Poetry Collection by Amberlee Perry
English
I chose to present five poems that I have written during this past year -- the most challenging, and most rewarding, year of my college career. The first two poems I wrote at the beginning of the semester in the Intro to Poetry class, while the last two poems are pieces I wrote for publication in Parallax. I have chosen these four poems for two reasons: to illustrate the progression of my poetry- writing skill over the course of the year, and to speak to the therapeutic aspect of writing poems, as writing these have helped me process events, emotions, and desires in a positive, creative way. I plan to continue writing poetry as a way to express myself and my deepest thoughts -- thank you to the English Department for bringing poetry back into my life.
Perry, Amberlee
Senior Showcase Oral Presentation
Ripon College
April 19, 2016
The author reserves all rights
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Major: English
Minor: Applied Communication and Nonprofit Management
Hometown: Berlin, Wisconsin
ENG: Introduction to Poetry
"Seasons Speak of Us" by Jorge Gutierrez
English
Original video creation of poetry.
Gutierrez, Jorge
Senior Showcase Digital presentation
Ripon College
April 19, 2016
The author reserves all rights.
Website
Major: Psychology
Minor: Religion
Los Angeles, CA
ENG 310 - Advanced Poetry
Transcriptional Regulation by λBacteriophage Antitermination by Sean Gibbons
Biology
As a regulator of transcription, antitermination works to allow for RNA polymerase to read through termination signals and express genes found downstream of these termination signals. The Q protein of phage λ displays this antitermination phenotype in E.coli. It works to allow for the expression of promoter distal genes by letting RNAP transcribe through termination signals that block these genes. Q function overlays the phage late gene promoter P R ’ and requires the presence of a DNA element called the Q-utilization (qut) site. The qut site must contain Q-binding sequences and a specific pause site for the Q protein to be able to modify RNAP for the antitermination phenotype. Mutations in the qut site (-13/- 15) have been shown to decrease antitermination efficiency by preventing Q protein binding. This research seeks to identify regions of the Q protein that interact with qut DNA, using a second site suppressor analysis to identify mutant Q genes that allow for antitermination phenotype on mutant (-13/- 15) qut sites.
Gibbons, Sean
Senior Showcase Oral presentation
Ripon College
April 19, 2016
The author reserves all rights
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Studiorum Classicorum et Linguae Latinae Laudatio by Ryan Slattery
Classical Languages
Original Latin oration on the importance of the Latin language and foreign language study.
Slattery, Ryan
Senior Showcase Oral presentation
Ripon College
April 19, 2016
The author reserves all rights.
Majors: Classical Languages, History
CLA 430 - Senior Seminar
Hometown: Wilmette, Illinois
Toward the Structure of the C-terminal Domain of EcoR124I Restriction Enzyme by Nicholas Leudtke
Chemistry
Using the type I restriction-modification (R-M) system of plasmid EcoR124I, E. coli cells systematically distinguish their own DNA from foreign DNA. Self DNA is protected by
methylation within a specific recognition sequence, while foreign DNA, which lacks methylation, promotes DNA translocation through the stationary R-M enzyme and cleavage at unspecific sites. The R-M system consists of three subunits: HsdS (specificity), HsdM (modification) and HsdR (restriction).
The published structure of the HsdR subunit of EcoR124I1 contained four functionally integrated domains. The last 150 amino acids in the C-terminal domain were unresolved in the crystal structure. A single point mutation led to a new crystal structure indicating that the last 150 residues form a 5th domain perpendicular to the other four domains.
To facilitate expression and crystallization, the C-terminal part of HsdR was appended after a fluorescent protein domain and a hexahistidine tag. Three constructs that include HsdR residues 705-1038, 867-1038, or 887-1038 were developed through PCR mediated deletions. Following expression, each protein was purified by nickel-NTA affinity and DEAE-Sepharose anion exchange chromatography. Crystals of the construct containing residues 887-1038 diffract x-rays to 8 Å and a model structure has been predicted for the C-terminal domain.
Molecular dynamics simulations with GROMACS software is being used to simulate the restriction subunit. The aim is to estimate if the proposed C-terminal structure maintains its secondary and tertiary structures during molecular dynamics simulations in solvent. Simulations of the protein are being examined for features that can evaluate the acceptability of the current model of EcoR124I.
