2008 Woodie Awards
Senior snags coveted Watson
Dan Stevens
Issue date: 3/30/06 Section: News
- Page 1 of 2 next >
|
Every year the Thomas J. Watson Foundation awards 50 liberal arts students the chance to explore the world for the purpose of independent study completely designed and planned by the graduating student. Shapiro is the 22nd Middlebury student since 1981 to receive a Watson Fellowship.
Shapiro's research project, titled "Painted Ladies: A Cultural Exploration of Women and Tattooing," will explore the nature of tattooing in far flung areas of the world including Samoa, Tahiti, New Zealand, India, Morocco and Tanzania. Shapiro said the project stems from a personal desire to explore how tattoos have meaning in other cultures.??
"I want to explore the role of women in tattoo cultures outside the United States, where tattooing still retains a sense of meaning, community and ritual, and the full participation of women is not an aberration from the norm, but a specific norm all its own," Shapiro wrote in her project proposal.
Watson Fellowship projects are as diverse as the students and the universities represented. Shapiro's fellow awardees will be studying topics ranging from the way baseball enhances cultural immersion to tracking the Arctic Tern from the North Pole to the South Pole.??
The process for selecting Watson Fellows is rigorous and competitive. Each member institution first requires an application with a project proposal from each student. The College then limits the applicants to a smaller group for interviews. Following this restriction, the institution then reduces the pool to an even smaller group to nominate to the Watson Foundation.