Exploring Peru, Bluegrass and Vogue

Some seniors writing theses would give their left arms to be able to flip through issue after issue of Vogue magazine in search of fashions by Christian Dior, but James H. Lubowitz would probably have already beaten them to the magazine stacks--and he was doing research for his thesis. Most undergraduate don't circle the globe for credit, but Janet W. Rich and Michael P. Adams wound up doing their thesis research in Australia and Peru respectively. The variety of senior theses is always astounding--here is a lively sampling of some of this year's crop that were researched far away from Harvard or dealt with unusual topics:

When Michael P. Adams '84 arrived in Peru to research his thesis on the democratization of Peru, he spoke "passable Spanish," he says. After six months in the country as part of a year off from Harvard, he spoke Spanish, had been through a few mudslides, was trapped in a village and had gone through an earthquake--all for research on the Partido Aprista Peruano (PAP), the largest political party in Peru and the most likely victor in the upcoming elections.

"The first month I was there I was kind of uncomfortable about my Spanish. I was really more of a tourist, but by the second month I got actively involved," Adams says. He was in Peru during one of the worst rainy seasons the country had ever experienced, but despite the weather he managed to travel throughout most of the country.

One journey came to a halt when a mudslide trapped the bus he was traveling in and killed eight people in the bus traveling just a few miles ahead of them. The groups spent 36 hours excavating the bus and then carried the bodies back. But after arriving in his room, Adams was prevented from sleeping by an earthquake. "I had never been in an earthquake before," he says. In yet another adventure with nature. Adams was trapped in a small village for two weeks by a mudslide that cut him off from the only road in and out of town.

The resulting thesis for the Government Department analyzed the 60-year history of the Partido, a radical social democratic party, as a case study of the problems of democratizing Latin America. Utilizing field research and documents collected in Peru. Adams analyzed and update work on the party. The PAP is the largest party in Peru though it has never come into power. The faction is likely to gain power in the elections in 1985, but Adams is not optimistic about the chances for democracy in Peru. "Any part of its program that would be objectionable has been taken out," he says.

The PAP operated for a short period under the Sanchez Cerro government as a legal opposition party, although neither the party nor Haya ever publicly accepted the legitimacy of the regime. Aprista representatives elected to the Constituent Assembly were allowed to serve briefly. However, before they were able to undertake any significant legislative activity, a state of emergency was declared by Sanchez Cerro. Under his law the Aprista parliamentarians were deported, Haya was arrested and opposition newspapers were closed.

In response to this wave of political repression, Aprista bases and militants embarked on a spree of violence which included several organized armed revolts. These revolts were unsuccessful, due to both the vacillation and conflicting advice of the Aprista leadership and the limited size of the PAP's bases. The Trujillo "revolution" of July 1932 is the most famous of these Aprista revolts. During the uprising, a large number of military officers were killed. When the revolt was finally quashed by the military, Aprista rebels were massacred en masse. In 1933 Sanchez Cerro was assassinated by an Aprista fanatic and replaced by General Benavides. --Michael P. Adams, Government

Gregory M. Valtierra's thesis was something of a monument to his grandfather and the experience of immigrants to the U.S. His two huge murals designed for the VES Department were exhibited in the Leverett House dining hall for several weeks. Valtierra had never painted before, having concentrated in architecture until this year. "I had never painted anything bigger than a house," he says.

The two large works depict scenes from the life of his grandfather, an immigrant from Mexico at the turn of the century. "I tried to pick themes that were common to the experience an immigrant would have in the U.S. and the reasons they would come here."

The largest of the two murals is a scene of two men fighting against a background of bright red, and represents conflict. Valtierra's grandfather came to the U.S. because he got into a fight with the son of a judge in his Mexican village and, after the man drew a knife on him, shot him. Upon arriving in the U.S. he worked for the Union Pacific railroad; was shanghaied to Alaska and was a stunt man for D.W. Griffith.

The second mural is drawn from his experiences with the railroad. While he was building a dam in Arizona, a horse and carriage he was driving panicked atop the dam and started falling down the slope. "As he was falling he prayed to God to see his parents again and then he hit a boulder which stopped his fall. He felt that it was God that saved him," Valtierra relates. The vivid blue and grey and white mural depicts his grandfather's fall.

"The mural has pretty much fallen out of favor in the art world," Valtierra says, adding that he hopes to have an opportunity to paint more examples of the form for use in public spaces.

