A Mentored Advanced Project is a faculty-guided scholarly or creative endeavor that builds on substantial preparatory work. It brings together the knowledge and skills students have developed through their coursework and is designed to produce outcomes worthy of presentation to the broader scholarly community.
Summer 2024 MAP Research
Les Maitresse – The Myth, Methodology, and Meaning explores the ways feminine narratives shape identity, community, and exclusion. Focusing on the interconnected figures of Zora Neale Hurston, Janie—the protagonist of Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God—and the Haitian lwa Erzulie Freda, the project examines how each has confronted public rejection and transformed her role in community formation. It also considers how these figures have accrued layered meanings over time through evolving interpretations in literature and art.
Using ethnographic analysis and the framework of intersectional feminism, the study investigates how Hurston, Janie, and Erzulie Freda are understood, misunderstood, and reintroduced within and beyond the diaspora.
Student: Vivian Finch, ’26
Instructor: Dr. Petrouchka Moise
Summer 2023 MAP Research
The Transition of Vodou Lore to Digital Platforms: An Analysis of Indigenous Archetypes through Role-Playing Game (RPG) Design examines how RPG character and narrative design can translate Indigenous archetypes into digital environments. Haitian history and storytelling are increasingly being reimagined in virtual spaces. In Slave Revolt on Screen: The Haitian Revolution in Film and Video Games, scholar Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall analyzes how global films and video games have portrayed slave revolts, with particular attention to the Haitian Revolution. Meanwhile, the Instagram platform @Vodou.Renaissance has used artificial intelligence to reinterpret Vodou archetypes beyond their traditional Catholic iconography.
Building on these developments, this research explores the structure of digital RPG design and its potential to serve as a new landscape for sustaining the Vodou lwa and their narratives. At this stage, the findings contribute to the development of foundational visual markers and contemporary iconographic standards for identifying Vodou imagery and influences in the work of Haitian artists who incorporate digitally born media into their practice.
Student: Beck Lambert, ’25
Instructor: Dr. Petrouchka Moise