![\"Nicole](\"https:\/\/www.umw.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/05\/Nicole-Crowder-1-2-1024x606.jpg\")
\u201cResearch and Creativity Day is a much anticipated annual tradition at UMW,\u201d said Grant Woodwell, associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and a professor of geology. \u201cThe day serves as a celebration of student achievement and provides a campus-wide event for students to share the results of their research or creative products with a wider audience of fellow students, faculty members, administrators and guests.\u201d<\/p>\n
Topics span most of UMW\u2019s disciplines, and this year\u2019s line-up includes more than 60 poster displays, original music performances and dozens of oral sessions beginning at 8 a.m. in the Hurley Convergence Center.<\/p>\n
Additional exhibits and sessions will take place in the HCC Convergence Gallery, the Ridderhof Martin Gallery, Trinkle Hall, University Center and Monroe Hall between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. The annual student art exhibit is from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. in duPont Gallery. New Perfectland, an original play with puppets, will take place in Studio 115 on the basement floor of duPont Hall at 4 and 7 p.m.<\/p>\n
Come see what a UMW chemistry student found from analyzing local honey and commercial honey for pesticides \u2013 and how that might relate to colony collapse disorder in bees. Discover what a biology student learned from chronically exposing mice to a combination of caffeine and a common artificial sweetener. And check out the work of a group of Jason James\u2019 anthropology students who studied the way societies remember and forget the past through monuments, memorials, museums, films and other media in a unique class called Practices of Memory.<\/p>\n
Collective memory of past events, James explains, shapes the way we understand and act on what\u2019s happening now. As a result, representations of the past are a source of political power \u2013 and can become the focus of conflict.<\/p>\n
The students\u2019 independent research included topics as diverse as the film Titanic, roadside historical markers, American Girl dolls and the Berlin Wall. Sophomore Hannah Huggins looked at what the novel Boy in the Striped Pajamas said about everyday Germans during the Holocaust.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s really interesting that people base their identities on memories and cultural memories,\u201d said Huggins, who is from Centreville, Virginia. \u201cPeople tend to forget there\u2019s no true reality of what the past is. All of history is a narrative.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lexy Stanford, a junior American Studies major from Culpeper, chose for her topic the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., and what it has meant to veterans, politicians and the public.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe idea that the wall allowed veterans to talk about what happened in Vietnam \u2013 that it opened up this door \u2013 that\u2019s what I found most interesting,\u201d Stanford said.<\/p>\n
The Practice of Memory projects will be displayed in the University Center\u2019s ballroom foyer, with initial presentations from 2 to 3 p.m. on Friday.<\/p>\n