American Studies Student Projects

American Studies students engage in projects that sometimes take them far beyond the usual classroom experience. As part of the curriculum, we encourage creative personal and collaborative expression through website development, drama, exhibits, and other forms of public program.

Race and City Planning in Pittsburgh's Hill District: A Community a Corporation an the Control of Urban Space
The Senior Project created by Ellen Pierson Class of 2008

Transpositions: Black Music and Identity in Paris
This project is the culmination of the 2006-07 American Studies senior seminar "Global Cities: Americans in Paris" in which students traveled to Paris to research the dialogue between America and Paris as expressed through the exchange of music.

Black Students at Kenyon
The senior project created by James Greenwood in 2001

Monuments and Memory
The Senior Seminar by Melissa Dabakis offered in 1998 took students throughout Ohio in the quest to understand some of the ways it commemorates its past.

And the Land Remains: An Investigation of the Leupp Isolation Center
American Studies students Elizabeth Harmon '05, Harrison Rivers '04, Anne Rogers '05, and Samantha Winslow investigated a little known detention facility located on the Navajo Indian Reservation in Northern Arizona. Their project involved a visitation to the site, interviews with Navajo, and research in the national archives.

Museum Exhibit and Design for the Thomas Condon Paleontological Center
Kenyon students, Harrison Rivers '04, Kirsten Bierlein '04, and Catherine Jochim '04, assisted in the development of exhibits for a new National Park Service museum located at the John Day Fossil Beds in Dayville, Oregon. A highlight of the project was the field research trip to the eastern Oregon desert to interview working paleontologists and see first-hand fossil excavations.