Alison H. Brown had more than just an academic interest in bluegrass music, having played the banjo seriously for a decade. The winner of a number of national banjo contests, including the Canadian National Five-String Banjo competition in 1978, she has made several records and played in the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville. But she turned her hobby into an academic essay as well when she wrote her History and Literature thesis "Bluegrass Music as a Reflection of Changes in the Southern Appalachian Family: 1939-1949."

Her experience as a banjo player helped her when it came to researching bluegrass music. Little work had been done on the topic before, and Brown conducted a large series of field interviews with founders of the music form. "Some of them already knew who I was," she says. "They were pretty willing to open up. A lot of them feel like they haven't gotten the fame they deserve."

Brown's thesis featured many bluegrass pioneers, from Bill Monroe, the acknowledged founder of bluegrass music, to Earl Scruggs of Flatt and Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys. Her thesis includes a discography of bluegrass records and is full of excerpted lyrics to help show in influence of family changes on the music.

Bluegrass music is not the normal sort of thesis that the History and Literature Department accepts, and Brown says: "I'm still surprised they let me do it." Despite the oddity of the topic the thesis may have helped the Harvard community learn more about the bluegrass sound so rarely heard around Boston--even in the Square. "Nobody around Harvard knew much about it. There was really nobody who could help much, so I was pretty much on my own," she says.

If bluegrass music seemed like an unusual topic for the History and Literature Department, then haute couture seemed like an equally unlikely topic for the Fine Arts Department. But James H. Lubowitz says he "made the assumption that fashion has aesthetic value and can be considered art," and then proceeded to analyze the aesthetics of Christian Dior in the 1950s.

Lubowitz's thesis stirred some controversy in the department, since some members "didn't respect the topic," he says. Nevertheless he went ahead researching original patterns and documents of Dior's reign as fashion king of Paris in the 50s. "I was really on my own," he says. "It was difficult because I was doing a lot of empirical work from the magazines. Dior elevated fashion to an integral part of popular culture and basically saved the French economy," he adds.

Lubowitz was not lucky enough to go to Paris to do any research on the originals, but did get a grant to travel to New York to do some field work there. But he does not plan to go into fashion or fine arts as his career; he is going to medical school. "Majoring in Fine Arts was almost an indulgence," he says.

The assumption of this thesis is that fashion or dress in the twentieth century is truly an art form. The study of the history of costume encompasses many fields, such as psychology and sociology, but the aesthetic aspects of clothing have attracted little attention from critics of the arts. However, fashion should certainly be considered an art form because it is definitely an expression of the aesthetic impulses of individuals or social groups. Furthermore, since individual designers of clothing have evolved from the role of modest, nineteenth century private couturiers to world-wide dictators of the haute couture, the work of the great twentieth century fashion artists like Christian Dior must be considered as art in the fullest sense of the term.

The first high fashion style of the Fifties was actually created in 1947 when Christian Dior showed his first collection. Dior presented a silhouette which became known as the "New Look." Half-a-century's development of the square, mannish, waistless woman was relinquished in a moment for this new ideal of feminine chic. It consisted of a tiny, nipped waist, rounded (even padded) breasts, rounded hips, and skirts which usually swept as low as eight to twelve inches from the floor.

Dior minimized the waist not only by means of clever cutting and a mini-corset or guepiere; be padded out the front hip bones and used every known trick of the art of couture in elaborately constructing his models. To add the ultra-feminine look of these costumes, Dior added small flowered hats with veils, high-heeled shoes, colored gloves to match a buttonhole or handkerchief, long slim umbrellas to tone with shoes and bag, and two or four strings of pearls.

These lovely dresses were carried out in materials woven with both real and artificial fibers. Many of the characteristics of Dior's new mode--the skirts held out by invisible means as well as the soft drapes which held their own line without visible support--owed their qualities to the new, man-made fibers. Indeed, these models would not have been possible without the aid of such novel fabrics as featherweight holland linings and diaphanous but firm, stiffened nylon.   --"The Aesthetics of Fashion"   James H. Lubowitz, Fine Arts

No one had ever done much work on the Turkey War of 1973-1979 before Michael T. Anderson '84 took up the topic. It was not a major international conflict--the war did not concern the nation Turkey, but the bird Americans eat for Thanksgiving. If they don't seem like much to fight about, then consider that the European Community started raising tariffs on turkey imports from the U.S. and made turkey farmers very upset. The ensuing trade war lasted for five years.

Anderson didn't focus on just the turkey war, but used for comparison the Chicken War of 1961-1964 and also analyzed the Textile Wrangle of 1969-1971 and another textile fight in 1956 between the U.S. and Japan. The Government thesis analyzed the varying intensity of the fights and the causes for the intensity.

