One of the distinguishing features of COPLAC colleges is their focus on undergraduate research. Small class size, close faculty-student
interactions, and funded research opportunities allow top students to work alongside faculty mentors in significant research projects at
all 26 member institutions. COPLAC now hosts a series of regional UR conferences for students at member campuses, and many of these same
students go on to present their work at the annual meeting of the National Conference on Undergraduate Research.
Metamorphosis is part of COPLAC’s effort to highlight some of the best recent work in undergraduate research. Each semester, faculty
committees at member campuses select two outstanding projects for inclusion in Metamorphosis.
The first edition of Metamorphosis will feature papers of presenters at the Southeast Regional Undergraduate Research Conference
held November 2009.
Research papers and posters can be viewed by moving your cursor over the green categories
listed below (View All, Humanities, Natural Sciences, Social Sciences, Professional Programs).
View All is the default view.
The Search bar allows you to search the database by author name, topic, title or key words
within the document.
A Study of Dominance and Mate Choice in a Captive Troop of Mandrills (Mandrillus sphinx)
M. K. Brown
Sonoma State University
Mentor(s): n/a
Recent research in Gabon suggests mandrills (Mandrillus sphinx) live in large, “female-led”
troops with peripheral males who compete for access to females during the breeding season. This
social structure differs greatly from captive conditions where a single male and a few females are
housed together year-round, which may affect female-female and male-female interactions. The
results reported here come from a year-long study of one troop (n=5) of captive mandrills housed
at the San Francisco Zoo. Dominance interactions were documented and “best fit” dominance
hierarchies were calculated and analyzed along with other group interactive behaviors. During
the study period, two significant demographic changes occurred: 1) a planned, artificial change
to female reproductive ability; and 2) an unplanned illness of the dominant female. The
dominance hierarchy, which was stable at the beginning of the study, began to break down and a
new dominant female emerged by the end of the study. The male also expressed behavioral
changes as mating opportunities were presented to him. My research illustrates that even in
captivity, dominance hierarchy remains an important element in mandrill social structure and
that demographic changes can impact it as well as male mate choice. This provides new insight
into the social behavior of a relatively little known primate species and provides valuable
information for captive mandrill breeding programs.
read more  (206.5 KB) |
Implications of Imitation: Two Postmodern Literary Revisions
Kara Blizzard
University of Alberta, Augustana Campus
Mentor(s): Dr. Paul Harland
Many postmodern works of literature offer alternative versions of earlier works. These contemporary revisions examine social circumstances and ideological constructs that surrounded the making of the earlier texts. J. M. Coetzee’s Foe, for example, is a revision of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe that focuses on imperialism and patriarchy. Coetzee points out the lack of women in Defoe’s work, and in adventure novels in general, by making a woman the protagonist of Foe. Michael Cunningham’s The Hours also comments on women’s past struggles to write: he depicts a fictional Virginia Woolf as she composes her novel Mrs. Dalloway. Cunningham’s and Coetzee’s works examine ways in which women have been prevented from writing. Both Foe and The Hours show that social and economic conditions influence the writing of literature; the New Historicism provides a framework for examining this influence. The two contemporary novels suggest that upper-class men have traditionally had voices in both history and literature, whereas women were outsiders with no audience. Coetzee and Cunningham present imaginary perspectives in order to question the accuracy of official histories.
read more (63.3 KB) |
Militants Seize Mecca: The Effects Of The 1979 Siege Of Mecca Revisited
Marissa Allison
University of Mary Washington
Mentor(s): Nabil al-Tikriti
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Rhythm and Color in Art as Influenced by Jazz
Kelsey Kline
Truman State University
Mentor(s): Shirley McKamie
As jazz music rose to popularity in the early twentieth century, people of all backgrounds were drawn to it. Visual artists recognized the distinctive rhythms and defining colors in jazz as inherently unique, and sought to recreate them visually. Piet Mondrian’s colored, pulsating blocks in Broadway Boogie Woogie (1942-1943) and Victory Boogie Woogie , created in the following year, shows that rhythm is an important element in the depiction of jazz music. In regard to color, Henri Matisse’s chromatic improvisations in his famous cut-out work, Jazz (1947), show the importance of color to the inimitable nature of jazz music. In France, Matisse was artistically guided by the concept of jazz; but, as an artist who spent significant time in America, Mondrian was specifically inspired by the sounds of New York City. Ultimately, the new, modern city and the new modern music of jazz went hand-in-hand in their profound influence upon modern art. These artists show the inspiration that can be drawn visually from the rhythms and colors of America’s music: Jazz.
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The Death of the Soul: The Role of Excremental Assault in the Nazi Concentration Camps
Meagan M. Blais
Keene State College
Mentor(s): n/a
During the Third Reich, prisoners within the Nazi concentration camp system were victims of an unconventional type of attack- a tool of genocide that strives not only for the death of the body, but for the death of the soul. Coined "Excremental Assault” by Holocaust survivor Terrence des Pres to explain the systematic subjugation of prisoners to filth as a policy deliberately aimed at humiliation and debasement, this tool became a daily exercise of Nazi totalitarian power. Within the camp system, this extreme “means to an end” sought not only to destroy the physical, but to destroy humanity and strip away dignity and self-worth.
Even behind this madness there was method and reason. Exploring the concept of “death in life,” this work will illustrate the uniqueness and effectiveness of this extreme tool of genocide both psychologically and sociologically demonstrating how it contributed to the execution of such cruel and sadistic Nazi atrocities during the Holocaust.
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The Sublime Nature of Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse and The Waves
Tiffany Ann McCormack
Southern Oregon University
Mentor(s): Dr. Terry DeHay
Through a postmodern approach, this paper examines the ways in which Woolf utilizes form and nature imagery in her two novels To the Lighthouse and The Waves to activate the sublime state in the reader. Woolf’s use of imagery fuses with the structure of her novels; in The Waves, imagery is the dominant piece, the interludes that serve to interrupt the story, while in To the Lighthouse, nature overcomes the Ramsay house in the “Time Passing” section. Nature becomes defined as that which is outside of civilization’s order, moving beyond definition. Woolf incorporates aspects of Roger Fry’s formalism to compliment her use of nature-oriented imagery, which purposefully calls attention to the form and not to the content, creating a peculiar effect in the reader. A reader, entering a sublime state brought on by the formal elements, experiences a slower rate of perception of the “real” and civilized world, allowing her reader to slip into the world of the imagination where knowledge and questions that have yet to be developed in the collective knowledge bank suddenly appear. The content and/or language serve to illuminate thematic issues and enhance the sublime state in the reader, while the form is responsible for activating the sublime state altogether, readying the senses for a hyper-perception. Thus, this paper argues that the structure of Woolf’s novels serve to relocate the boundaries of perception outside of the finite knowledge of civilization to the infinite unknown, in other words the sublime.
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