Eight owls flocked to the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts for the Council of Public Liberal Arts Colleges (COPLAC) Northeast Regional Undergraduate Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity Conference to display a variety of work conducted in the past year.
Seniors Zach Punch and Ben Harley, juniors Jackson Caffrey, Mariah Rodriguez-Costa, Amarrah Gates and Kris Wilczak, as well as sophomore Amanda Rotigliano all traveled to North Adams, Mass. in late October to represent the college on a regional level and display academic projects.
Punch, an architecture major, landed in the conference for his work on an adobe hut placed outside of the Media Arts Center, created to test the viability of adobe as a building material in a northern climate, as previously reported by The Equinox.
In order to do this, Punch had temperature monitors placed inside and outside the structure, as well as housed inside the clay bricks, according to the article.
Separately, Harley, a film major, described his project at the conference, an analysis of gendered violence in the movies “Fight Club” and “Gone Girl.”
He originally started the work while taking COMM-479, a senior project course taught by Professor Amber Davisson, but continued work on it after the class concluded.
“When I originally wrote the paper for my final, it was just on ‘Fight Club’ and I was looking at gender, male violence, in that movie and by greater extension, ‘Why do you get these cults online who then take the movie at face value?’” Harley said.
Harley said after examining “Fight Club” he realized he was only taking into account one perspective and looked to include the other side of gendered violence by talking about the movie “Gone Girl.”
“It just seemed like the natural kind of puzzle piece I was missing, encompassing the greater whole of what my paper was analyzing,” Harley said.
Harley took into account various academic sources for the work, including the idea of Moral Displacement Theory, a framework of analysis which describes how main characters in movies resonate with the viewer and can cause people to view these characters with moral ambiguity.
After working on the paper for the class, Harley converted the content into a slideshow presentation for use at the conference.
“My hope is, it’s not gonna happen this semester, probably, but my hope is finish up the paper this semester and see if we can find someone to sponsor and get it made into a published journal, that’s the long term goal,” Harley said.
Gates and Caffrey both attended the conference due to the work they did with Head of Special Collections and Archives Rodney Obien on crafting an open access journal for student work called “Inclusion.”
“We were hoping, I think, generally that people would learn more about efforts to include diversity, equity inclusion on college campuses, especially in regards to student work and so I think that was our main goal was just kind of showcasing that,” Gates said.
Going forward, she said the journal will continue to publish student work as it comes in and there are plans to publish a print copy in the future.
Additionally, Gates said she was happy with how the trip went and the opportunity to represent the college on a larger scale.
“There was a lot of really, really cool projects and it was really nice to get to know other students who are so passionate about what they do so it was a really good opportunity and I felt very proud to be representing Keene State,” Gates explained.
Nathan Hope can be contacted at
