Significant works of historical and literary scholarship, original scientific investigation, extended creative projects—senior theses at Bard College at Simon’s Rock make for absorbing if not light reading. All B.A. students at the College complete a senior thesis, a major independent project that is the focus of students’ senior year. Conceived, organized, and carried out by each student with appropriate support from a faculty advisor, the thesis is the capstone of the student’s liberal arts and sciences education.

At the close of the last academic year, the Simon’s Rock community—graduates, staff, and faculty—gathered for a candlelight dinner honoring the A.A. and B.A. graduates. Senior theses played a starring role. Provost and Vice President Mary B. Marcy addressed the students affectionately, and provided audience members with her impressions of each of the nearly 50 theses completed that year, having read each one.

Marcy’s comments on a small sampling of the 2007-2008 theses are offered below. All senior theses are placed in the permanent collection in the Alumni Library, and are available for perusal.

Timothy Ross Cama

Take One: Embedded Journalism in Operation Iraqi Freedom

Tim’s studies the use of “embedded” reporters as a practice, with specific analysis of the invasion of Iraq. He uses the Public Affairs Guidance document produced by the Department of Defense as a starting point, and the concerns often leveled at this form of journalism—potential bias, identification, and bonding with the military they are to cover. Tim makes a convincing argument that some of the less discussed aspects of embedding, such as the clash between military and journalistic structures and the role of journalists’ personal sense of patriotism are factors not fully considered in previous discussions. He acknowledges the Department of Defense’s desire to use embeds for its own propaganda ends, but does not assume these efforts are always successful. In short, as the editor of our own Llama Ledger, he has taken his personal understanding of journalism, provided intellectual context, and created a thoughtful analysis of an important and inadequately understood contemporary issue.

Jacqueline C. Jankowski

Zeno’s Paradoxes: A Thesis without a Clever Subtitle

In the process of considering four classic philosophical conundrums, Jackie also champions the overlooked and underappreciated—in this case, Zeno as the inadequately valued precursor to Socrates, arguing for the tertiary placement and legitimacy of the stadium paradox as a great puzzle, and ultimately, arguing on behalf of the value of philosophy itself. The paradoxes all address space, time and movement—if an object can only reach its destination by going half the distance, and then half the distance again, for example, it never arrives, for numbers are infinite. Jackie explains the challenge, and analyzes the most famous arguments developed in response. To appreciate the scope of her work, it important to understand that these responses are categorized as time-based, space-based, and motion-based, taking her into the realms of quantum physics, geometry, mathematics, and, of course, historical research. The result is a thoroughly researched thesis that reveals a sophisticated understanding of elevated philosophical ideas; it is both an historical record and an impressive piece of original scholarship.

Elyse Chaput

Whose Land? Whose Truth? The Story of a Turtle

Rather than asking us to understand, Elyse’s thesis does something much more profound. It asks us to be willing to hold contradiction, complexity, and confusion. She has created a series of essays, some brief, some long, some liberating, some painful, and all elegant, to capture her junior year in Mozambique. She writes about poverty, about death, about trauma, about loss. But she also writes about love, and compassion, and hope and healing. Her journey is more than an experience abroad, even an experience in what we inelegantly label a “third world” country. It is an experience of maturation and struggle and compassion, both intellectually and personally. Reading it gives us the singular opportunity to witness compassion and courage in action.