Hoopes Prizes Awarded for Theses

The College announced the award of Thomas Temple Hoopes Prizes to 49 seniors and their supervisors for excellence in scholarly work and research on Monday. Five seniors and their supervisors also received honorable mentions.

Seniors interviewed yesterday said they were surprised and delighted to receive the award, which includes a prize of $2,500 for each student and an award for the advisers.

Alice Y. Ting '96 said yesterday she will use her award to purchase a plane ticket to Dallas for her boyfriend Michael A. Gelman '96, also a Hoopes recipient, so that the two can spend a week in her home city prior to graduation.

"I would never have been able to afford it if I hadn't won," Ting said.

Ting, who worked with Emery Professor of Organic Chemistry Elias J. Corey, said her thesis focused on the structure of an enzyme which is a precursor to important steroids such as estrogen and cholesterol.

Gelman said his research focused on combinatorial chemistry, which is a method for generating large molecules by mixing and matching smaller parts. Gelman said his research has applications in the areas of signal transduction, intracellular communication and pharmesutical design.

Another prize winner, Cliff W. Chiang '96, took advantage of his joint concentration in English and Visual and Environmental Studies to illustrate Milton's Paradise Lost.

He said his title quote "'If answerable style I can obtain'" was taken from the book and served as a comparison between his own creative attempt and Milton's.

"I sort of saw it as a parallel between what I was doing and what he was doing," Chiang said.

Chiang, who was advised by Baunbaum Professor of Literature Leo Damrosch, the chair of the English Department, said he set his illustrated thesis in the 1930s "to make it accessible to modern audiences."

Another Hoopes winner, Heather L. Clark '96, explored the Irish identity of James Joyce in "Conquest is a Lie: Joyce, Irish Identity and the Politics of the Postcolonial in 'Araby.'"

Clark, an English concentrator who was advised by teaching fellow Dan M. Wiley, said she has spent a lot of time in Ireland. She said her thesis explored new ground in Joycean analysis.

"A lot of people look at [Joyce] as part of the English canon," she said. "I tried to look at him from an Irish perspective."

"I really looked at him from a post-colonial perspective," she added.

Another prize-winning thesis examined the intergroup relations of multi-racial individuals.

Selena D. Fowler '96 interviewed Harvard students and distributed questionnaires to students on campus.

Fowler was advised by Cabot Professor of Social Ethics Herbert C. Kelman and Professor of Sociology Mary C. Waters.

Prizes were awarded to Noel C. Allen '96 for "The Destruction of Self: The Poetry of Olga Orozco"; David E. Benjamin '96 for "Report From Iron Mountain: A Look at Modern American History"; Manjul Bhargava '96 for "On P-orderings and polynomial functions on arbitrary subsets of Dedekind-type rings"; Joshua S. Bloom '96 for "Studies of Gamma-Ray Bursts as Standard Candles and Globular Cluster X-ray Binaries as Dynamical Probes"; and Cliff W. Chiang '96 for "'If answerable Style I Can Obtain...': An Analysis and Account of Illustrating Paradise Lost."

Prizes were also awarded to Daniel T. Chrzanowski '96 for "Fertility in Western Kenya: An Engendered Explanation and an Application of Human Rights"; Heather L. Clark '96 for "Conquest is a Lie: Joyce, Irish Identity, and the Politics of the Post-colonial in Araby"; Jill A. Corcoran '96 for "Beyond the Bell Curve and 'g': Rethinking Ability and Its Correlates"; Hugh G. Eakin '96 for "Religious Politics and Civic Rhetoric in the Renaissance: The Brancacci Chapel Frescoes and Their Patronage"; Steven A. Engel '96 for "The Legacy of American Hegemony: A Theory of Institutional Change"; and Eliezer M. Finegold '96 for "Musika Mizrahit: From the Margins to the Mainstream."

Winners included Selena D. Fowler '96 for "Multiple Heritage Individuals: Patterns of Intergroup Relations and Their Mediating Factors"; Michael A. Gelman '96 for "Directed Combinatorial Organic Chemistry in Ligand Design"; Diana A. Gibson '96 for "On the History of Misunderstanding: The Hymenaios and the Etymology of the [YMEN] refrain"; Jay R. Girotto '96 for "How School Policies Can Affect Cognitive Skills: An Econometric Analysis of the Effects of Student Choices"; Aaron P. Goldberg '96 for "Naturalism and the Problem of Phenomenal Consciousness"; and Elissa L. Gootman '96 for "Dialogue and its Discontents: Israeli and Palestinian Ethnonationalism and the 'Therapeutic Paradox."'