"Fighting Over Fabric and Fowl" may have earned the Currier House resident high marks from the department, but his unusual interest in poultry also earned him the name "Captain Chicken" from some of his friends. Nevertheless, Anderson was one of the first to do research on the dispute which, he says, "no one has any clue about." Despite the strange epithet he received from his friends. Anderson has turned his knowledge into a possible job: he is up for a job as confidential adviser to the Undersecretary of Agriculture for International Affairs.

The Turkey War continued into the Ford Administration. On October 11, 1976 (conveniently one month before the November elections) Ford imposed a quota on EC meat imports of 1.26 million pounds. After negotiations failed to solve the poultry trade conflict. Ford on November 29, 1976 raised the tariff on $13-a-gallon brandy from $1.00 to $3.00 and the levy on $9.00 brandy from $1.25 to $3.00

In retaliation, the EC reached once again for its familiar weapon, turkey levies. Tariff levels on turkey drumsticks, legs, and quarters were increased 35%, 55%, and 40% respectively.

The Turkey War simmered on and proved to be a major obstacle to Geneva Multilateral Trade Negotiations. In July of 1977 the EC and US agreed on a procedure to handle agricultural matters in the MTN. Each side was to submit petitions to the other concerning its demand for agricultural trade concessions. As late as July 1978 negotiator Robert Strauss admitted that poultry trade was one problem delaying the successful conclusion of the talks.

The dispute was finally resolved with the conclusion of the Tokyo round of trade negotiations. The EC conceded three minor points. First, they agreed to lower levies on turkey drumsticks, breasts, and thighs by using new coefficients for calculating gate prices. Second, they agreed to keep seasoned, uncooked turkey at the bound rate of 17%. Finally, the Community decided to reduce turkey liver levies from 14% ad valorem to 10%.

The Turkey War, after dragging on for five years, was finally concluded.   "Fighting Over Fabric and Fowl"   Michael T. Anderson, Government

A lot of Visual and Environmental Studies professors probably got a big shock when they got to the last four minutes of Eames Demetrios's 70-minute thesis film. After 66 minutes of what viewers called outstanding technical work, the movie shifts to a four-minute scene of two people having sex--in absolute silence and with an unmoving camera. Audiences that saw it reacted with shock and silence. "There was nothing erotic about it at all," said one viewer. "It was shocking, and its message seemed to be that sex is meaningless. It was part of an entire view of life in the 80s and things being empty." The film, called "Stories from Lobos Creek," has five parts, or stories, which are in turn part of a larger work of 10 short subjects. The stories were all written and filmed by Demetrios. They were filmed in San Francisco over six weeks at the end of August and edited through the year.

Most of the actors were professional actors whom Demetrios found in San Francisco through an open audition. Demetrios hopes to screen the complete work at film festivals around the country and hopes to go into the film business.

Demetrios's film sparked some controversy in the department, not because of the subject matter, but because some professors thought the connections of the themes in the film were not deliberate enough. Demetrios puts it this way: "Some liked them a lot and some liked them not at all; they didn't think I knew what I was doing." The five parts of the film deal first with Demetrios's father's sculpture, then a man talking to his dog, then a woman who goes into a fall-out shelter to seek refuge from nuclear war only to emerge 10 years later to discover it did not occur, a gang leader talking to the camera and finally a woman director shooting her lover about whom she has just made a film. The film within the film contains the sex scene. Admits Demetrios: "some of the content is a little bit unusual."

Janet W. Rich started her thesis research by exploring the breast-feeding and reproductive habits of primates in Kenya to examine the connection between breast-feeding and the return of ovulation in women. She ended up dropping the primate angle and spent two-and-a-half months on a small island off the northern coast of Australia studying breast-feeding in an aborigine tribe. The resulting thesis for the Anthropology Department proved that given certain breast-feeding habits, women can delay the return to ovulation by 14 to 15 months.

Rich's study of the Yolngu tribe in the Northern territory exposed her to a type of research and field work that helped convince her to go into the Peace Corps in Niger next year. While studying the area, Rich was witness to a few traditional ceremonies and was taken hunting once, in addition to eating live Mangrove worms once.

The thesis, which compared Yolngu breast-feeding habits with those of the !Kung of Africa and the La Leche League of Boston, a local advocacy group. The study, she says, has implications for the growing movement for the return to breast-feeding. "There are a lot of people calling for a return to breast-feeding. Breast-feeding is very good aside from these fertility-delaying effects. But with a greater number of women enter, the workforce, the debate is becoming more difficult and fewer women can breast-feed," she says.CrimsonTimothy W. PlassEAMES DEMETRIOS '84