Gaining Hands-on Experience

Carlye Warren

Carlye Warren, Comparative Humanities and Art and Art History major, Class of ’06, has had a variety of research experiences at Bucknell. During her junior year, Carlye worked on an in-class project funded by the Getty Foundation involving the architectural preservation of a few historic buildings on campus. Carlye states "the results of this project were actually used by the university and architects." This project and other classroom projects sparked a desire to do a more intense and challenging research project but none of the projects she did while taking courses were conducive to transforming into a long term project. In the 2004-05 academic year, Carlye decided to work on an independent study project with Professor Roger Rothman. She enjoyed art history yet wanted to go beyond the traditional art history project. She used her background in comparative humanities and English to develop a project on images of the nude pregnant female body by Egon Schiele. She has worked on this project since that time, taking a break in fall 2005 to study abroad. Carlye describes this work as "a work in progress. I need further graduate work (like taking more German) to go further." The project was a difficult project for her. Prof. Rothman’s expertise is in a different area of art history. She found it very useful to email questions and inquiries to off-campus experts in Viennese turn of the century thought to augment the guidance that Prof. Rothman provided. To her surprise, these experts responded to her emails with informed, intellectual answers. At one point in the project, Carlye found herself surrounded by books and art work allowing her to immerse herself in the subject matter.

Carlye also produced a senior honors thesis on the symbolism of the heart in medieval devotional texts. Completing an honors thesis is required for the Comparative Humanities major. This project required her to read and evaluate hand written medieval documents.

Carlye’s research experiences beyond the classroom has "completely guided what I intend to do in the future." She was accepted into an art education Master’s program but has instead decided to pursue a Master’s degree in English at Bucknell to continue the female imagery project or work for a non-profit organization. Carlye describes her research projects as what kept her going through her undergraduate education. She found research topics that she was passionate about and followed that passion by taking an independent study.

For more information, see the abstract of a presentation that Carlye gave at the "Intercollegiate Art History Symposium" at Bucknell during spring 2006.