This project was completed with all of the creators listed below, as well as the support from the Czech Science Foundation (P207/12/2323) and the United States National Science Foundation REU program (award 1358737).
Luedtke, Nicholas
Grinkevich, Pavel
McIntosh, Bennett
Baikova, Tatsiana
Lapkouski, Mikalai
Ettrich, Rüdiger
Carey, Jannette
Senior Showcase Poster presentation
Ripon College
April 19, 2016
The author reserves all rights.
Major: Chemistry
Appleton, WI
Small Worlds: Display of Inwardness in Pompeiian Houses during the Late Republic and the Early Roman Empire by Myat Aung
Classical Studies
Comprehension of the Roman experience is conceived through the exploration of antiquity: close examination of artifacts and ideas that the Romans encountered in their everyday lives. Myriad ways in which the city was perceived to the ancients stemmed from the ramifications in the physical fabric of the city they experienced. The interpretation of a Roman life is made up of minute incidences and events, one of them being the internal experience of a person, in relation to entering the private realms of a house. At the time of Rome’s transition from the Republic to the Empire, the articulation of an emotional experience that sprang from a spatial relationship with an interior of a house attracted writers and artists as an ideal escape from the turmoil. After Pompeii became Rome’s colony in 80 BC, stylistic changes that occurred in Rome during the transition emerged in the art and architecture Pompeii’s houses and villas, expressing the ideal of inwardness, beauty, and tranquility in an enclosed private space through elaborate construction and decoration of interior spaces.
Aung, Myat
Senior Showcase Poster presentation
Ripon College
April 19, 2016
The author reserves all rights.
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Majors: Art History, Classical Studies
CLA 430 - Variable Topic Seminar
The Social Hell of William Blake: the Impact of the Industrial Revolution on Blake's Illustrations of Dante's Inferno by Myat Aung
Art
In 1824 CE, William Blake was commissioned to illustrate the Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri. Amongst 102 illustrations, Blake devoted two thirds to the Inferno. Within the scholarship on Blake, the prevailing analysis of his illustrations shows his treatment of religious imagery. Such treatment does not emphasize how Blake’s illustrations reflect the social changes in nineteenth-century London. I thus examine Blake’s Inferno and articulate how it conveys ideas not present in the original text. My research revolves around Dante’s allegory and how Blake would have interpreted the work in his day. When Blake started painting the Inferno, the Industrial Revolution had already begun. As London became highly urbanized, factories were built with the promise of better commodities. Concurrently, transportation, communication, and access to mechanized goods improved. Amidst advances in science and industry, London became a crowded, unsanitary place covered in smoke, where workers suffered from diseases and low wages due to coal burning and laissez-faire capitalism. Because over five hundred years separated Dante from Blake, I ask questions about how Dante’s text informed Blake’s thinking. What was Blake’s perspective on daily life in London? What type of imagery in Blake’s drawings deviated from the descriptions in the text? How did Blake approach the Inferno in the nineteenth century? To answer these questions, I identify four themes that Blake used in his illustrations to reimagine Dante’s Hell. I ultimately argue that William Blake’s illustrations of the Inferno are his social commentary on the status quo of London during the Industrial Revolution.
Aung, Myat
Senior Showcase Oral presentation
Ripon College
April 19, 2016
The author reserves all rights.
pdf
Majors: Art History, Classical Studies
ART 570 - Senior Seminar in Art
Determination of Potential 4-hydroxy-2-nonenal Covalent Binding Sites on Electron Transfer Flavoprotein using Liquid Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry by Margaret Breen-Lyles
Chemistry-Biology
Oxygen radicals and the reactive by-products they create have long been indicated in the disease pathways of metabolic disorders, given that they have the potential to react with the key components of proteins and thus disrupt their functioning. One of the most common by-products of oxygen radicals reacting with components of the cell is 4-hydroxy-2-nonenal (4HNE). Numerous studies have indicated that 4HNE is able to adduct to single amino acids, peptide sequences, as well as whole proteins. Electron transfer flavoprotein (ETF) is a highly active electron transferase of the fatty acid and amino acid oxidation pathways, and deficiency of this protein has been indicated in numerous disease pathways. ETF has demonstrated reduced activity when incubated with 4HNE, therefore this study attempted to determine possible binding sites of 4HNE on ETF by utilizing model peptides and LC-MS analysis. Distinct 4HNE adducts were formed with the peptide angiotensin II as well as a peptide from the alpha subunit of ETF. The groundwork has been laid for further research into the possibility of cross-linking occurring between ETF subunits as well as analysis of 4HNE adducts on ETF through tryptic digest.