Others awarded prizes were Michael D. Gordin '96 for "'Trust, but Verify': Sverdlovsk, Yellow Rain and the Crisis of Biological Arms Control, 1979-1995"; Marya L. HillPopper '96 for "From Market Building to Institution Building: The Development of Gender Equality Policy in the European Union"; Chimene I. Keitner '96 for "Revamping the Salome Myth: The Femme Fatalle and Sexual Power in Rachilde"; Thaddeus B. Kousser '96 for "'Treating' the Poor"; Alexander G. Kozak '96 for "The Myth of Hypsipyle in Greek and Roman Poetry"; and David B. Lat '96 for "Language and the Land: The Building of Community in Philippine Postcolonial Anglophone Literature."

Additional prizes went to Natan J. Leyva '96 for "The Tension Between Rights and Democracy: Rawls and Habermas in Dialogue"; James B. Loeffler '96 for "A Gilgul fun a Nigun: Jewish Musicians in New York, 1881-1945"; Nathan E. Lump '96 for "'Thus there are devils, there are spirits': Genre, Personal Experience, and Belief in Folkloristics and the Words of a Welsh Storyteller"; Elizabeth C. Marlantes '96 for "From the Mud Hut to the Parthenon: Edith Wharton's Search for the Ideal Home"; and James N. Miller '96 for "'Between the Boycotters and the Liftgivers': A Comparative History of the Bus Boycotts in Montgomery, Alabama and Johannesburg, South Africa 1955-1957."

The Hoopes prize also went to Alexandra M. Molnar '96 for "Through the Lens of Tourism: Shaping Identity in a Cretan Town"; Roxanne S. Tze Pan '96 for "Searching for the New Citizen: Liang Qichao's Conception of Freedom"; Michele R. Pelot '96 for "Mixed Chimerism and Adoptive Immunotherapy for the Treatment of Chronic Leukemias"; Timothy F. Platts-Mills '96 for "Spatial Variation in the Chemical Composition of Surface Waters in the Front Range, Colorado"; Elizabeth G. Ree '96 for "'Is It Art?': Changing Perceptions of Modernism and the Function of Art by the Public, Critics and Writers in Response to the 1913 Armory Show"; Renee-Ann Richardson '96 for "Oh Pressed Hair!: The Politicization of Black Hair Texture as Reflected Through Print Advertisements, 1940-1995."

Other winners included Catherine S. Robe '96 for "On The World's Stage: Nellie Bly and Nineteenth-Century Stunt Reporting"; Jennifer Roost '96 for "Calories Controlled: An Improved Approach to the Psychopharmacological Manipulation of Alcohol Preference in an Animal Model"; Angela A. Sun '96 for "For the Right to Be Heirs: An Examination of the New Territories Laid (Exemption) Ordinance as a Case Study of Gender Politics, Village Unity and the Law"; Jennifer T. Sun '96 for "The Fournier Transform in Computational Learning Theory"; Rachel K. Teukolsky '96 for "'Brief Exposures': Photography as a Thematic and Technique in Joyce's Ulysses"; and Alice Y. Ting '96 for "Part one: New Catalysts for the Sharpless Asymmetric Dihydroxylation; Part two: Lanosterol Synthase Studies."

Prizes were also awarded to Ramin Tolovi '96 for "The Basis of Technical Change in 'Japanese Manufacturing, 1899-1938"; Emily J. Tsai '96 for "Neural Mechanisms Underlying Auditory Intensity Discrimination: Responses of Auditory Nerve Fibers to Pure Tone Signals in the Presence of Notched-Noise"; Emily M. Tucker '96 for Animula Vagula Blandula: A Study in the Use and Formation of the Latin Diminutive"; Jennifer M. Ty '96 for "Is Walking With Two Cheaper to Do? The Energetic Cost of Walking and Running in a Non-Human Biped"; Balint Virag '96 for "Random Walks on Finite Convex Sets of Lattice Points"; Adam K. Webb '96 for "Community, Peasants, and the Shining Path Guerrillas: A Field Study in Ayacucho, Peru"; Geordie Young '96 for "The Distribution of Void Sizes During Structure Formation in the Universe"; and Timothy P. Yu '96 for "Angles of Submission: The Poetics and Politics of 'Language' Poetry."

