In order for a creative thesis proposal to be approved, the student needs to show that they are familiar with the art form they intend to use, Foster says. Harbeson says she took creative writing classes which prepared her to write her novel.
WORDS AND PICTURES
Harbeson’s plan is to submit a 100-page young adult novel, a rewriting of the fairy tale “Rumpelstiltskin” by the Brothers Grimm, by the mid-March deadline. Her creative thesis allows her to engage with an issue that has been a central part of her life.
“I’m writing as if the queen hadn’t been able to guess Rumpelstiltskin’s name—as if he had kept the child he had been promised,” she says. “The reason why I’m doing this is that fairy tales have an emphasis on the biological family being the only family who can really raise a child.”
As an adopted daughter, Harbeson says that she has a problem with the original tale’s portrayal of biological ties as a necessary component for the ideal family, so she decided to explore the idea of Rumpelstiltskin being able to raise the queen’s daughter on his own.
Devi K. Lockwood ’14, another folklore and mythology student, is also planning on taking advantage of the creative project option, which she says was the deciding factor in choosing her concentration. Her thesis will be a collection of poems that use water as a metaphor for storytelling.
“Water is really central and important to my life because I’m a rower and my mom was a lifeguard, so I’ve just grown up in and around all different kinds of water,” she says. “I’m interested in exploring how water is the unifying factor for different people who live in an area.”
Last spring, Meredith H. Keffer ’12, a former Crimson photo editor, presented a collection of photographs as part of her senior thesis on the worship of folk saints in Argentina.
Before the non-academic thesis option was officially made available to folklore and mythology concentrators, students like Keffer who wanted to do a creative project would include that component alongside their analytical theses. Foster says that this trend contributed to the decision to allow seniors to submit only the creative part.
Keffer’s 166-page thesis, which was about three-quarters photographs, received the Swapna Dev Prize, an award that recognizes excellent senior projects in folklore and mythology, as well as a Hoopes Prize.
“Having a creative option gives students an opportunity to engage those other senses, to think and work outside of the narrow academic box, and also to try to convey knowledge in a more engaging way,” Keffer says.
KALEIDOSCOPE EYES
Tatar calls folklore and mythology a “kaleidoscopic concentration” because of the variety of creative media it can include. “We’re living in a multidisciplinary academic world and in a multimedia environment, where knowledge is transmitted now through visual and print culture,” she says.
For this concentration, a creative thesis is a good fit, Keffer opines. “You have to open yourself to a certain degree of creativity in order to study other cultures,” she says, adding that folklore is often defined precisely as the study of expressive culture.
Foster, however, notes that the term “creative” may be a problematic label for the artistic option, since it implies that the traditional thesis is something other than creative.
Lockwood agrees, “Writing an analytical thesis is just engaging in a different kind of creativity.”
Folklore and mythology concentrators say that they appreciate how responsive the Committee has been to their special interests. “It’s brilliant for people like me, because I struggle a lot with paper writing and the idea of writing a thesis was incredibly intimidating to me,” Harbeson says. “I wouldn’t have enjoyed it.”
“It’s a department where you’re not anonymous in any way,” says Lockwood. “Your intellectual interests can mix up with your personal life in the best possible way.”
—Staff writer Francesca Annicchiarico can be reached at fannicchiarico1@college.harvard.edu.