figure in pinball artwork. Here are some reflections on my survey and research findings:

Sexualized Attire

At times it was difficult to determine what sexualized attire entailed. And what if the male figures in the image were dressed similarly? Despite my primary focus on female figures, it became necessary at times to look at the greater context to determine if the attire was purposefully sexualizing, or if the attire was a sort of uniform worn by all figures in the image (or sometimes both).

Race and Representation

Few pinball machines exhibited people of color. Even when the background setting of the images implied the scene took place in a foreign country, many of the characters were white with culturally appropriated attire. A handful of games depicted African Americans, and only two games depicted African American females.

Unarmed Women

Often women were placed in dangerous situations. Often the male figures held weapons, but the female figures were left unarmed. The image of Lieutenant Uhura on Bally's Star Trek is a rare example of the female figure being armed, with as much agency to defend herself as her male counterparts (the other crew members).

Licensed Games

The trend of licensing games that began to occur with frequency in the late 1970s had an interesting effect on pinball artwork. On one hand, licensing reinforced the male gaze as it was used in film and television. On the other hand, games like Star Trek, based on a ground-breaking television show, introduced more progressive ways of representing females in pinball artwork. Licensed images required the approval of the actors they portrayed, which gave women like Nichelle Nichols (Lieutenant Uhura, Star Trek) some control over their depiction. Pinball artists, who previously only had to answer to their superiors in the industry, now had to answer to the real people being represented.

Symbolic Participation

Another common theme I found in the artwork was the blurred distinction between being an active participant or a passive spectator. In some instances, female figures were fully participating in the main activity being depicted in the pinball artwork. Sometimes, they played ancillary roles to the main action, such as when they filled the role of cheerleader while the male figures played football in a football-themed game. Finally, there was something I called symbolic participation in which the female figure might be present in the same scene, or in possession of a piece of equipment used in the main activity, but they are not full participants. Sometimes they were holding a pool cue, for example, but showed no indication of playing, with their attention and gaze diverted elsewhere.

Permissive Smile

The most interesting and disturbing element used to depict females in pinball artwork is what I called the permissive smile. The permissive smile could be found in images in which the female figure was placed in a dangerous or threatening situation, particularly in the presence of male figures, but instead of appearing alarmed or responding to the scene around her, she is smiling. 

Generally, in candid photographic snapshots or real-life interaction, people associate a smile with happiness. But we need to be reminded that pinball artwork is constructed. Each element of the image is a signifier for something else. In this case, the smile indicates a passive acceptance or invitation. In one instance, a woman is tied to a stone slab or platform, presumably to be sacrificed in a ritual. Her smile is in stark contrast to the situation she is in. Before I conducted the survey, I thought it would be inaccurate to include something as seemingly innocuous as a smile as a sign of passivity, and it never occurred to me it could be associated with violence. After encountering instances of the permissive smile in pinball artwork, I better understand Erving Goffman’s 1976 analysis of the smile in his book Gender Advertisements.

Findings and a Sense of Finality

      After nearly a year of conceptualizing and completing aspects of my senior thesis project, it is almost finished. I have developed my senior thesis paper and project immensely with the help of my instructors for Research Methods and Senior Thesis and my primary and secondary advisors. I am thankful for the continued support of these individuals, my family, friends, and peers.

      In the past few weeks, I have met with my primary and secondary advisors individually and together to discuss what I needed to edit and add into my final paper. We also discussed the concept and final design of my poster. I have even created a WordPress to portray my findings in a PDF format digitally. It still needs some tweaks, as I have been focusing on other larger components of my project.

            
      I am proud to say that I have submitted my final senior thesis paper and am awaiting final feedback or signatures on it from my advisors. At points in this semester, this day never seemed like it would come or that the amount of work left to do was insurmountable. I definitely want to revisit this project in the future, assessing a different decade or year span or another publication. It would also be interesting to focus on one aspect, say a brand or just editorial photographs. For now though, I will focus on how to design my poster to best convey my findings in an aesthetically appealing way and making finishing touches to my project.