Arts and Humanities – Page 3 – UROP Spring Symposium 2021

Arts and Humanities

Management by Design: Mental Health and its Gendered Discrepancies in the Workplace

Beginning in 1967, most office spaces in America were transformed to follow an “Action Office” Design created by Robert Propst. This invention, backed by psychological and behavioral research, was meant to minimize worker fatigue, increase collaboration without too much distraction, and overall boost productivity in the workplace with employees working faster for longer without much realization. The consequences of this new approach, however, weren’t realized until much more recently. Our research project sought to explore and assess the changes in workplace design from 1967 to 2017, focusing on awareness of mental health and gender fairness. Have work conditions improved? Is employee health a concern for corporations? Why is there still a prominent, gendered difference in employee treatment within the workplace? Using Robert Propst’s The Office and the Henry Ford Archives, we were able to get a sense of what was happening behind closed office doors in 1967.

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HGTV: Understanding Home Improvement Media Influence in the Architecture, Design, Planning, and Development of the US Metropolis

Media has a large impact on the functioning of society, dictating common norms, procedures, and ways of living. However, often overlooked is the impact that media has on the built environment. With such a large influence over communities, architecture can be swayed by the same social components that divide people, especially diversity. In order to examine the media’s impact on diversity in architecture, I examined the racial makeup and family structure makeup, (whether or not the family is a nuclear family, has disabilities, a same-sex couple, single-parent households), of HGTV shows. In order to do this, I watched the first and last available seasons of the shows, and cataloged the race and makeup of each family featured in each episode, as well as of the hosts. From this data, I calculated the percentage of POC and non-nuclear families featured in the shows within the seasons and compared the percentages calculated from the first season to the last season to track the progression in racial diversity. After watching the shows, I found that there was a decrease in racial diversity and an increase in non-nuclear family compositions overall from the first to last seasons of the chosen shows. These findings continue to highlight the lack of diversity and representation of different family groups in HGTV. Therefore, the media’s influence on the built environment disproportionately represents a white, nuclear family, rather than the diverse makeup of the communities featured on the shows.

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Good with Words: Speaking and Presenting

While serving on Professor Barry’s research team, we operate on the assumption that speaking, writing, and problem solving skills are necessary in the legal field. However, we have found that we must do a better job of addressing that need. The current teaching plan being utilized is not enough in terms of the content and the scale. The key question of this project is: How do you scale meaningful professional training in speaking and writing to be both useful to the masses as well as the individual? In trying to answer this question we have focused in on certain classes at University of Michigan Law School, and we are working to pinpoint key areas in need of improvement. We do this by observing a class lecture each week and noting: areas for improvement, areas that can be cut or condensed, and areas that should be emphasized. Also to address this question, we are trying to implement the use of virtual reality headsets, which helps contribute to the larger scale of feedback as a student can actually be placed into a courtroom where their actions have no consequences. Students can use the simulation multiple times until they can successfully finish and understand it. The final results, to be collected over the semester, will provide a clear idea to address scaling lessons for students speaking, writing, and problem solving. This plan can then be applied to other classes to create a generation of highly professional, prepared lawyers.

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Song of America: The Spiritual on the Concert Stage

As stated by W.E.B. Du Bois, the African American spiritual is one of the most significant and impactful genres of American music. Spirituals originated among enslaved African Americans and were influenced by both African and European traditions, including Protestantism, African music, the ring shout, and the camp meeting. Although spirituals were traditionally sung in daily life and religious gatherings, the spiritual transformed after the Civil War as musicians began arranging spirituals in classical styles for performances by professional musicians. My research focuses on the evolution of “Wade in the Water,” an important spiritual from the Antebellum period and one of the most performed concert spirituals in the modern era. Throughout its transformation into a concert spiritual, many aspects of “Wade in the Water,” including melodic and harmonic elements, accompaniment, singing style, and performance practices, were adapted into classical music styles. In this study, library sources, scores, performances, recordings, and lectures were analyzed to determine influences behind stylistic changes in “Wade in the Water” and how the concert spiritual impacted perceptions of African Americans. Through my analysis, I concluded that “Wade in the Water” experienced several important alterations at the dawn of the twentieth century, as spirituals were arranged for trained vocalists. This paper will contribute to research on the musical influences of concert spiritual, an important topic in studying the development of American music.

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The Endurance of Hard Times

Some of the most recognizable American music was written by a man named Stephen Foster. Though the world of popular music has changed and developed dramatically since the mid-19th century, Foster’s music lingers on in our collective memory as “folk music.” How could a 19th century man’s music retain such emotional power in current times? Research was done to understand why Foster’s music has survived into the 21st century, with articles and books on music, philosophy, and psychology used to explore why and how music makes humans feel the way we do. These parameters were used to analyze Stephen Foster’s parlour music, especially songs containing elements that might trigger sad or melancholic emotions. Many of his parlour songs were found to have lyrics that were sad and reminiscent of the past, though the songs that were analyzed (contradictorily) were in a major key. The combination of these factors give his music a sense of nostalgia. This nostalgia feeds into why people still listen to and cherish Foster’s music. It also must be noted that Stephen Foster’s music is a product of his own experiences, but the lyrics allow listeners to interpret the song to fit their own experiences. All of these attributes are why Stephen Foster’s music remains powerful in the 21st century.

