By Dylan Hume
I'd like to think that someone once said, "The glories of academia are reserved for those who study the atypical."
Thesis season always brings out the best and brightest among us, encouraging them to step out of the dark shadows of the library to discuss with the rest of us what exactly it is that they've been working so hard on for the past year or so. To this, I say "Bravo," and I encourage you to attend as many thesis presentations as possible.
Among this year's offerings are a set of wonderful English theses that discuss postmodernism, primitivism, Joyce and Charles Dickens; many economics papers that discuss everything from gender bias in the Indian health care system to private schools in Nepal; and many philosophy theses that mainly discuss thinkers. While these theses represent the hard work and original thought of many of our best students, they are also pretty characteristic of senior theses in general.
But in addition to these, the flood tide of theses usually includes a smattering of lesser known topics that are thankfully given the scrutiny that they so well deserve. And video games, in my mind, definitely deserve a little more scrutiny.
Nathan Wersal '08, an English major concentrating in new media, is writing a thesis entitled "Issues of Freedom and Control in Modern Video Games."
"I'm focusing on first-person shooter games, especially linear single player modes," said Wersal. "Too much existing criticism is definition, trying to define what games and genres are. There are two camps in academic game studies: narratologists, who bring in literary narrative theory and film theory, and self-described ludologists, who essentially believe that any discussion of narrative and aesthetic is secondary to the functional and structural elements of video games."
Wait a second: academic game studies? Narratologists? There are secondary sources about video games?
"There's more research than you might think," said Wersal, "but there's no authoritative critical lens through which you can examine the medium. It ends up being a multi-disciplinary field, because first-person shooters tend to subsume a bit of other mediums."
As a fan of video games myself, I'm happy that they are being examined with such a reasoned and thoughtful approach. It's not necessarily an obvious topic for a senior thesis, but in a way that's a good thing. When people say, "What? You're writing a thesis about video games?" it has the potential to get them interested in the thesis itself despite the often confusing academic jargon that pervades most theses.
AlexAnna Salmon '08 is working on another thesis topic that might elicit some confused inquiries, but that's only because of the title. Her thesis is entitled, according to the Academic Gala handbook, "'Igyararmiunguunga': Qallemciq Nunaka Man'I Kuicaraami-lu. 'I Belong to Igiugig': The Story of My Home on the Kvichak River." Whew. Now that's a title. Her thesis chronicles her time spent with a small Eskimo tribe in southwestern Alaska. An interesting topic, no doubt, but I'm sure she could have shortened the title just a little bit.
Chad Detloff '08 is writing a thesis called "Comics as Resistance to Oppression: the Ideological Involvement of Spanish, Italian, and Argentinian Artists." Now this sounds a little more up my alley. Comics? I love comics! But wait, he's writing a thesis on comics?
"The comics I studied were written under or in response to dictatorships and repressive governments in Italy, Spain and Argentina," said Detloff. "I compared the comics in each country to one another, looking for different literary elements."
Okay, so not just comics then, but comics and the regimes to which they were responding.
"There's almost no research on the topic," said Detloff. "I ran into problems getting materials. The library has almost nothing in the field -- I'd say 95 percent of the books I used I bought myself, and I couldn't even find a lot of stuff on interlibrary loan, though Umberto Eco did write a lot about the Italian author I studied."
Ah, Umberto Eco, a name I recognize. But that's got to be hard, writing on a topic with so little in the way of previous research.
"It has its pros and cons," said Detloff. "There are fewer people telling you that you're wrong. But it's hard to step into a research process without those people to tell you whether you're right or wrong. I loved the freedom to do what I wanted, but initially I found it very difficult."
I can certainly believe that. As much as I love comics, I couldn't imagine doing the level of research that Detloff has done on these very specific and generally under-acknowledged graphic works. I can say the same for video games and Wersal's project. The next time you think "His thesis is about what?" take a second to imagine the hard work and effort that goes in to every thesis, and give credit where credit is due.
Dylan is a staff writer for The Mirror. His thesis will be defended through interpretive dance.
