Mary Ellen Birkett, Professor, French Studies
Studying how the play of deceit and revelation has been represented in art and literature.  Specifically, Jean-Michel Moreau le Jeune’s set of 26 grand-folio engravings gathered together under the title Monument du costume physique et moral de la fin du dix-huitième siècle ou Tableaux de la vie, published in 1789, and the anectodal commentaries on each plate by Restif de la Bretonne.

Jessye Brick '09, Psychology, Study of Women and Gender
Analyzing whether the stay/leave decision-making process among victims of domestic violence resembles the process individuals use when making other decisions regarding their health, such as whether to quit smoking or exercise. Focusing on how external factors impact the decision-making process by concealing or revealing the prevalence of domestic violence and the consequences of staying or leaving an abusive relationship.

Mlada Bukovansky (Organizing Fellow), Associate Professor, Government
Exploring the impact of hypocrisy and double standards on the legitimacy of international norms and institutions, especially those institutions which, like the World Trade Organization, attempt to disseminate liberal norms.  Under what conditions does hypocrisy facilitate social cohesion, and when does it lead to corrosion and the loss of legitimacy?

Meredith Byers '10, English & Goverment
Exploring how perceptions of John Keats have changed as seen through 20th-century biographies and how readers approximate truth when faced with contrasting versions of a life.

Lin San (Loretta) Cheung '09, Government
Exploring the problems within the methodologies used to generate statistics involving the assignment of a numerical or monetary value to things that are inherently unquantifiable, such as the worth of a human life. Specifically examining Environmental Risk Analysis and Cost-Benefit Analysis.

Christa Daly '09, Government
Exploring how political leaders in Serbia, Croatia, and Kosovo used nationalism to preserve and/or gain power and statehood from the mid-1980s to the present through a study of the national narratives disseminated by the political leaders of the dominant community in each of those states.

Samaiya Ewing AC '09, Philosophy
Conducting a case study examining the role of deceit in the failure and revitalization of the Michigan Boulevard Garden Apartments, a low-income housing project on Chicago’s south side, and the neighborhood surrounding it.

Emily Floyd '09, Art History & Religion
Researching the origin and legend of the Virgin of Guadalupe and exploring the perspectives of guadalupan scholars, members of the church hierarchy, and believers in the virgin concerning her legend and origin.

Jennifer Hall-Witt, Lecturer, History
Exploring the tension between sincerity and theatricality amongst British radicals in the 1790s, focusing in particular on William Godwin.  Examining this tension in Godwin's political philosophy, in his fiction, and in his engagement with the theater and with the trials for treason, sedition, and seditious libel in the 1790s.

Carina Ho '09, Economics
Comparing the historical and current reproductive healthcare models of India and China. Specifically, I am examining the parallels and disparities of policy agenda and strategy and how they have impacted the countries' successes in reaching demographic goals.

Nicholas Howe, Associate Professor, Computer Science
Analyzing the ways new technologies and modalities work with existing social forces to enable, constrain, and shape deceit or the potential for it in traditional and emerging venues.  Specific topics of interest include prospects for electronic voting and the detection of handwriting forgeries.

Trish Jackson, Vice President, Advancement
I will explore the evolution of the advancement profession and the accompanying rhetoric of such with focus on the metaphors of campaigns, the art and science of fund raising and the increased use of business vocabulary within the field.  I will also highlight the role of gender in the profession and how the rhetoric has changed as the field has become increasingly female-dominated.  Finally, I shall demonstrate how business jargon has increased as advancement work is considered more of a "profession" as opposed to just a job.

Dara Kaye '09, Government & English
Researching and writing a play about the Bernard Madoff Ponzi scheme, exploring the origins of the deceit and gullibility which made it possible, the reasons why readily available information which would have exposed the scheme was ignored, and the disastrous results.

Barbara Kellum, Professor, Art
Exploring how the Greco-Roman notion of artfulness was predicated on concealing and indirectly revealing meaning and the role of artful fiction in social advancement. Specifically interested in considering what the use of transparency and concealment might reveal about supposed status ambiguities in the monuments of wealthy manumitted slaves.

Chester Michalik, Professor Emeritus, Art
Researching the ways in which the visual arts and visual media have been used as vehicles for propaganda, and deception.  Focusing specifically on visual examples, such as photographs and posters, of military and political propaganda.

Suleiman Mourad, Associate Professor, Religion
Investigating a discourse within Islam over the sacredness of Jerusalem in which some Muslim activists assert Islam’s exclusive “ownership” of that holy city and reject the validity of any historical Jewish association with it despite evidence that the city’s sacredness and symbolism in Islam originated in its Biblical heritage. Specifically considering the development of a discourse in which a religious group intentionally conceals its own historical and religious tradition in favor of its political aspiration.

Mikaela Mroczynski '09, Anthropology & Theatre
Why do humans engage in the personification of non-human things? Why are we obsessed with creating things in human likeness? One way this fascination is manifested is through the existence of androids, robots made to physically and socially resemble humans. How androids are conceptualized, why and how they are made, and how they are engaged with and represented is the interest of my study.

Elizabeth Pusack '09, Comparative Literature
Investigating how diaries function in the lives of ordinary people and how they serve as a tool for both self-deception and self-discovery through the creation of a "diary diary," an artist's book on the social history of the diary that will feature essays on various diary phenomenon (the lovesick diarist, the aspiring author as diarist, the diary as clue in a criminal investigation, the expurgated diary), interviews with diarists and reproductions of diary pages.

Candice Salyers, Lecturer, Dance
Exploring levels of transparency and deceit within dance performance and embodied knowing, particularly as this information affects the interaction between performer and audience, concealment and revealing of the physical form, conflicting implicit and explicit intentions of the performer and/or choreographer, and interrogation of the dance-as-language metaphor.

Patricia Skarda, Professor, English
Examining modern novels and their literary  antecedents, with a special interest in retellings of classic novels which, consciously or not, fail to acknowledge their progenitors, and also in retellings that raise issues of intellectual property law. Texts included in my project include Claire de Duras's Ourika (1823), translated by John Fowles, which inspired Fowles's The French Lieutenant's Woman (1969), a work based in part on Thomas Hardy's Tess Of The D'urbervilles (1891) as well as on a peculiar biography of Thomas Hardy, called Providence and Mr. Hardy. This research will be incorporated into a forthcoming book, Tellings and Retellings: Modern Novels and Their Literary Antecedents.