Tag: Barbara Mossberg

Presenter(s): Ashley Kim − Biology, Environmental Science

Faculty Mentor(s): Barbara Mossberg

Oral Session 3O

Research Area: Humanities

Food sustains all human life. It allows the human body to function in its most basic form, but can also bring joy with the right combination of ingredients. In Dr. Barbara Mossberg’s “Helpful Banana Bread”, she explores the role of nature in food through cooking, but also the role of humans in the food cycle of nature itself. By allowing the audience to share her recipes, experiences in the kitchen, and memories of nature, she gives readers new insight to the seemingly simple acts of cooking and eating. All life on Earth works together to maintain the complex environment that sustains human life itself. Bringing the experiences in this book to an audience in a non-traditional format (in this case, food) will help them share in the moments that the author came to her realizations about the relationship of nature and food. In turn, the audience has the opportunity to come to these realizations themselves. Since the author describes her memories of eating and cooking in such vivid detail, just reading these experiences make the audience feel as if they were experiencing it themselves. Physically being able to taste and smell the same foods she enjoys in the same manner she suggests elevates the audience’s experience of the book and the world around them. This translation is much more immersive than solely reading traditional literature because it allows the audience to have the experiences as the author, allowing them to understand the human role and impact on nature through food.

Presenter(s): Sarah Hovet − English, Journalism

Faculty Mentor(s): Barbara Mossberg

Oral Session 2O

Research Area: Humanities

Funding: Vice President for Research and Innovation (VPRI) Undergraduate Fellowship, Sigma Tau Delta Study Abroad Scholarship, GEO Ambassador Scholarship, Tims Ellis Endowed Scholarship

In the largely male-dominated Irish literary arts scene, the role of women has historically been confined to muses for men’s work. (Examples include James Joyce’s usage of his wife Nora as inspiration for Ulysses and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon’s treatment of his former partner Mary Farl Powers in his poem “Incantata.”) The particular masculine-coded “genius” of Irish writers like James Joyce, William Butler Yeats, Samuel Beckett, and J.M. Synge; the perceived role of women as iconography for the nation and not creators, and the Irish constitution itself contribute to the absence of women from the Irish canon. However, today’s Irish writing scene fosters a critical mass of female-identifying Irish writers through whom one can trace matrilineal literary influence from contemporary writers including Mary Lavin, Edna O’Brien, and Eavan Boland back to their modern predecessors, such as folklorist, playwright, and National Theatre co-founder Lady Augusta Gregory. My research begins by establishing an academic foundation from critical and historical works, then expands to archival research in the Edna O’Brien papers at University College of Dublin and feminist Attic Press collection at National University of Ireland Galway. My work intends to establish that today’s female Irish writers, from Claire Louise-Bennett to Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill, produce significant models of female consciousness, exploring sexuality, motherhood, and more with a frankness significant for a culture prevalently Catholic and feeling the effects of censorship laws late into the 20th century, as well as with formal innovation. Furthermore, their vibrant voices comprise the natural evolution of what is actually a long tradition of meritorious female Irish writers who have been eclipsed due to sociohistorical factors, thus bringing these women’s history back into the light for new criticism, and creating a more complex understanding of modern Irish literature as a whole.