Kate Silbert '08 wins Fraker prize for top essay

Author: Bryant Cobb

On March 13, the Fraker Prize was awarded to Kate Silbert '08 for her essay entitled "Real Human Bodies: A Critical Examination of Bodies - The Exhibition in Pittsburgh." The Fraker Prize is awarded annually to the best essay written by a Middlebury student on issues pertaining to women and gender. The prize is named after Allison Fraker, a Middlebury senior who was killed in a car crash in 1989. The award recipient is chosen from essays that are nominated for the award by members of the Middlebury faculty.

Silbert's essay was written for Professor of Women's and Gender Studies Sujata Moorti's senior seminar during the fall semester of 2007. Silbert's assignment was to write an essay that had something to do with the body. Silbert chose to write her essay about the way that the body was represented in an exhibit at the Carnegie Science Center in Pittsburgh that displayed bodies from ancient China.

"I had known about the exhibit," said Silbert, "but until I saw that billboard I had not fully made the connection between the exhibit and the themes of my seminar."

In her essay, Silbert discussed how the exhibit had been advertised as having an educational objective. In fact, many of the bodies were used to give the viewer insight into the inner workings of the muscular, skeletal and circulatory systems, among others. However, Silbert added that the exhibit did not seem to be only for educational purposes.

"The exhibit was obviously also there to entertain the viewer," said Silbert. "It was an obvious collision of two different goals and shows that objectivity can be impossible to obtain." She added that the exhibit seemed to show that the body is universal and therefore applicable to everyone.

"I tried to use course concepts to show in my paper that such an exhibit is problematic because it accepts the universality of the body and does not take into account the very important gender and racial differences between bodies," said Silbert.

Silbert also used her paper to explore the way that gender is represented in society. She noticed that the default gender was always the male gender in the exhibit. "There were images of male bodies participating in different activities, mostly sports," said Silbert. "However, the female gender was only explicitly referenced when the exhibit focused on the reproductive system."

In addition, Silbert also addressed the ongoing debate over whether it is right to be showing dead bodies. She specifically discussed the arguments of those that felt that showing the bodies was an affront to the dignity of the dead.

"There were many wonderful papers this year, and it was hard to choose," said Moorti. "However, Kate's paper seamlessly discussed classroom topics, gender and race in a well-written and original essay."