Trystan Loustau
Major: Psychology
Graduation: Spring 2022
Future Plans: After graduation, Trystan plans to pursue a doctorate in social psychology.
FSU Involvement: Honors Program, Honors Experience Program (HEP), HEP Equality Committee, 2019 HEP Symposium, Presidential Scholars, Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program (UROP), Undergraduate Research Symposium, FSU IDEA Grant Recipient (sponsored by the Scott and Ina McNichols Undergraduate Research Award), Associate Editor for The Owl (2019-2020), Psi Chi International Honor Society, Phi Beta Kappa.
Trystan Loustau (Psychology, ‘22) presented her paper entitled “Back to Child, Back to Husband”: Containing Transgressive Mothers in Into the Woods” at the international conference for the Association of Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) in August. She submitted her paper for consideration with the Music Theatre/Dance Focus Group’s Bruce Kirle Memorial Debut Panel for Emerging Scholars. It was accepted through a process of blind peer review with a panel of scholars, and will published as a scholarly article in the journal "Studies in Musical Theatre" in the Fall. This is a wonderful honor for an undergraduate student and we are very proud to have her represent Honors!
She was also awarded an FSU Idea Grant for $4,000 for a research project in her field of study, which she hopes to present at the President's Showcase in Fall 2020.
In addition, during the Spring 2020 semester, Trystan collaborated on a blog post project with the New York Public Library, along with a small group of other HEP students. She contributed the character analysis portion of the blog post on the musical Baker Street. The blog was posted in May 2020. Trystan was also featured in an FSU News article on July 6, 2020 for her outstanding achievements.
“I am incredibly honored to have my paper selected for this panel. I first saw the film Into the Woods when it debuted in 2014. At the time, I wasn’t even aware that it had been adapted for film from the original 1986 stage musical. I fell in love with the soundtrack and the interwoven storyline that revealed more and more each time I listened to it. My scholarly study of Into the Woods began in Spring 2019 in Dr. Ross Moret’s HEP class "Superheroes and Ethics.” For the final paper, he allowed us to dissect a selection of media of our choosing through the lens of one of the ethical philosophers we had studied. I chose to analyze the moral ambiguity of Into the Woods using theories put forth by American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. It was one of the most fun papers I had ever written, so you can imagine my excitement when the HEP program welcomed a new professor the following year—Dr. Arianne Johnson Quinn—who taught entire courses on musical theatre analysis. While learning all about the American musical in Dr. Quinn’s class, I also had the pleasure of working with her and a group of other HEP students on a collaborative project with the New York Public Library (NYPL). Utilizing primary sources and relevant contemporary theatre scholarship, I wrote the “Character Analysis” section of a blog piece about the musical Baker Street that was published on the NYPL website. I loved being able to take a peek inside the characters’ heads and wonder about who, how, and why they were. Back in class, Dr. Quinn asked us to try our hand at writing a musical analysis paper. I did my best to stay away from Into the Woods at first; after all, I had learned about so many new and interesting musicals that I had yet to further explore. But, in the end, I was unable to resist the draw of the musical’s multi-layered characters, compelling soundtrack, and intriguing take on classic fairytale themes. My paper, entitled “Back to Child, Back to Husband: Containing Transgressive Motherhood in Into the Woods” examines how the musical pushes and pulls at traditional, reductive portrayals of what it means to be a mother” - Trystan Loustau