INQUIRY

INQUIRY • Volume 19, 2015
destruction. In order to evaluate Aplu’s roles in Etruscan
society, this study examines a diverse array of artifacts with
his image from 600–80 BCE. Thematic and chronological
organization of primary sources indicates which divine
roles were temporal and which were permanently affixed to
Aplu. The evidence suggests Aplu was a youthful musical
god with a prophetic aspect but not a god of purification or
destruction as commonly believed. This research not only
helps clarify Aplu’s commonly misunderstood roles in
Etruscan society but also casts doubt on the popular belief
that “Aplu is Apollo.”
Highway Snapshots of the American Landscape: The
Search for the Frontier Fantasy in the Fiction of Steinbeck
and Kerouac
Dilyn Myers, English
Sponsor: Professor Phillip Brian Harper, Social and
Cultural Analysis
Traditional U.S. fantasy of the West evolved in the
twentieth century when the advent of the highway system
and the family car opened a previously mysterious wilderness.
Both John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and Jack
Kerouac’s On the Road exploit the scenic imagery of the
physical geography of the West in their deployment of that
fantasy, but they also diverge from earlier literature. Unlike
their predecessors, Steinbeck’s and Kerouac’s characters see
the West through the windows of a car, from the confining
limits of the road, during the disillusioning periods of the
Great Depression and postwar years. This thesis references
Annette Kolodny, who identifies the foundation of
the frontier fantasy in early American literary descriptions
of the landscape as both mother and virgin. Using setting
descriptions in both novels and the author’s own landscape
photography, this study analyzes the contradiction between
feminine, civilized spaces and the simultaneous femininity
of the wild frontier. It is argued that the resolution to this
paradox is the masculinity of the road, which escapes domesticity
to conquer the feminine wild. This thesis finds the
continuous operation of frontier fantasy, and the gendered
landscape it involves, rooted in the expanding network of
highways that enable twentieth-century mobility.
No Art Scene is an Island: Sites of Artistic Production
in Trinidadian Art
Layo Olayiwola, Art History
Sponsor: Professor Edward Sullivan, Art History
Since its launch in 2008, the experimental art site Alice
Yard has been galvanizing the Trinidadian art scene. The success
of Alice Yard as a laboratory for artistic experimentation
demonstrates the instrumental role that art sites can play in
developing local art scenes, in providing vibrant spaces for
the exhibition of multidisciplinary art and in forging strong
connections with global audiences. Alice Yard effectively
negotiates local issues and global concerns, remaining a
vital source of cultural renewal for Trinidadians whilst
contributing to the heterogeneous character of contemporary
Caribbean art and art institutions. Using an analysis
of sources such as newspapers, exhibition catalogues and
scholarly works as well as interviews and photographic
documentation, this project seeks to contextualize Alice
Yard within the history of Trinidadian art. As Alice Yard is
a dynamic, non-traditional site, it presents an important lens
through which to view expanded and emerging definitions
of Trinidadian culture. Through this project the author hopes
to widen the scholarship on and critical assessment of sites
in which contemporary Caribbean art is being produced
and exhibited.
The Medicalization and Commercialization of Female
Body Hair Removal in the History of the United States:
1870–1940
Paige Picard, History
Sponsor: Professor Linda Gordon, History
This project traces the history of female body hair
removal in the United States. Although most women today
regularly remove some if not all of their body hair from the
neck down, most women did not regularly engage in hair
removal practices until after the 1920s. This paper explores
the origins of hair removal as well as the methods used,
some of which were dangerous, and analyzes the forces
that contributed to normalizing a hairless female body. An
exploration of various medical journal texts from the late
nineteenth and early twentieth century and of advertisements
from fashion magazines from the 1910s to the 1930s
reveals that both scientific inquiry and commercial interest
helped persuade women to remove their body hair. As more
women entered public spaces and as fashions revealed more
of the female body, body hair increasingly became a site of
contestation. This paper reveals the dangers that women
willingly subjected themselves to throughout history to
maintain this ideal of beauty and helps contextualize the
present-day obsession with female hair removal.
Hacking the Circuit: The Artist’s Approach to Collective
Healing in Post-Colonial Latin America
Caroline Pocock, Global Liberal Studies
Sponsor: Professor Christopher Packard, Liberal Studies
The standard Western model of memorialization of
collective trauma—museums, memorial structures, designated
spaces for contemplation—does not reflect the way
Mexico’s history of oppression has cultivated unique artistic
responses to the ongoing collective trauma associated with
drug-related violence. Artist Teresa Margolles employs the
institution to express subversive opinions through the official
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