From Spring Break to Senior Projects

Although many students are returning today from spring break, there are scores of their fellow undergrads and graduate students who have been hunkered down working on student projects. Senior theses are due in April, and from African American studies to writing, folks are working hard on developing creative practices and original research. I’ve heard about theses that concern working-class issues and avant-garde film, dairy farmers in New England and practices of commemoration in Latin America. Many Wesleyan students work in teams, especially in the sciences, and I am frequently impressed by their combination of rigorous methodological attentiveness and leaps of imaginative possibility. Some are focused on historical issues, from French cuisine to the evolution of capitalist economic policies, while others are imagining futures less fraught by inequality and environmental danger than our own present.

Over the next month the campus will bloom with the spring’s creative projects. Music, dance, and theater performances have already been flowering, and you can see listings of more of them here. The visual art presentations kick into high gear with the thesis shows, which start this week.

Let’s show our support to all those Wesleyans who have worked through the break and are now coming to the finish line with these projects. May they all come to happy fruition!