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Progressive Policy in Architecture

The power structures within architecture firms have remained stagnant and do not fulfill the potentials of the architects within. The overall perspective within the industry is that these institutions need to work towards a progressive format of power. The research in this project intends to change the power structures of these firms based upon the successes in leadership structures of other industries, as well as their progressive policy implementations. This study looks at the measures of productivity, diversity, and other factors of industry progression in the fields of architecture and other institutions such as government structures, law firms, and business corporations. The power structures of these other industries are compared to the power structure of architecture to find and develop the policies needed to push architecture firms forward in the realm of leadership structures. We hope to find that through the means of governmental legislation, architecture firms will be able to incorporate more progressive means into their power structures. This legislation should implement the necessity of progressive policies that contain standards developed through this research.

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Leading Design in Architecture

“Leadership through Architecture” led by Taubman professor Irene Hwang can be described as an interdisciplinary and independent project that works on redirecting architectural education in combating outdated practices and perspectives that impact design within different realms of architecture. My role in this project is to develop an understanding of how the built environment can impact community living and opportunity. This educational foundation further allows me to create an inventory of a series of interviews that reflect the diverse interpretations residents have of their environments.

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COVID-19 hidden stories of mental health

The upsurge of the COVID-19 global pandemic has brought forth many studies concerning how marginalized communities have been disproportionately affected by the virus: partly due to discriminatory practices embedded within the United States healthcare system, increased proportions of those working essential jobs, and increased probabilities of suffering from preexisting conditions, among other factors. However, there is very little qualitative research regarding the first-hand experiences of these individuals, particularly those within the Hispanic community, nor is there research accessible to Spanish-speaking individuals. Thus, our study entitled “COVID-19 Hidden Stories” searches to collect and empower the experiences of Hispanic individuals who have been affected by the pandemic through virtual interviews in a way that has not yet been amplified by the media or made accessible for the community’s use. Utilizing a trauma-informed journalistic approach, interviews were conducted through phone calls with Hispanic individuals who had contracted COVID-19 within West Michigan, South East Michigan, and Chicago, Illinois communities. The interviews were transcribed and compiled into an audio podcast format, all in Spanish, with English subtitles including necessary context and analysis for individual accounts. Ultimately, analysis of the interviews indicated that difficulties in obtaining access to testing and care, financial burdens, and mistrust of the healthcare system in general were the primary obstacles faced by the Hispanic community during their battles with COVID-19. As a result of these obstacles, our interviewees demonstrated several accounts of mental distress, allowing us to focus on the ways their mental health has been impacted by the pandemic. Ultimately, this journalistic research aims to create solidarity during a time of isolation and highlight noteworthy changes in mental health as experienced by the Hispanic community. The research also highlights the intersectionality that exists between modern-day immigration policies and discriminatory health-care practices against Hispanic persons.

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COVID-19 hidden stories of mental health

The upsurge of the COVID-19 global pandemic has brought forth many studies concerning how marginalized communities have been disproportionately affected by the virus: partly due to discriminatory practices embedded within the United States healthcare system, increased proportions of those working essential jobs, and increased probabilities of suffering from preexisting conditions, among other factors. However, there is very little qualitative research regarding the first-hand experiences of these individuals, particularly those within the Hispanic community, nor is there research accessible to Spanish-speaking individuals. Thus, our study entitled “COVID-19 Hidden Stories of Mental Health” searches to collect and empower the experiences of Hispanic individuals who have been affected by the pandemic through virtual interviews in a way that has not yet been amplified by the media or made accessible for the community’s use.

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Méliès and the Modern World

This project looks in depth at the work of early filmmaker Georges Méliès who was a pioneer of special effects and story films during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Furthermore, we are looking to highlight the importance of Madeleine Malthête-Méliès, who had perhaps the longest active career of any film historian and whose main concentration was documenting her grandfather Georges Méliès, including locating his many lost films. Our focus has been supporting the publication of a translation of a key historical source that has long been unavailable in English, the late Madeleine Malthête-Méliès’ biography, Georges Méliès, L’Enchanteur, which is under contract with the University of Michigan Press. This book will make Méliès’ work better known to a wider audience including readers of English. We have worked to document the author’s work by arranging English subtitling of a video interview with Madeleine Malthête-Méliès, and have compiled a complete bibliography of the research publication connected with the organization she founded, Les Amis de Georges Méliès. We are summarizing relevant articles for discussion in the introduction to the biography and assisting in the publication of another book, Méliès Boots: Material Contexts for Early Film Manufacturing (University of Michigan Press, under contract). To further show how Georges Méliès has impacted the modern world, we are preparing a short film that will summarize research on Méliès at the University of Michigan undertaken since 2011 told from the point-of-view of a new generation of media makers who draw continuing inspiration from learning about Méliès and his work.

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