Richter International Fellowships
UNIVERSITY HONORS PROGRAM

Independent Research Abroad for University Honors Program Students

Winter 2001-2002

Beth McKeon – Advertising vs. Life: Do they reflect each other? Does this reflection change between Europe and the United States – New York, New York; Paris, France

Advertising in the United States has the tendency to stereotype women as sex symbols and objects. Women as consumers are somewhat expected to play the role of sex object, but not to the extent that they are portrayed in advertisements, and rarely do “real” women look like the “ideal” women portrayed in advertisements. How does this discrepancy compare to advertising vs. reality in Europe? Ms. McKeon’s study was to take images from advertising and search for similar images taken in real life in the United States, specifically New York and Dallas, and Europe, specifically Paris and the South of France.

Many immigrant women come to the United States with little to no knowledge of spoken or written English. As they go through literacy programs, how does their new-found literacy change their self-esteem, role in their family or any other factors of their life? Through a tour of literacy programs in San Diego, where there is a mix of Latino and Asian immigrants, from a variety of cultural backgrounds, Ms. Nair studied the overall effects of these literacy programs on the lives of these students.

Summer 2002

Tricia Anderson and Alyson Cooper – The Lingering Affects of Terrorism in Ireland – Dublin, Ireland (and surrounding cities)

Have the scars of decades of civil war fought through terrorism left scars on Ireland? How are those scars healing? Have the tensions subsided? Through a series of interviews across the populous of Ireland, urban and rural, these questions will be pursued, and hopefully answered.

French Polynesia is an area of the world cherished for its pristine beauty undeveloped nature. In the past, its main economic resource has been fishing. Recently, tourism has surpassed fishing as their main resource. How is French Polynesia dealing with these tourists and accommodating them while still preserving the untouched nature that the tourists are visiting?

As a pre-med student, Elika Eftekhari has spent a significant amount of time interning in emergency rooms in the United States. She has seen and considered the process of what happens to a body once it is no longer alive. In the US, she saw little religious influence on how bodies were treated, and how families were notified. Her family immigrated from the near-religious state of Iran, where almost nothing is separate from the Muslim religion. She plans on relating what she knows about medical ethics in the US and compare it to those in Iran. The field of Medical Ethics is relatively new, and almost all of the study of Medical Ethics has taken place in North America and Western Europe. This study has the potential to shed light on the field and bring religious considerations more to a forefront in certain areas of Medical Ethics.

Racial and Ethnic tensions have long been a problem in Macedonia. With the founding of a Democracy, how have these tensions been affected? Ms. Elmazi plans on studying prejudices through medical care and the quality of hospitals for the different ethnic groups. Do the doctors enforce their ethnic preferences on their patients through the quality of their care?

In 1999, Weimar Germany was dubbed “Cultural Capital of Europe”. This title brought a flood of tourism and revenue. Three years later, how does this title continue to influence hotel revenue, new building permits, and the overall economics of the city? Through an examination of the revenue trends of hotels along with building permits and new business permits, light should be shed on just how Weimar continues to be affected by their honored status.

After Impressionism, artists started thinking in terms of activism. Several artists working completely independently from each other all had remarkably similar themes through their work, and it all relates to social activism around the time of the Great Depression. The goal for her research is to lead to an exhibition of these works at the Dallas Museum of Art.

During the Sino-Japanese War in 1937, the Japanese army committed the “Nanjing Massacre” against the Chinese. Most research has focused on objective details of the event, such as casualty numbers. Mr. Kuder and Ms. Lee have set out to search for the evolution of its portrayal among the historians. How has subjectivity entered what has been presented as objective accounts? To study this, they will interview leading Chinese academics, search archives, visit the official Nanjing memorial and search primary and secondary works on the subject.

It is undoubtedly certain that young girls in the U.S. are very much influenced by the mass media, particularly in terms of their role models. The way young girls attempt to act and look like celebrities (e.g. Brittany Spears) is a key example of this. As more and more media from the United States makes its way to Europe, how much are European young women similarly influenced by American media icons? How do the adults react? Do they bristle much like an adult in the United States bristles, or is it different because it also comes from a foreign source? Through personal interviews, surveys and experiments, these two young women plan on accumulating enough data to contrast media influence between homegrown and foreign influences on young women.

Spain is a country with several different religious backgrounds that all have deep roots. These two will be studying how the presence of a Muslim mosque in a community affects the surrounding buildings; specifically the interior decorating and architecture of the surrounding secular buildings. Do the architects and decorators of surrounding buildings pay attention to religious buildings when erecting theirs? Through interviews with these building planners and observations, light will be shed on the collective reverence for Muslim buildings, and whether or not that reverence is only among other Muslims, or society in general.

Partnering with an SMU Anthropology Professor, Ms. Ronan will be tracking the migration patterns of the 14th Century Pueblos through Northern New Mexico by examining out of place artifacts found at an SMU dig site outside of Taos.

Account Planning, or Advertising Research plays a larger role in the business of advertising in the United Kingdom than in the United States. Mr. Shaver seeks to examine whether or not the investment in research leads to more effective, and therefore profitable advertising than is achieved in the United States.

As the mass media has become more and more global, and English has become the default second language for much of the world, American media has become more and more pervasive world-wide. France has passed laws to limit the influx of American and other foreign media, and therefore limit the influx of foreign cultures. Mr. Smith has proposed to just how effective these laws guaranteeing homegrown music on the radio, tv and movies shown and music displayed in stores are in impressing the importance of French media on the French. Through surveys and interviews of the populous, he aims to study whether or not these laws are effective in maintaining French culture, and how accepted these laws are among the public, especially the youth of France.

Cuba is edging toward capitalism through allowing people to privately own companies and businesses. From a political and economic standpoint, Mr. Stephens plans on researching how this policy is affecting the day to day life of people in Cuba. Are prices and availabilities for the populous improving? Is the government planning on expanding these rights or contracting them based on how these policies are going?

As an Asian-American, Ms. Tran has experienced influence from an Asian society while also being influenced by her American surroundings. Using her own experiences as a benchmark, she will be going to Vietnam and comparing psychological differences of childhood development from both a social/family aspect and the economic conditions with which they grow up. She will be looking for similarities and differences in how Vietnamese children in Vietnam and Vietnamese children in the United States arise and to what they can be attributed. If the socioeconomics of the upbringing outweigh those of the family, how can someone be in touch with their ethnic heritage if they are raised in a completely different socio-economic environment?

For more information about the University Honors Program at Southern Methodist University, or to receive a program brochure, please call (214) 768-2813, or send your name and mailing address to honors@mail.smu.edu.

Last updated September 18, 2006