UMW Undergraduate Research and Creativity
a virtual symposium
Students taking Research Methods in Psychology are tasked with generating a novel research question, designing a study to answer that question, and analyzing and interpreting data within the context of their original hypotheses. These posters represent the culmination of this semester-long project.
Much Ado About Nothing
by William Shakespeare
Beatrice and Benedick are meant for each other. Trouble is, they don’t see it that way. In one of Shakespeare’s wittiest and most romantic of comedies, mistaken identities, misdirected insults, devious fakery, and bumbling antics prove no match for the effervescent power of love. Will calculated swooning and conniving mischief succeed to find Beatrice and Benedick falling madly for each other, or will it all simply amount to Much Ado About Nothing?
When campus closed on March 12 in order to transition to online learning in light of the rise of COVID-19, UMW Theatre was deep into preparation for the final offering of it’s 2019-20 season, Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare. When there was a chance that we might return to in person classes on April 6, the faculty decided to put the production on hold and make arrangements for a delayed opening once classes resumed. When UMW announced that classes would remain online for the remainder of the academic year, the faculty and staff decided to present a performance of Much Ado About Nothing online. Gregg Stull, professor of theatre and chair of the department met with the Much Ado company on March 19 to share the plans. Rehearsals resumed on March 23.
The cast presented a live stream performance on April 16 to a crowd of more than 1500 viewers watching from 37 states, Puerto Rico, the District of Columbia and five states. Within 24 hours of being posted as an on demand performance on YouTube, more than 2000 people have watched the UMW Theatre production of Much Ado. From the start of the production process until the performance, 107 UMW students contributed to bringing Much Ado About Nothing to life.
During WWII, 1.3 million people were transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau; 1.1 million died there. This notorious death camp was just one part of the intricate system the Nazis created to exterminate the enemies of the Third Reich. After the liberation of the camps by the Allies at the end of the war, historians have deconstructed what life was like in the camps based on the personal testimonies of adult survivors and the accounts of the children imprisoned. Though many aspects of life in the camps and the conditions of the prisoners have been examined, few historians have focused on the experiences of pregnant women in the concentration camps for the tragic reason that very few of these women survived their ordeal. While this was the reality for the majority of the women, not all pregnant women were selected to die. The Nazis were not in the position to immediately exterminate all their enemies and had to instead create a system that organized their killing into stages where life and death were selected based on certain criteria. Throughout my research paper, I hope to explore and answer the following question: what were the determining factors that sentenced pregnant women to either life or death during the selection processes in the Nazi concentration camps?