Breen-Lyles, Margaret
Senior Showcase Poster presentation
Ripon College
April 19, 2016
The author reserves all rights.
Major: Chemistry-Biology
Minor: Spanish
Summer Research at Ripon College under Dr. Colleen Byron
10 Ways to Get Lost in Your Own Neighborhood by Maddison Vega
English
The poem upon which this video is based, titled 10 Ways to Get Lost in Your Own Neighborhood, was written by Maddy Vega during Professor Gannon's ENG 310: Advanced Poetry course. It was then selected for use in a video project, for which students were tasked to create a short creative video based on their poem.
As the poem explores themes of an adolescence navigating typical adolescent struggles along with those additionally imposed by mental illness, the video similarly combines elements of the mundane and elements of the strange, from the distorted voiceover to the innocent knickknacks decorating the walls of the room.
The video was shot during the spring of 2016 and directed by the author of the poem, Maddy Vega, who also stars in it.
Vega, Maddison
Senior Showcase Digital presentation
Ripon College
April 19, 2016
The author reserves all rights.
Website
Major: English
Minors: Sociology, Education
Kenosha, WI
ENG 310 - Advanced Poetry
Fairy Tales in Picture Books by Kayla Beck
English
This exhibit explores the history and presentation of fairy tales through the medium of children's picture books. Specifically focusing on the fairy tales "Cinderella" and "Beauty and the Beast". This exhibit will examine the way that the stories are presented through illustrations and how they are viewed in different cultures.
Beck, Kayla
Senior Showcase Digital presentation
Ripon College
April 19, 2016
The author reserves all rights.
Website
Majors: English, Art History
Germantown, WI
Hacking and Yacking Digital Texts
Formerly Buddhist Practices Offer Great Potential to the World of Western Psychology by Katlyn Troisi
Religion
Psychology
Over time science has grown in importance in the way in which people live today. This has caused conflict in the eyes of those who are religiously affiliated and have been instructed to ignore scientific findings. The true issue is the polarization of these two aspects of life. Rather religion and science should grow together. Buddhism has acknowledged the potential of incorporating science into their teachings and when new evidence comes to light they openly change how they see the world. Since Buddhism is open-minded to the benefits of science, there has been an opportunity to study many of the Buddhist practices which are now being used in the western field of psychology. There is an entire adapted field of Buddhist-derived Interventions which have impacted the world of psychotherapy greatly (Shonin, E., Van Gordon, W., & Griffiths, M. D., 2014). Specifically, this paper discusses the many benefits of meditation and mindfulness when added as a treatment method for therapy. This overlap presents immense opportunity for the relationship of religion and the social sciences to feed off of one another to form a greater understanding of each discipline.
Troisi, Katlyn
Senior Showcase Oral presentation
Ripon College
April 19, 2016
The author reserves all rights.
pdf
Majors: Psychology, Religion
South Williamsport, PA
REL 450 - Senior Seminar
Does Exposure to Social Media Discourse Affect Openness to Future Political Discourse? by Katlyn Troisi & RaeAnn Brixius
Psychology
The present study sought to expand on previous research which had indicated that engaging in political discourse through social media increases the level of comfortability people have when discussing those topics in person. This study used screenshotted pictures of fake Facebook posts between either authority figures (politicians) or civilians. The posts were also either between two people or a group discussion amongst five people. Results showed that there was no significant effect reported by including either an authority figure or a civilian or the group size involved in the conversation. However, the analysis did report near significance in the condition which examined question three in relation to group size. The neutral condition also reported no significance.
