This is the last issue of the Voice seniors can read while still in the throes of I.S., and the capstone project is very much on seniors’ minds. Below, in their own words, are the topics students have spent three-fourths of the school year on , as well as a drink of choice to pair with each project.
Student: Abigail Helvering
Topic: 1. How a one-legged woman became an international spy who outwitted the Nazis. 2. How democratization affects a state’s intelligence structures.
Drink: Vodka martini, shaken not stirred.
Student: James May
Topic: James Joyce used music to write a ton of weird stuff and nobody knows what he actually meant.
Drink: Sazerac.
Student: Shelby Bretschger
Topic: Gift exchange and reciprocation, in the context of cultural consumption, can influence consumer behavior and furthermore market equilibria.
Drink: A nice six pack, for sharing!
Student: Kieran Mundy
Topic: Structuralism and deconstruction, theories which essentially argue that language is inherently false and unstable, are both linked to and represented by the genre of short fiction known as minimalism.
Drink: Just gin.
Student: Taylor Knoop
Topic: Why did that country choose to forgive the bad guys when that country put the bad guys to trial and that one just gave victims money?
Drink: Gin and Tonic
Student: Emily Hrovat
Topic: Institutionalized homophobia and the difficulty of quantifying identity make it nearly impossible to collect meaningful data on LGBT people (specifically in regards to food insecurity, which is what I was trying to do).
Drink: Jell-o shots, to symbolize how queer culture seems fun on the outside, but when you take a minute to catch your bearings you realize how fucked you are.
Student: Maddy Baker
Topic: The “modern-day” form of racism: how pretty much everyone is a little bit racist but nobody wants to call themselves racist.
Drink: That one last tequila shot that you definitely shouldn’t have had.
Student: Amy Melena
Topic: How a person’s demographic ‘social location’ affects their perception of the developing community of La Parguera, a historic fishing village-gone-tourist hub in Puerto Rico.
Drink: Sangria. (Tourists love it and locals think it’s tacky…aka how tourists and Parguereños feel about each other.)
Student: Greg Butler
Topic: How American nature writing has changed in the last 200 years and how it has gotten us to where we are toady in terms of our relationship to nature.
Drink: Jameson Irish Whiskey.
Student: Michael Hatchett
Topic: I wrote 10 comedic essays.
Drink: Root Beer because, much like my I.S., I am a joke.
Student: Cullen Dolson
Topic: The expansion of neoliberalism via sustainable tourism in Nicaragua.
Drink: A delightful concoction of hippie sweat and Flor de Caña. Unfortunately, only tourists can enjoy it, sorry locals.
Student: Ian Murphy
Topic: How donations to nonprofit hospitals impact wasteful spending, and the historical implications of government policies on charity care in the United States.
Drink: Mimosa made with Dom Perignon or other very expensive Champagne.
Student: Sarah McCrea
Topic: Three bad reasons 19th century white Ohioans thought it was okay to hate on interracial couples.
Drink: A Black and Tan because you should never give in to what the haters say.
Student: Haley Austin
Topic: Contemporary Maya peoples conduct ritual and produce debris, let’s compare it to 2000 years of debris in the past and try to make sense of it.
Drink: Whiskey, neat.
Student: Mickey Osthimer
Topic: I’m writing a collection of linked short stories about violence, family, identity and the environment in a magic realist tone and varying formats.
Drinks: Three ice cold ales followed by a slow-sipped, room temperature, two-shot glass of Bushmills topped with a hot toddy before ten hours of deep, deep sleep. The Bushmills alone would suffice, but you’ll need a LOT, and like a couple days off of work.
Student: Robin Klaus
Topic: Social commentary on the evils of capitalism (in nineteenth-century France) within an album of drawings made by Camille Pissarro to convince his nieces to be anarchists.
Drink: Homemade moonshine: so you can drink to forget the misery of the human condition without participating in capitalist means of production and consumption.
Student: Mel Griffith
Topic: Concepts of nothingness are fundamental to math and philosophy.
Drink: Drink an empty glass of whatever you’d like
Student: Sarah Van Oss
Topic: Supernatural creatures were summoned forth from the underworld by a powerful Maya queen with the help of a magical bowl.
Drink: Mezcal shots out of a traditional clay shot glass, preferably taken with hallucinogenic flowers and after piercing the tongue with a spiky rope. (I wish I was kidding.)
Student: Charlotte Tierney
Topic: How recent feminism and Chicano culture changed the 500-year-old Mexican legend of La Llorona, a woman who drowned her children and was trapped on Earth as a ghost to cry about it forever, and three children’s books written about her infanticide.
Drink: A tall margarita for drowning your tears and children.
Student: Liz Kittner
Topic: How does the president make foreign policy decisions about genocide? A complicated theory-based I.S. that makes me disappointed in our country.
Drink: A Balkan favorite: a potent brandy which burns like this topic with fruity undertones to symbolize the hope I still have that humanity can (and will) do better.
Student: Colin Omilanowski
Topic: Bones are really useless: how two ancient Christian martyred saints impact a Roman fort in the middle-of-nowhere Romania.
Drink: You mistake the clear plumb bathtub moonshine made by the site guard for water after a long hot day of digging at the archeological site. You were gonna drink that night anyways.
Student: Lois Kimmel
Topic: How presidential campaign speeches make people feel about their class identity.
Drink: Good ol’ American beer.
Student: Yashasvi Lohia
Topic: The effects of crushing optical fibers on laser light
Drink: Four to five 5 Hour Energy shots, because my I.S. has kept me up for the past 20-something hours