Five theses received honorable mentions: John A. Abraham '96 for "Regulation of Phosphoration of Microphthalmia by the c-Kit Signalling Pathway in Melanoma Cells"; Lynn M. Itagaki '96 for "Parody and Narrative Doubling in Maxine Hong Kingston's Tripmaster Monkey: Her Fake Book"; Linsey C. Marr '96 for "A Flourescent Torchiere and Energy Savings at Harvard"; Jeremy L. Martin '96 for "The Mathieu Group M12 and Conway's M13-Game"; and Andrew L. Wright '96 for "'The Seeds of History, the License to Invent': Torquato Tasso Between History and Fiction.

"I really looked at him from a post-colonial perspective," she added.

Another prize-winning thesis examined the intergroup relations of multi-racial individuals.

Selena D. Fowler '96 interviewed Harvard students and distributed questionnaires to students on campus.

Fowler was advised by Cabot Professor of Social Ethics Herbert C. Kelman and Professor of Sociology Mary C. Waters.

Prizes were awarded to Noel C. Allen '96 for "The Destruction of Self: The Poetry of Olga Orozco"; David E. Benjamin '96 for "Report From Iron Mountain: A Look at Modern American History"; Manjul Bhargava '96 for "On P-orderings and polynomial functions on arbitrary subsets of Dedekind-type rings"; Joshua S. Bloom '96 for "Studies of Gamma-Ray Bursts as Standard Candles and Globular Cluster X-ray Binaries as Dynamical Probes"; and Cliff W. Chiang '96 for "'If answerable Style I Can Obtain...': An Analysis and Account of Illustrating Paradise Lost."

Prizes were also awarded to Daniel T. Chrzanowski '96 for "Fertility in Western Kenya: An Engendered Explanation and an Application of Human Rights"; Heather L. Clark '96 for "Conquest is a Lie: Joyce, Irish Identity, and the Politics of the Post-colonial in Araby"; Jill A. Corcoran '96 for "Beyond the Bell Curve and 'g': Rethinking Ability and Its Correlates"; Hugh G. Eakin '96 for "Religious Politics and Civic Rhetoric in the Renaissance: The Brancacci Chapel Frescoes and Their Patronage"; Steven A. Engel '96 for "The Legacy of American Hegemony: A Theory of Institutional Change"; and Eliezer M. Finegold '96 for "Musika Mizrahit: From the Margins to the Mainstream."

Winners included Selena D. Fowler '96 for "Multiple Heritage Individuals: Patterns of Intergroup Relations and Their Mediating Factors"; Michael A. Gelman '96 for "Directed Combinatorial Organic Chemistry in Ligand Design"; Diana A. Gibson '96 for "On the History of Misunderstanding: The Hymenaios and the Etymology of the [YMEN] refrain"; Jay R. Girotto '96 for "How School Policies Can Affect Cognitive Skills: An Econometric Analysis of the Effects of Student Choices"; Aaron P. Goldberg '96 for "Naturalism and the Problem of Phenomenal Consciousness"; and Elissa L. Gootman '96 for "Dialogue and its Discontents: Israeli and Palestinian Ethnonationalism and the 'Therapeutic Paradox."'

Others awarded prizes were Michael D. Gordin '96 for "'Trust, but Verify': Sverdlovsk, Yellow Rain and the Crisis of Biological Arms Control, 1979-1995"; Marya L. HillPopper '96 for "From Market Building to Institution Building: The Development of Gender Equality Policy in the European Union"; Chimene I. Keitner '96 for "Revamping the Salome Myth: The Femme Fatalle and Sexual Power in Rachilde"; Thaddeus B. Kousser '96 for "'Treating' the Poor"; Alexander G. Kozak '96 for "The Myth of Hypsipyle in Greek and Roman Poetry"; and David B. Lat '96 for "Language and the Land: The Building of Community in Philippine Postcolonial Anglophone Literature."