Troisi, Katlyn
Brixius, RaeAnn
Senior Showcase Poster presentation
Ripon College
April 19, 2016
The author reserves all rights.
pdf
Majors: Psychology, Religion
South Williamsport, PA
PSC 423 - Senior Research Seminar
Apocalyptic Islam: What Makes ISIS a Serious Threat to America by Jacob Sahr
Politics and Government
ISIS poses a serious threat to America and the American way of life. Whether ISIS has the ability to target the United States currently or in the near future, the aspects which constitute the brutal terror organization and state-like characteristics make ISIS an inevitable threat that America will have to confront sooner or later. This study does not encompass or delve into the historical founding of ISIS; rather, this analysis seeks to explain the aspects of ISIS which cause it to be an expanding, resilient, and powerful threat in global politics, and in the end, to the United States. The current aspects of ISIS that contribute to their increasing and omnipresent threat are recruiting tactics and ability, the organizations financial ability, military capability and strength, state functionality, and ideological principles. Considering all of these facets, there are those who believe America should not become more involved or invested in the Middle East's problems, but when these characteristics are combined ISIS serves as a very serious threat to America, its national security, and its interests. The scope of this analysis does not intend to postulate policy solutions or recommendations, but to simply demonstrate the increased need for American involvement and policy change.
Sahr, Jacob
Senior Showcase Oral presentation
Ripon College
April 19, 2016
The author reserves all rights.
pdf
Majors: Politics and Government, History
Minor: Military Science
Menasha, WI
POL 502 - Senior Seminar
Disabled by “Repair”: The Textual and Extratextual Prosthesis of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The (Love of the) Last Tycoon by Katie Warczak
English
F. Scott Fitzgerald's final unfinished novel, The Love of the Last Tycoon: A Western is a text that has historically received minimal scholarly attention due ot its incomplete state. Most often put in dialogue with other Fitzgerald works, such as The Great Gatsby (1925) and Tender Is the Night (1934), Tycoon has been the subject of few independent studies, unless the focus has been on the text's "tragic" unfinished status. This label of "incomplete" led the work's editors, Edmund Wilson in 1941 and Matthew J. Bruccoli in 1993, to attempt to "finish" the novel by including introductions, facsimiles of Fitzgerald's notes, and, in Wilson's case, a synopsis of Fitzgerald's outline for the remainder of the work, in their respective editions. However, this paper argues that such attempts to "repair" Tycoon have only disabled the novel by adding extratextual prostheses that make the individual editions of Tycoon more about the editor than the author or the text. By applying David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder's textual theory of narrative prosthesis at the extratextual level, the problematic editorial prostheses reveal themselves and point to the need for a new way to read unfinished texts. This new method involves removing previously normalized prostheses, such as introductions, notes, and the tagline of "unfinished," from the published versions of incomplete texts in order to encourage readers to come to their own conclusions about these works and foster a broader conversation about unfinished literature that centers on editorial and textual theory rather than tragedy.
Warczak, Katie
Senior Showcase Oral presentation
Ripon College
April 19, 2016
The author reserves all rights.
pdf
Majors: English, History
Minor: German and American Studies
Oshkosh, WI
ENG 430 - Senior Seminar
Undermining Whiteness and Promoting Protest: Frank Yerby’s The Foxes of Harrow and the Fledgling Civil Rights Movement by Katie Warczak
History
This paper offers a revisionist perspective on the relationship between white-life novels, or literature written by African Americans that features majority white casts of characters, and the early Civil Rights Movement in the United States. While most scholars have dismissed white-life texts, particularly those published in the post-World War II era, as pandering, raceless works unworthy of study, this paper shows that the rise in the number of white-life novels in the years following the Second World War was a response to societal and publishing pressures that made it nearly impossible for African Americans to publish more traditional protest literature. However, as Yerby's Foxes illustrates, while these works appeared raceless, they contained racial messages that interacted with, and furthered, several goals of the early Civil Rights Movement, specifically undermining white supremacy and advocating for racial integration. In Foxes, the novel that begin the postwar white-life novel trend, these Civil Rights goals are furthered through the white protagonist, Stephen Fox's gradual transformation from a racist slave-holding plantation owner to a tolerant man who contemplates freeing and paying his former slaves as well as through one slave, Inch's, successful integration into white society. As the harbinger of a new wave of white-life novels, Foxes was extremely influential and many African American authors subsequently penned white-life texts that built on these anti-white supremacy and pro-integration arguments. Examining white-life works is therefore essential, not only for understanding the literature of the time, but for comprehending another grassroots contribution to the early Civil Rights Movement.
Warczak, Katie
Senior Showcase Oral presentation
Ripon College
April 19, 2016
The author reserves all rights.
pdf
Majors: English, History
Minors: German and American Studies
Oshkosh, WI
HIS 490 - Senior Seminar