2018 Summer Fellow Ariana Gunderson Presents Research at “Puppet Slam”

Ariana Gunderson, a 2018 Pardee Center Graduate Summer Fellow, was one of seven graduate students from across Boston University who participated in a “puppet slam” on April 18 as part of an experimental course called “Thinking Through Puppets and Performing Objects” initiated by Pardee Center Faculty Associate Felice Amato.

The HUB Cross-College Challenge course, a collaboration between Amato, Assistant Professor in the College of Fine Arts, and Anna Panszczyk, Senior Lecturer in The Writing Program in the College of Arts and Sciences, paired undergraduate students with graduate students, with the assignment of creating a 3-minute puppet performance based on the grad students’ research.

Gunderson, who is completing a master’s degree in gastronomy in Metropolitan College, presented a piece titled “In Defense of Comfort Food.” It included a short video segment featuring a pint of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream that critiqued the notion that comfort food is only about women using ice cream as comfort food as a relationship is ending, and noted that comfort food also can play an important role in trauma recovery. The performance included a display of sweaters and other covers Gunderson has knitted for everything from pints of ice cream to grains of orzo. “Remember to be grateful for comfort food and not ashamed,” she said at the end of the piece.

Gunderson said she decided to participate in the course because she saw it as an outgrowth of her experience as a Pardee Center Summer Fellow, which emphasized the importance of communicating academic research in ways that non-academic audiences can understand.

“I saw this as a meaningful way to engage with my thesis and in a way that was fun and bite-sized,” she said.

In introducing the performances, Amato said the course was created because “puppetry can convey information in ways that transcend language.”

Besides Gunderson, graduate students from experimental physics, biology, social work, mechanical engineering, biomedical engineering, and medicine participated.

For her project as a Pardee Center Summer Fellow in 2018, Gunderson researched attitudes about climate change among people involved in oyster farming on Cape Cod.

The event was featured in a recent BU Today article.