Additional prizes went to Natan J. Leyva '96 for "The Tension Between Rights and Democracy: Rawls and Habermas in Dialogue"; James B. Loeffler '96 for "A Gilgul fun a Nigun: Jewish Musicians in New York, 1881-1945"; Nathan E. Lump '96 for "'Thus there are devils, there are spirits': Genre, Personal Experience, and Belief in Folkloristics and the Words of a Welsh Storyteller"; Elizabeth C. Marlantes '96 for "From the Mud Hut to the Parthenon: Edith Wharton's Search for the Ideal Home"; and James N. Miller '96 for "'Between the Boycotters and the Liftgivers': A Comparative History of the Bus Boycotts in Montgomery, Alabama and Johannesburg, South Africa 1955-1957."

The Hoopes prize also went to Alexandra M. Molnar '96 for "Through the Lens of Tourism: Shaping Identity in a Cretan Town"; Roxanne S. Tze Pan '96 for "Searching for the New Citizen: Liang Qichao's Conception of Freedom"; Michele R. Pelot '96 for "Mixed Chimerism and Adoptive Immunotherapy for the Treatment of Chronic Leukemias"; Timothy F. Platts-Mills '96 for "Spatial Variation in the Chemical Composition of Surface Waters in the Front Range, Colorado"; Elizabeth G. Ree '96 for "'Is It Art?': Changing Perceptions of Modernism and the Function of Art by the Public, Critics and Writers in Response to the 1913 Armory Show"; Renee-Ann Richardson '96 for "Oh Pressed Hair!: The Politicization of Black Hair Texture as Reflected Through Print Advertisements, 1940-1995."

Other winners included Catherine S. Robe '96 for "On The World's Stage: Nellie Bly and Nineteenth-Century Stunt Reporting"; Jennifer Roost '96 for "Calories Controlled: An Improved Approach to the Psychopharmacological Manipulation of Alcohol Preference in an Animal Model"; Angela A. Sun '96 for "For the Right to Be Heirs: An Examination of the New Territories Laid (Exemption) Ordinance as a Case Study of Gender Politics, Village Unity and the Law"; Jennifer T. Sun '96 for "The Fournier Transform in Computational Learning Theory"; Rachel K. Teukolsky '96 for "'Brief Exposures': Photography as a Thematic and Technique in Joyce's Ulysses"; and Alice Y. Ting '96 for "Part one: New Catalysts for the Sharpless Asymmetric Dihydroxylation; Part two: Lanosterol Synthase Studies."

Prizes were also awarded to Ramin Tolovi '96 for "The Basis of Technical Change in 'Japanese Manufacturing, 1899-1938"; Emily J. Tsai '96 for "Neural Mechanisms Underlying Auditory Intensity Discrimination: Responses of Auditory Nerve Fibers to Pure Tone Signals in the Presence of Notched-Noise"; Emily M. Tucker '96 for Animula Vagula Blandula: A Study in the Use and Formation of the Latin Diminutive"; Jennifer M. Ty '96 for "Is Walking With Two Cheaper to Do? The Energetic Cost of Walking and Running in a Non-Human Biped"; Balint Virag '96 for "Random Walks on Finite Convex Sets of Lattice Points"; Adam K. Webb '96 for "Community, Peasants, and the Shining Path Guerrillas: A Field Study in Ayacucho, Peru"; Geordie Young '96 for "The Distribution of Void Sizes During Structure Formation in the Universe"; and Timothy P. Yu '96 for "Angles of Submission: The Poetics and Politics of 'Language' Poetry."

Five theses received honorable mentions: John A. Abraham '96 for "Regulation of Phosphoration of Microphthalmia by the c-Kit Signalling Pathway in Melanoma Cells"; Lynn M. Itagaki '96 for "Parody and Narrative Doubling in Maxine Hong Kingston's Tripmaster Monkey: Her Fake Book"; Linsey C. Marr '96 for "A Flourescent Torchiere and Energy Savings at Harvard"; Jeremy L. Martin '96 for "The Mathieu Group M12 and Conway's M13-Game"; and Andrew L. Wright '96 for "'The Seeds of History, the License to Invent': Torquato Tasso Between History and Fiction.